As the Paradigm Shifts
Whoa. THIS news is big. Not big as in "oh-my-god Burger King just came out with a quadruple-cheeseburger" big, but rather as in "I think I may be witnessing the beginning of a paradigm shift in the television industry" big.
NBC today announced that they will, for the most part, no longer be programming the 8:00pm - 9:00pm prime-time hour with scripted programming. That means (with rare exception) no comedies or dramas will be populating NBC's first hour of prime time. Going forward, NBC will rely on reality programming such as Deal or No Deal and 1 vs. 100, and news-lite programming such as Dateline. The network that gave us 8:00 stalwarts such as Friends and The Cosby Show has deemed that there's no longer an audience for these shows in this early hour. According to NBC's Jeff Zucker, the prime-time audience has shrunk to the point that there simply is no longer enough advertiser interest in scripted programming in the 8:00 hour... and therefore, he can no longer justify his network's continued reliance on such early-evening programming.
In terms of ratings, one can see Zucker's point: an hour of Deal or No Deal costs about $1 million per episode to produce. Alternately
, production costs for an hour of prime-time drama or two half-hour comedies can easily run in the $2-$3 million range. When one crosses this economic model with the reality of the Nielsen ratings -- NBC's Deal or No Deal (Monday at 8) is a top-10 show; while NBC's new Tuesday night at-8 drama Friday Night Lights is being watched by almost no one, and NBC's new Wednesday-at-8 comedies (30 Rock and Twenty Good Years) are dead on arrival -- one can plainly see that the economics of such a shaft make perfect business sense... and therefore the days of broadcast-network television as we knew them are over.
If NBC is shifting their business model in such a fashion, then can the other networks be far behind? After all, it wasn't too many years ago that all the networks ran first-run, scripted programming in prime-time on Saturday nights. Then, a few years ago, NBC realized that Saturday nights had become unprofitable (due to it being the night of the week with the lowest number of people at home to watch television), so they effectively got out of the Saturday prime-time television business, surrendering their Saturday night schedule instead to drama reruns, old movies, and the occasional Dateline. It didn't take the other networks long to follow suit, and today you can't find new episodes of an original scripted series on any of the broadcast networks, no matter how hard you try. Instead, it's CSI reruns, more Dateline, America's Most Wanted, and even some college football.
It's a new world out there, television viewers. TV on DVD is now a huge industry. The internet is revolutionizing our beloved industry faster than you can say "hey, they cancelled Smith!" All of the major broadcast networks are now making their shows available for viewing via the net. If fans of ABC's Lost miss the latest episode, all they have to do is visit abc.com to see it via broadband. Want to take an episode with you? Hey, just download it to your iPod! Easy! And when you add all of this to a world of 200+ channel choices, TiVo, and cable's On Demand programming, you begin to see that the television universe has come a long way from the days of rabbit ears and VCRs.
With the 8:00 hour of network prime-time television beginning to slide slowly into oblivion, can it be long before the rest of the broadcast-network programming model as we've known it for more than 50 years becomes equally obsolete? Only time will tell, but if I were you, I'd be bookmarking CBS's Innertube site and getting myself a video iPod... just in case, of course.
NBC today announced that they will, for the most part, no longer be programming the 8:00pm - 9:00pm prime-time hour with scripted programming. That means (with rare exception) no comedies or dramas will be populating NBC's first hour of prime time. Going forward, NBC will rely on reality programming such as Deal or No Deal and 1 vs. 100, and news-lite programming such as Dateline. The network that gave us 8:00 stalwarts such as Friends and The Cosby Show has deemed that there's no longer an audience for these shows in this early hour. According to NBC's Jeff Zucker, the prime-time audience has shrunk to the point that there simply is no longer enough advertiser interest in scripted programming in the 8:00 hour... and therefore, he can no longer justify his network's continued reliance on such early-evening programming.
In terms of ratings, one can see Zucker's point: an hour of Deal or No Deal costs about $1 million per episode to produce. Alternately
, production costs for an hour of prime-time drama or two half-hour comedies can easily run in the $2-$3 million range. When one crosses this economic model with the reality of the Nielsen ratings -- NBC's Deal or No Deal (Monday at 8) is a top-10 show; while NBC's new Tuesday night at-8 drama Friday Night Lights is being watched by almost no one, and NBC's new Wednesday-at-8 comedies (30 Rock and Twenty Good Years) are dead on arrival -- one can plainly see that the economics of such a shaft make perfect business sense... and therefore the days of broadcast-network television as we knew them are over.If NBC is shifting their business model in such a fashion, then can the other networks be far behind? After all, it wasn't too many years ago that all the networks ran first-run, scripted programming in prime-time on Saturday nights. Then, a few years ago, NBC realized that Saturday nights had become unprofitable (due to it being the night of the week with the lowest number of people at home to watch television), so they effectively got out of the Saturday prime-time television business, surrendering their Saturday night schedule instead to drama reruns, old movies, and the occasional Dateline. It didn't take the other networks long to follow suit, and today you can't find new episodes of an original scripted series on any of the broadcast networks, no matter how hard you try. Instead, it's CSI reruns, more Dateline, America's Most Wanted, and even some college football.
It's a new world out there, television viewers. TV on DVD is now a huge industry. The internet is revolutionizing our beloved industry faster than you can say "hey, they cancelled Smith!" All of the major broadcast networks are now making their shows available for viewing via the net. If fans of ABC's Lost miss the latest episode, all they have to do is visit abc.com to see it via broadband. Want to take an episode with you? Hey, just download it to your iPod! Easy! And when you add all of this to a world of 200+ channel choices, TiVo, and cable's On Demand programming, you begin to see that the television universe has come a long way from the days of rabbit ears and VCRs.
With the 8:00 hour of network prime-time television beginning to slide slowly into oblivion, can it be long before the rest of the broadcast-network programming model as we've known it for more than 50 years becomes equally obsolete? Only time will tell, but if I were you, I'd be bookmarking CBS's Innertube site and getting myself a video iPod... just in case, of course.
posted by TV Boy at 7:52 PM
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