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Friday, 13 October 2006 |
By D. W. O'Dell
 Sure, it’s easy to criticize network executives. Real easy. So, could I do any better? Possibly not, since I lack the skills necessary to make it to the top of the network ladder (ruthlessness, greed, a complete lack of moral bearings, a lobotomy . . . .). But let’s say I won on a reality show and as the winner I got to be the President of a network for, let’s say, three years. What would I do differently?
First rule: I would seek out creative people and interfere with them as little as possible.
If you look at enough network line-ups, one thing should strike you—shows that are hits are hits because of the people making the shows, not the show’s concept. Six twenty-somethings talking in a coffee shop? Yawn, unless the show is created by the people who made Friends. The wacky hijinx of the denizens of a Boston bar? That’ll be off the air in 6 weeks, unless it is run by James Burrows and the Charles Brothers.
This is not to say that successful, creative people should be given carte blanche. Joss Whedon followed Buffy and Angel with Firefly, a concept I still say doesn’t work on so many levels. David E. Kelly followed the creative Ally McBeal with the derivative Snoops, girls club, and The Brotherhood of Poland, New Hampshire. No one hits a home run every time.
The theory with networks seems to be that any hit show is an indication of some underlying trend among viewers. But a single point does not a line make. The fact that the big new hit this year happens to be a procedural crime drama does not mean that audiences had some inchoate longing to watch characters peer into microscopes.
Masses of people do not start behaving differently all of a sudden. What 15 million Americans find entertaining one TV season should be pretty much what they found entertaining the previous season. The population of the United States does not lose its sense of humor overnight, or decide en masse that game shows are better than well-scripted dramas.
Conversely, one show can demonstrate that no trend exists where one was thought to be. Several times the situation comedy has been declared dead; all it takes to refute the argument is a Cosby Show or a My Name Is Earl to show that the declarations of death are premature.
If there is some underlying shift in public tastes, creative people should be attuned to these cultural manifestations and reflect them in their work. Creative people do not create in a vacuum; even William Shakespeare was aware of what his audience wanted, and he gave it to them.
And the suits need to stay out of the way. On a Scrubs commentary, Bill Lawrence noted that every episode that the network brass hated went on to win awards or viewer popularity contests. The people in suits shouldn’t get in the way of the people who create. Networks need to allow creative people to create.
The determining factor in what becomes a hit and what doesn’t is the people behind the concept, not the concept. No concept was ever turned into a hit show despite being written by chimpanzees.
Second Rule: I would ignore what other networks were doing
Has anyone ever created a hit show by copying a hit show on another network? After NBC established Seinfeld as a hit, ABC came out with It’s Like, You Know. It like, failed. Dancing with the Stars bred Skating with Celebrities (what’s next, Magic with the Famous?). The success of Lost inspired not one but three eerie, sci-fi-ish series (Threshold, Invasion, Surface), none of which survived their first season (although both Invasion and Threshold had some defenders).
I would note one exception to this rule—counter-programming. Instead of copying what your opponent is doing, do the exact opposite. Put a teen drama on opposite Murder, She Wrote. Put a low-brow comedy on opposite 60 Minutes. Program a woman-oriented drama against the opposition’s show about cops with big guns (or microscopes). Don’t fight fire with fire: fight fire with water.
Sometimes it may happen that there is a truly breakthrough show on another network. Recent hit shows like Survivor, Lost, and Desperate Housewives were unlike any thing that had been on TV. Survivor was so innovative that CBS minimized its risk by dumping in into its summer programming following May sweeps. Lost practically invented a new narrative form. Desperate Housewives lives in a nether world between drama, comedy, parody, and serial narrative, crossing more genre boundaries than any other show.
This is not a recent development. In the history of television there have always been shows that defied, transcended, or reinvented genres. Star Trek, Mission Impossible, Wild Wild West, and Kung Fu are all classics that broke new ground when they first came on the air. Hey, someone had to invent to 30 minute sitcom.
