So, NBC, scripted much?
Dec. 9th, 2008 08:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jlhJay Leno to take over the M-F 10pm slot on NBC.
Gawker has an excellent take on the winners and losers, but I wanted to talk about the effect on scripted programming. NBC Universal President Jeff Zucker had said a couple of seasons ago that one direction NBC might take was to fill the 8pm hour for the entire week with reality programming, and the Leno deal comes close to that (although at least Leno's writers are in the WGA). NBC is in fourth place, so it isn't surprising that they want to keep Leno around. Besides, neither Fox nor CW program the 10pm hour anyway (it's local news) which always peeved the Big Three.
For a while now Zucker's been trying to move NBC away from being a stand alone network and toward just another network in the NBC Universal family along with Bravo, USA and Sci-Fi. That might be realistic when it comes to viewers, especially younger ones, but I can't imagine that it's hugely popular with the local affiliates (who could give a shit about Bravo). Not to mention that the network pricing structure certainly hasn't caught up. And he's achieved it; if you check the programming going into Fall 2008, NBC planned only 11 of 22 weekly hours with new scripted programming; the rest is reality, news magazines and football. Compare that with 17 hours on CBS and 14 hours on ABC.* Of those 11 hours two are the Thursday night sitcoms, two are L&O, My Own Worst Enemy has already been cancelled, Lipstick Jungle is on the bubble and rumors abound that Heroes won't be renewed, who knows what will happen with Chuck, Life and Knight Rider, and it's the last year of ER. Entertainment head Ben Silverman has proven to be a complete failure at turning prime time around (Seacrest, count your lucky stars that you got Mama's Boys greenlit while your buddy was still in power) and clearly along with Conan O'Brien he's one of the more obvious losers in the Leno deal. No real reason to commit to the hour long drama, a staple of the 10pm timeslot.
A lot of the talk during the press conference today is how expensive hour-long shows have become, and Leno pointed out that even if he doesn't beat CSI on first run, CSI will only run 22 weeks a year, while he'll run 46 or so. Expense is a lot of what's hurting scripted dramas these days, what with the pay cable nets like HBO and Showtime using them like Best Buy uses CDs, as loss leaders; they probably still track most of their subscriptions to boxing rather than The Sopranos and Dexter, but they also own the shows and make a lot more money off the back end with DVD sales. Also, with those movie catalogs, they don't rely on their original shows to make up so much of their programming. But for a network that really needs to make all the money off the show upfront (they often aren't the studio producing the show, but merely the distributor) and via advertising, and who has a lot of hours to fill where short seasons aren't much of a blessing, the model just doesn't work. Fox has worked it out, in many ways, letting baseball take up space so the shortened seasons aren't as noticeable. (Though Idol and 24 are aging, and where that network will be without those two shows is anyone's guess.)
The other big point NBC tried to make with the Leno show was that it would be topical and therefore DVR-proof, which is laughable. Daily Show and Colbert are hugely popular on DVR, and few shows are as topical as they. Get used to the live+7 universe, fellas; it's here to stay. Just convince your advertisers that it doesn't suck.
One of the reasons I got out of advertising is so I didn't have to figure out the future of all of this. American network television is in a real muddle, and I'm not exactly sure how it's going to work its way out. Zucker may be right, and the real solution for the nets is to act like cable channels, but that screws the affiliates. Then again, with tv shows selling so well on DVD the syndication market is crap so they might not have much of a choice either. And NBC-U is much better at cross promotion than other network groups; look at all the play various Bravo shows have had on the big network, or how easily they could distribute their Olympics coverage, or their political reporting for that matter. Much as ABC Sports was subsumed into ESPN, MSNBC is the face of NBC News; heck, that's where Brian Williams made his name, and it's even more integrated now that they've been brought back out of their Secaucus exile to sit at the big kids' table at Rockefeller Center.
The real question is, will Leno just get bigger at 10pm? They took great pains today to manage ratings expectations. Leno's 4.5 or so nightly average isn't exactly a prime time number, but as the suits said, Leno's show won't cost as much as ER, either, so it can have modest ratings and still pay out. It's a weird blend of the experimental and the deeply conservative, but that's what American television usually looks like, anyway.
What do you think? Or would you rather just talk about that Blagojevich and how he's brought Patrick Fitzgerald back into our lives?
*Fox isn't comparable to the Big Three in this aspect. First, it only programs 15 hours a week, with the 10pm local news hour. Second, because of post-season baseball their schedule doesn't really launch in many ways until the January starts of American Idol and 24. And third, Fox has always, and very unapologetically, had lots of reality in its schedule, which mask its inability to schedule a live action comedy. The CW, with no Saturday nights, has even fewer hours.
Gawker has an excellent take on the winners and losers, but I wanted to talk about the effect on scripted programming. NBC Universal President Jeff Zucker had said a couple of seasons ago that one direction NBC might take was to fill the 8pm hour for the entire week with reality programming, and the Leno deal comes close to that (although at least Leno's writers are in the WGA). NBC is in fourth place, so it isn't surprising that they want to keep Leno around. Besides, neither Fox nor CW program the 10pm hour anyway (it's local news) which always peeved the Big Three.
