Cable’s Summer Lineup Cuts into Broadcast Networks’ Hold on TV
By By Tom Maurstad Media Critic, The Dallas Morning News
Sep. 16–There are plenty of industry-jargon/business-school buzz phrases you can use to describe what’s going on in television. But there’s another way that avoids the eye-glazing effect of expressions like “shifting templates” and “fragmenting markets,” and that’s just to point out something you may have already noticed.
Isn’t it funny how seemingly every showbiz bee in the media hive is buzzing over the new fall TV season while all the shows you care about have either just ended or are about to?
Let’s run down a quick list: The Closer, Entourage, Saving Grace, Damages, Big Love and Mad Men. All are original programs with brand-name stars. Some are new, some are returning. Some have built big audiences, some have established niche followings that may lead to big audiences. One more thing they have in common: All are on cable.
Not that you could guess it from magazine covers — Entertainment Weekly’s Sept. 14 “Fall TV Preview” offers “Your Complete Guide” while a “special issue” of TV Guide gives readers the “scoop” on all the “hot new shows” — but we now live in a two-season TV world. And that’s just a transitional phase on our way to a world of year-round TV.
Thanks to the emergence of cable networks as a successful source of original programming, viewers are no longer bound to that familiar calendar of broadcast TV. No longer is everything all about fall, with a few new shows appearing as that strange species known as midseason replacements. In that old-world order, summer was a dead zone of new programs and a dumping ground for reruns and more recently cheap-to-produce reality/game shows. In the new world, summer has become a second season for debuting new shows: This summer saw the premiere of new shows, from HBO’s Flight of the Conchords to AMC’s first venture in original-series programming, Mad Men, and the new seasons of returning shows including TNT’s flagship series, The Closer. More than 9 million viewers tuned in for its season finale last Monday, making it the second-most-watched show in its time slot for both cable and broadcast.
“We just did our biggest season of new shows we’ve ever done,” says Evan Shapiro, executive vice president and general manager of the Independent Film Channel. “We did it in August for the same reason all the other cable networks are jumping in with summer programming: because there’s not much going on on broadcast. The giants are sleeping, so we’ve got the playground to ourselves.”
This isn’t a trend being driven by quantity alone. If it were, it still wouldn’t be much of a trend. Even the most prolific of original-program-generating networks (HBO among premium channels and TNT on basic, for example) are producing a fraction of what the big broadcast networks create, a few hours a week compared to more than 20. The real X factor is quality.
With series from Rescue Me to Damages (both on FX), cable has demonstrated a flair for smart dialogue, good storytelling and nuanced acting. Combine that with the intersecting story lines and depth of detail that come out of ensemble casts, and a devotion to character development (as showcased in shows like TNT’s The Closer and Showtime’s Weeds) and you’ve got a platform custom-made to pull in adult viewers wandering the desolate summer TV landscape looking for intelligent, involving entertainment.
“Cable networks have been very astute in recognizing that summer is wide open for them to use as a test kitchen for new shows,” says Steve Kalb, senior vice president and director of national broadcast for Mullen, an advertising agency whose clients include Ask.com, Match.com and XM Satellite radio. “They have also been more innovative in developing alternative advertising models, such as sponsorship and product placement.
“Broadcast is still the only ‘big-reach’ game in town, but even that distinction is fading. Those giant-ratings events like American Idol are anomalies at this point. Particular broadcast shows still deliver huge numbers, but cable is leading the buzz market, and that attracts advertisers.”
Right about here is where it would be nice to get some on-the-other-hand comments from the big broadcast networks, but none of them responded to repeated requests for comments or interviews, so we will all just have to fill in that blank for ourselves.
And as the fall season for the broadcast networks starts and the summer season for the cable networks ends, let’s reflect on the near-future scene that all this original programming success sets. The secret of summer, obviously, is out. With fall already filled, that leaves only two seasons left on the calendar — winter and spring — for new-show exploitation. Next stop, year-round TV.
“There’s no free pass anymore,” says Michael Wright, senior vice president of Turner Entertainment’s Content Creation Group. “Cable has gone from stepchild to first choice in most homes, and every network is going to have to get into the original-show business. You can’t just rely on acquired programs anymore.
“And that means everybody’s going to be looking for an opening wherever they can find it.”
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