Quantum breakthroughs in programming are rare, but they happen. Once a previously un-thought of concept is thought of, it would be foolish to ignore it. Of course, going back to my first point, once new horizons are opened up, creative people will rush to explore new territory (and uncreative types will be there to express their creativity by copying it; as Fred Allen said, imitation is the sincerest form of television).
The bottom line is that each network has different resources available to it. You should make the most of what you have, not try to make what you have into what someone else has. If you are good at developing comedies, don’t plug a lame drama into the Thursday at 10 PM slot just because all the other networks have dramas there.
A corollary to my first rule is that hit makers don’t follow, they create. Trends mean nothing. No one watches shows about politics—unless The West Wing comes along. Everyone wants self-contained episodes—until Lost becomes a phenomenon. People only watch shows with likable characters—until 20 million people a week watch House. Most of the “rules” of network programming exist only to give network executives an excuse to exercise their own preferences and biases.
Not all original shows succeed, but virtually all derivative shows fail.
Third Rule: If there is a dead zone in my schedule, I would fill it with the best ratings-challenged show possible
Every network has an hour it just isn’t going to win. The other networks have a stranglehold on the time slot that just can’t be broken. There are only two things you can do—schedule the cheapest show possible and minimize your losses, or fill the slot with a high-quality program that no one is watching and pick up some Emmies. So slip your version of Hill Street Blues (or Veronica Mars) into that time slot and let it ride.
If no one is going to watch, you might as well fill the hour with quality TV. Generally speaking, it costs just as much to produce crap as quality TV, especially in a show’s first year. And if the ratings are low, that’s a good excuse to keep salaries down.
And sometimes surprising things happen. This past season The WB decided to put Smallville, which had declining ratings, into the death slot of Thursday at 8. It was thought to be a death sentence, a way to wrap the series up after 5 seasons. The show responded with its best season in years, and the ratings actually improved. Instead of being cancelled, Smallville lives for another season.
Some high quality shows are more expensive to produce. Hill Street Blues and Arrested Development had large casts (it kills me to refer to Arrested Development in the past tense). The West Wing had unique set requirements (namely one big oval room; also, the “pedeconferencing” technique required sets to be built for long takes while actors walked). In these cases, maybe it isn’t worth it to fill a dead zone with an expensive ratings-challenged show.
Bringing back a show prevents start-up costs associated with creating a new show. Your actors are under contract, the sets are built, and promoting a quality show that has won awards or at least nominations is easier than with something starting from scratch. If anything you put on at Thursday at 8 is going to pull in 3-4 million viewers, you might as well bring back a show like Veronica Mars rather than incur the wrath of critics and wind up cancelling its replacement next season anyway.
In investment circles it’s called churning--constantly selling and buying stocks rather than holding onto quality stocks for very long. It’s never a good strategy in the long run. High quality shows with low ratings have more potential for revenues from DVD sales and ancillary products. Critically praised shows can be re-run more than low quality shows. There’s more potential for syndication revenues with quality shows, even if they don’t reach the magic 100 episode mark, but they have to last more than a season.
This is not to say that you have to stick with critically praised shows indefinitely. Fox showed more than enough patience with Arrested Development (which, again, was an expensive show to produce). But if you are doomed to lose a time slot, you might as well opt to lose with class rather than lose with specials titled “World’s Worst Auto Accidents Caught On Tape.”
Fourth Rule: I would work with the other networks and the Nielsen company to eliminate “sweeps”
This should be numero uno on my list. The idea of relying on rating data from November, February and May to establish ad rates for the entire year is archaic in this day and age. You program 52 weeks a year, so get ratings 52 weeks a year. Everyone knows that ratings stunts in sweeps months are atypical, but no one does anything about it.
We live in the age of computers, the Internet, instantaneous data collection and dissemination in every aspect of human endeavor, yet when it comes to measuring ratings we are still trapped in a system developed decades ago.