For a while now Zucker's been trying to move NBC away from being a stand alone network and toward just another network in the NBC Universal family along with Bravo, USA and Sci-Fi. That might be realistic when it comes to viewers, especially younger ones, but I can't imagine that it's hugely popular with the local affiliates (who could give a shit about Bravo). Not to mention that the network pricing structure certainly hasn't caught up. And he's achieved it; if you check the programming going into Fall 2008, NBC planned only 11 of 22 weekly hours with new scripted programming; the rest is reality, news magazines and football. Compare that with 17 hours on CBS and 14 hours on ABC.* Of those 11 hours two are the Thursday night sitcoms, two are L&O, My Own Worst Enemy has already been cancelled, Lipstick Jungle is on the bubble and rumors abound that Heroes won't be renewed, who knows what will happen with Chuck, Life and Knight Rider, and it's the last year of ER. Entertainment head Ben Silverman has proven to be a complete failure at turning prime time around (Seacrest, count your lucky stars that you got Mama's Boys greenlit while your buddy was still in power) and clearly along with Conan O'Brien he's one of the more obvious losers in the Leno deal. No real reason to commit to the hour long drama, a staple of the 10pm timeslot.
A lot of the talk during the press conference today is how expensive hour-long shows have become, and Leno pointed out that even if he doesn't beat CSI on first run, CSI will only run 22 weeks a year, while he'll run 46 or so. Expense is a lot of what's hurting scripted dramas these days, what with the pay cable nets like HBO and Showtime using them like Best Buy uses CDs, as loss leaders; they probably still track most of their subscriptions to boxing rather than The Sopranos and Dexter, but they also own the shows and make a lot more money off the back end with DVD sales. Also, with those movie catalogs, they don't rely on their original shows to make up so much of their programming. But for a network that really needs to make all the money off the show upfront (they often aren't the studio producing the show, but merely the distributor) and via advertising, and who has a lot of hours to fill where short seasons aren't much of a blessing, the model just doesn't work. Fox has worked it out, in many ways, letting baseball take up space so the shortened seasons aren't as noticeable. (Though Idol and 24 are aging, and where that network will be without those two shows is anyone's guess.)
The other big point NBC tried to make with the Leno show was that it would be topical and therefore DVR-proof, which is laughable. Daily Show and Colbert are hugely popular on DVR, and few shows are as topical as they. Get used to the live+7 universe, fellas; it's here to stay. Just convince your advertisers that it doesn't suck.
One of the reasons I got out of advertising is so I didn't have to figure out the future of all of this. American network television is in a real muddle, and I'm not exactly sure how it's going to work its way out. Zucker may be right, and the real solution for the nets is to act like cable channels, but that screws the affiliates. Then again, with tv shows selling so well on DVD the syndication market is crap so they might not have much of a choice either. And NBC-U is much better at cross promotion than other network groups; look at all the play various Bravo shows have had on the big network, or how easily they could distribute their Olympics coverage, or their political reporting for that matter. Much as ABC Sports was subsumed into ESPN, MSNBC is the face of NBC News; heck, that's where Brian Williams made his name, and it's even more integrated now that they've been brought back out of their Secaucus exile to sit at the big kids' table at Rockefeller Center.
The real question is, will Leno just get bigger at 10pm? They took great pains today to manage ratings expectations. Leno's 4.5 or so nightly average isn't exactly a prime time number, but as the suits said, Leno's show won't cost as much as ER, either, so it can have modest ratings and still pay out. It's a weird blend of the experimental and the deeply conservative, but that's what American television usually looks like, anyway.
What do you think? Or would you rather just talk about that Blagojevich and how he's brought Patrick Fitzgerald back into our lives?
*Fox isn't comparable to the Big Three in this aspect. First, it only programs 15 hours a week, with the 10pm local news hour. Second, because of post-season baseball their schedule doesn't really launch in many ways until the January starts of American Idol and 24. And third, Fox has always, and very unapologetically, had lots of reality in its schedule, which mask its inability to schedule a live action comedy. The CW, with no Saturday nights, has even fewer hours.
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no subject
Date: 2008-12-10 01:13 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-12-14 07:24 pm (UTC)It might be that in our Glorious Future of the Long Tail we all become so demanding of things that suit our tastes that the only shows that can appeal broadly are innocuous reality shows like Idol and Dancing with the Stars and The Amazing Race and Extreme Home Makeover.
no subject
Date: 2008-12-10 01:46 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-12-14 07:14 pm (UTC)Julie said in the next entry that Days got rid of Roman and Marlena because of $$$. I think NBC is in a really bad place if they're making so many decisions due to cost savings. It doesn't seem like a good way to run a network. If they developed good scripted shows, advertisers would pay to be in them, and the ratings would be good. Sheesh.
no subject
Date: 2008-12-10 02:07 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-12-14 07:26 pm (UTC)NBC research apparently shows that most people spend the 10pm hour watching stuff off their DVR rather than watching anything live--my guess, because that's after the kids have gone off to bed and you can actually sit down and watch an adult show. And I just looked up the Emmys and the Globes, and man, network scripted drama is not in a good place.
no subject
Date: 2008-12-10 04:28 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-12-14 07:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-12-10 01:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-12-14 07:26 pm (UTC)