“Let us focus our circulation down to deliver a more qualified audience. Let us cut the paper stock to save money. Let us cut the newsroom to save margin. Let us slow roll into new media as we don’t want to cannibalize our own business”…and on and on and on…
This article - to me - is the first official bad sign that network TV is the next old media to undergo a long term cycle to oblivion. The discussion isn’t about product or customers; just about costs, margins and OIBDA.
When you can’t grow, you focus on expenses and the cycle of cuts; layoffs; cheapening of the product; and all sort of self-fulfilling rationale begins. I once thought of NBC television under Brandon Tartikoff as a creative powerhouse. Now it is all about suits and numbers and cheap content to fill in the time slots. Color me nervous for network TV.
p.s. regarding the “geeky” educational channels: PBS cornered that market long ago. I stopped tuning in to TLC or A&E when those stations began running things like “Dog the Bounty Hunter” or “Inked”
I think the cable providers will pick up the TV series genre (and give more R-rated options there) and we’ll see a shift from traditional “movie channels” like HBO, Showtime, etc, move from a hybrid mini-series/movie format to more of a weekly series format (given that movies are released faster on DVD and available on demand for many subscribers, I’d guess that less and less viewers are waiting for the cable movie channels to run them).
Leaving the traditional broadcast networks with what? I’d guess focusing on any news and sports subsidiaries they might own. There’s always the local news niche, but local access stations could pick that up.
The reality series is (hopefully) going to sputter out as people get tired of seeing the same formulae over and over + youtube, etc, are kind of their own on-demand “reality tv” (not making the content creators any money [yet] of course).
When “reality TV” became the “in thing” for the networks to being showing, ad nauseum, they touted it as the NEW THING! THE BEST THING ON TV!!! And yeah, it appealed to the lowest common denominator TV watcher, but some of us who enjoyed shows like West Wing and it’s ilk realized that these shows were gold mines for the network due to the low cost to produce. I haven’t watched much of anything on network TV (except NHL games, of course!) since all this dreck started showing up. I find myself watching A&E, Discovery Channel and all those other “geeky” channels precisely because I’m disgusted with the regular networks. They lost me about 5 years ago!
I truly don’t understand why NBC seems so eager to turn their back on their core strength, which is massive reach.
It seems like they can’t wait to show advertisers that they can get 5000 people to watch a five minute show on a cell phone. Meanwhile, I have to agre with Ted, they’re allowing their core business to go into a slow decline.
They’re not putting up much of a fight. If anything, it’s like they’re eager to surrender.
Ted, keep an eye on the rest of this week’s network upfronts. I think you will find that not everybody is giving up on the traditional model.
Networks don’t want disposable product. They want bankable product. Unfortunately, either the popular shows aren’t bankable or the networks haven’t figured out how to bank on them. I think the latter is true, but that’s not the point. Most viewers don’t watch every single episode of a program – an average I once heard was one episode a month, so one out of every four. This makes disposable content a lot easier to digest.
The best thing going for anyone in scripted television is syndication. There is much more opportunity for syndication than ever before. But syndication requires the exact opposite of disposable content – shows with arcs, narrative threads, and characters which stand the test of time. These shows have to break out of the one out of four paradigm – they require the “must see tv” label of the networks’ golden days. No one knows if the TV can get that back.
Maybe mustsee.tv is next…
Color those of us writing and writing and shooting our own pilots and trailers for pitches nervous as well!
It’s like getting to the party as everyone is hugging and saying goodnight.
It’s a shame that shows like Lost and West Wing (in it’s good years) and Heroes…Sci Fi’s Battlestar Galactica, Scrubs, The Office…they’re so good, and yet all the networks want to see is disposable content. Shows with no arc…no narrative thread. Shows where you miss one week or three, and you can pick right bak up without missing a beat. (Heaven forbid an audience have to think or remember something that happened earlier in order to enjoy a show!)
So what’s next? AOL.tv?