The networks know the sweeps ratings numbers are bogus. The Nielsen Company knows the ratings do not reflect any reality. The advertisers know the numbers are meaningless. Networks use every gimmick in the book to hype their ratings in February, May and November--season finales, “special” episodes, big-budget mini-series, and specials. And since they are all doing it at the same time, VCRs and TIVOs go into overdrive. And none of it represents “typical” programming shown the other nine months of the year.
The only thing holding the system together is inertia (as Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe once remarked, inertia “is the greatest force in the world.”). There must be some way to get everyone together to work out an alternative to relying on ratings numbers during sweeps. The current system is like determining who is stupider by testing people only when they are incredibly drunk, and letting them know ahead of time when to start drinking.
A by product of this would be to try and even out programming so that there is some consistency through the year. I’ve written elsewhere that the traditional TV season is an artifact. All the networks debuting their TV series at the same time causes a logjam of shows competing for attention at the same time. Many shows get cancelled before anyone has a chance to find them. Often shows that debut in “the second season” in January (such as Malcolm in the Middle) have a better chance of being found among the din.
Because pilots are all ordered at the same time, there is a sudden cutthroat competition for actors, directors, and technicians, meaning pilots are made (and shows subsequently produced) with compromises made in casting and production. Why should networks fight for scarce resources at the same time, and then leave those resources fallow for the rest of the year? It is a waste of those resources and at the same time requires producers to overpay for them when they are in demand.
If someone comes to a network with a good idea for a series in October, why shouldn’t the network have the show ready to debut in April? If you are only going to order 22 episodes of a series, why try and schedule those episodes to be shown over a 40 week period? Audiences are revolting against erratic scheduling of shows like Lost, and networks are responding. Prison Break and Lost will be shown in a brief run at the beginning of the TV season and a second uninterrupted run at the end. 24 forgoes debuting in September and runs straight from January to May. Network “grids” are getting very complicated.
And why desert viewers in summer? As CBS discovered with Survivor, there is an audience for TV in July. Why assume nobody watches TV on Saturday nights? I can’t be the ONLY person home most Saturday nights (my favorite Saturday night show was Cupid; I loved the idea of a show about singles searching for love being watched by single people at home on a date night). Maybe the base audience is slightly less than during other times of the year or on other nights, but we’re still talking about millions of people.
It all starts by overthrowing the tyranny of February, May and November sweeps.
Fifth Rule; Be aware of alternate revenue sources and economic models
The economics of television are changing. Gone are the days when a show’s revenue stream consisted of ad sales and future syndication rights. Now one has to consider DVD sales, product placement, iPod sales, and corporate “synergy” (i.e. The WB touting CDs featuring music featured on the show by Warner Brothers artists).
The landscape is rapidly changing, and while you see examples of these things all the time, I don’t know that TV executives have totally overhauled their idea of what constitutes a hit show. For example (one I’ve used several times before), The WB cancelled Angel, despite the fact it had a solid, predictable fan base (that showed no signs of eroding) and had future revenue streams from DVD sales, magazines, and books.
And of course these revenue streams have to be exploited creatively and appropriately. Hearing Jack Bristow tout the benefits of a hybrid SUV on Alias really destroys the suspension of disbelief you need to enjoy the show. NBC screwed up Ed by making them change their theme song to one whose rights were owned by NBC (they blessedly returned to the old theme song eventually).
Lost will forgo revenues from re-runs next season, showing episodes in a 7/15 format (seven straight episodes at the start of the season; 15 at the end), just as Prison Break did this past season. 24 has eschewed re-runs for two years now, opting for a “no break” format. These shows have realized that DVD sales will help make up for the lost revenues that would have been created from showing repeats, and the show’s fans will be happier and hopefully more loyal.
It’s not surprising that corporate honchos have reacted most nimbly to changes in the money stream. That is, after all, why networks put on TV shows in the first place. |
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