Broadcast Networks Worry They’Ve Got More to Lose

By David Kronke

While overall television viewership is up from last year, broadcast networks aren’t celebrating. Their audiences are down.

This is the week of the May upfronts, in which networks unveil their fall schedules to advertisers and the media. But rating losses, the lingering impact of the writers strike and the possibility of another strike are putting a damper on things.

Traditionally, the upfronts have been a week-long party. The presentations offer spectacle, comedy, music (The Who once performed for CBS) and a cavalcade of stars from each network’s programs, followed by lavish parties with alcohol flowing copiously.

But this year, as the networks reveal their fall schedules, the mood will be far less celebratory. Every network except, perhaps, Fox is expected to take a hit in advertising revenue next season.

This is partly due to the fact that the five major networks are down an average of 21 percent in the key adult 18-49 demographic compared to last year. Also, DVR use has climbed, meaning fewer viewers are watching shows on the day they are broadcast.

Only Fox and CBS will offer traditional upfronts, though CBS’ may offer fewer bells and whistles than usual. NBC, whose executives decried the expense involved in mounting upfronts, has already released a tentative schedule that runs from fall 2008 through summer 2009. It will instead focus on touting NBC Universal’s cable and online offerings for advertisers.

ABC will reveal its 2008-09 plans in a short, frill-free presentation with no party. The CW, coming off a disastrous second season, will forgo an upfront altogether, opting only for a cocktail reception during which it will sketch out its plans for next season.

(For one thing, it has abandoned Sunday night, opting to rent its airtime to a media conglomerate that will create programming and sell advertising.)

Chalk up another victim of the writers strike.

After the loss of original scripted programming played havoc with the networks’ winter schedules and resulted in widespread viewer attrition — which wasn’t reversed once new episodes of series returned — the networks are looking to cut corners wherever they can.

Moreover, the strike cut into pilot season, during which new shows are developed, so the networks have significantly less with which to titillate advertisers than in the past.

So at a time when the networks need strong programming to lure back viewers who have strayed, they have precious little to whet their desire to return. Not to mention the possibility of an actors strike this summer, which no one in the TV industry wants to contemplate.

“The fact that we broke viewers of their viewing habits will, in all likelihood, carry over into next year,” concedes Preston Beckman, Fox’s executive vice president of strategic program planning and research. “But it’s like the baseball strike – if we have a couple of compelling new hit scripted shows — on the broadcast networks this season, it’ll reenergize viewers to network TV.”

He adds, “Given that we were all kind of behind the eight-ball this year, I don’t know if you’ll see new programming on in the fall, but by the end of the season, a couple of quality scripted series will remind people why they’ve always watched broadcast television.”

It may not be quite that easy. Marc Berman, ratings analyst for Mediaweek magazine, declares, “There’s no reason to think that people will rush back after being away for three months. You can’t mess with an audience. And even before the strike, the networks were still down. There were no big new hit shows this past season, nothing worth noting. In fact, we haven’t seen any really big hit shows since the 2004 season (when ‘Lost,’ ‘Desperate Housewives,’ ‘House’ and ‘Grey’s Anatomy’ all debuted). And a lot of the veteran shows are losing steam.”

Indeed, TV’s most popular scripted shows — “Desperate Housewives,”"CSI: Crime Scene Investigation,”"Grey’s Anatomy,”"House,”"Lost” and “Heroes” — while still at the top of the Nielsens, all have hemorrhaged millions of viewers this season. (Even new episodes after the writers strike have drawn smaller audiences.)

In fact, each of the networks lost about 10 percent or more of its audience since last season in terms of overall viewers and target demographics, though Fox has fared the best (or, lost the least).

At the same time, cable channels like ABC Family, Bravo, Comedy Central, HGTV, Lifetime, Oxygen, Sci Fi Channel, TBS, TNT and USA have enjoyed huge bumps in viewership in the first quarter of 2008. Many, in fact, enjoyed the most successful month in their histories in April.

Which means viewers aren’t tuning out TV in favor of the Internet, as conventional wisdom would have it. They’re just migrating from the broadcast networks, which cost exponentially more to operate than their cable cousins, even though the difference in their respective ratings numbers are dwindling on an almost weekly basis.

“If ever in the history of the medium, the broadcast networks needed a few good hits, this is the time,” says Robert Thompson, founding director of Syracuse University’s Bleier Center for Television and Popular Culture. “But even if they find them, given the new economic models in the industry these days, how do they pay for them? Can you afford to do that anymore?”

Due to the writers strike, most networks won’t have many new shows to unveil this week. They’ll continue to develop programming through the summer. Fox, with two high-profile projects with celebrated showrunners — Joss Whedon’s “Dollhouse” and J.J. Abrams’ “Fringe” — will fine-tune both with an eye toward debuting them in early 2009.

“We knew we didn’t need a lot in the fourth quarter, so we didn’t have to rush projects or make hasty decisions,” says Beckman of Fox, which airs baseball’s World Series but otherwise tends to get off to a slow start in the fall.

“Our needs for fall are minimum. — We can fail in the fourth quarter and have failure-proof shows in ‘(American) Idol’ and ’24′ in January and beyond, which gets us back on track.”

Other networks, however, have gotten skittish and rushed some new shows into production, ordering up drama presentations, which are usually about half the length of a regular pilot.

“Initially, they weren’t going to do anything because nothing was ready, but in the course of three weeks this spring, there was this slate of stuff they wanted to produce,” says a TV producer speaking on the condition of anonymity.

“The list multiplied out of nowhere. Some didn’t have completed scripts, but they wanted to shoot in three weeks. It was haphazard. One show that’s on the air couldn’t get its guest cast hired because everyone was waiting to hear if they got pilots. What we’ll end up producing are some half-baked shows that are not as well-thought- out as they should be.”

The producer doesn’t think this will make advertisers happy.

“It’s like doing your homework the night before the project is due. I haven’t heard any kind of positive buzz on anything that’s been in production. Usually you hear about one or two or three things that people are high on, but this year, I’ve heard nothing except what a mess everything has been to get to this finish line.”

But Rob Roy Thomas, a writer/producer/director (Fox’s “Free Ride,” Bravo’s “Significant Others”), isn’t surprised by the confusion and mixed messages prefacing this week’s upfront presentations.

“This is like a market crash, and the markets are resetting themselves right now,” he says. “Things are getting redefined, and we’re in middle of that process. When you’re in a state of redefinition, there’s nothing surprising about chaos. But we’re always surprised by chaos.”

Thomas believes the ad agencies will be sympathetic to the networks’ paroxysms while undergoing change.

“After all that has happened, will the buyers expect anything else?” he says. “The networks are in transition and not sure which way they’re going to go, (but) they’re going to have to lump it and get through this metamorphosis. They’ll lose some money along the way. Even though it’s financially difficult and scary, it’s never been more interesting.”

And though some say network TV is a victim of burgeoning technologies, Thomas says that, with time, it will survive thanks to the new technologies, as it learns just how to embrace the Internet.

“Right now, network TV is a patient,” he says. “We just have to keep it alive and comfortable until the new technological kidney comes in.”

David Kronke, (818) 713-3638 david.kronke(at)dailynews.com www.insidesocal.com/tv/

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