It’s clear to me now that the accountants* have taken the reigns at the broadcast TV networks. While broadcast networks used to try and drive profits by pretty much exclusively focusing on increasing ratings, the boys with the green eye-shades are now in control and are trying to drive profits by driving down costs or emphasizing other non-ratings related revenue streams.
The evidence:
1. Shows renewed last spring with bad ratings, but extraordinary financial situations:
‘Til Death (practically free to Fox), Ugly Betty (syndication), Scrubs (syndication), New Adventures of Old Christine (syndication), Friday Night Lights (3rd party subsidy), Flashpoint (shared development cost), Dollhouse (drastically reduced costs).
2. The Jay Leno Show
Yes, it also kept Jay away from ABC, but it was substantially a cost cutting move at the expense of ratings.
3. Only one show (The Beautiful Life) removed from broadcast primetime so far this season.
It’s not like broadcasters are reveling in extraordinary success, ABC, NBC (and really CW) are getting crushed. But only one ratings loser has been removed from a line up so far. I think the accountants have stepped in and decreed that for the most part they’re not going to throw new money at the timeslots of failed shows until all (or at least more of) the episodes are aired. They’ve paid for 13 episodes of these losers and by damn, even if their ratings stink, they’re not going to spend another penny on something else to fill the airtime until the episodes have aired. Sunk costs be damned! That’s almost certainly is at the expense of ratings, but it’s lower cost!
* no slight on accountants, it’s probably the CFOs anyway, but there’s not as good a headline & graphic for that.
Kurt Sutter was way ahead of you:
“All those savvy executives have been replaced with accounting personnel.”
Certain predictive theories suggest that posts like these indicate the trend has peaked and is now swinging back in the other direction!
Hmmm, I’m going short accountants right now!
So you don’t count Southland as canceled?
Julia, I was wondering how long that would take. Longer than I thought!
To be fair to point 3, hasn’t this been growing from the 07/08 season on, when the strike forced them to air all available inventory, ratings be damned?
Sure, the ratings go in the toilet, but would the makegoods really cost more than the replacement series will?
And I’m not sure how much I’d complain about point 1: Almost all of these air in Friday slots, that the networks could (and arguably should) turn into repeats / news shows, just like they did Saturday. Which would cost less (and probably result in better ratings)…
I can’t see how leaving Trauma or Eastwick on is cheaper than the alternative. Those shows cost a bundle.
Well, the X Files had disastrous ratings it’s 1st season and it was renewed.
I am glad that these show are sticking around longer, even though the ratings are poor. I gave up tv mostly because I got tired of new series disappearing after one or two episodes, making me feel I have so wasted my time. I almost don’t watch any series anymore unless it is in the third season. As bad as anything is, there are always some people that are really attached to a show.
I did make an exception for Chuck.
Michael, in the case of Trauma, what would be NBC’s alternative? I know there are rumors of Chuck coming back early, but that’s they’re only option.
Michael, I think the point is that in the cases of both, a financial commitment to making 13 episodes has been made. They can cut a few episodes, but there will still be some costs (likely not quite as much) for the unmade episodes.
There’s also the fact that FOX is still burning off Sit Down, Shut Up after a Ferenstein repeat on Saturday nights.
Plus, NBC is supposedly bringing back SNL Thursday in mid-season.
Is Hank on ABC’s sweeps calendar?
J.R. Comcast’s schedule has Hank listed with a new episode for 11/4, but I’m sure that could change.
Plus, NBC is supposedly bringing back SNL Thursday in mid-season.
Why would they do that? To make Community look good?
The Accountants’ Revenge will backfire because what all of the bean-counting is not doing is driving viewers, especially new ones, to the broadcast networks. The networks have to give viewers a reason to watch them, not hope that they’ll still watch the shows they keep renewing that nobody watched to begin with just because the networks got a good deal on them. It’s backward thinking they’ve fallen on at its exemplary best.
As an accountant, Bill, I would resent that headline…
…except that things would be much better at NBC and CW if they actually had good accountants at, say, boardroom level – say, the ones from PriceWaterhouseCoopers that hand out the envelopes at the Academy Awards
Or, better yet, producers and actors are going to have to take significant pay cuts to work on television, and the studios also need to take a haircut, since the networks need to increase their bottom line somehow, and increasing ad revenue isn’t happening…
…and, since they’re both going to have to take significant pay cuts in movies soon, they’ll all have to cut costs, by having to live in a Cooper Mini Mansion – with only 3,000 square feet of space…
…or else we’ll wind up with that East German cat-and-mouse cartoon, instead of the Simpsons, Dancing With Celebrity Bones, and Til Your Body Rots
…wait a minute – the BBC would love that…
…that would mean more B-list, and maybe an A-list celebrity, would be willing to appear on Dancing With The Stars…
…yes, I said the BBC, as they actually own the show – ABC merely licences it (don’t cry for Disney – they have made plenty of $$££¥¥ on the show)…
…but the BBC had to agree to let Tom Bergeron host it, rather than anyone really good, so the “stars” would look more like stars than they really are
I’m going to give my accountant a BIG bonus and tell him to give it to FOX’s accountant, because I’m pretty sure all accountants know each other, right?! Yay for accountants!
Dollhouse! Dollhouse! Dollhouse rules! FOX’s accountant rules! “True Blood” drools! Dollhouse!
It’s late October. What were we expecting, 20 new shows to be yanked already? The cancellation notices will start rolling in next month — be patient!
That was one of the good after-effects of the strike and the collapsed economy. Longer leashes for bad-performing shows to do badly. Not too many network robots seem to realize it, but more harm than good comes from yanking a show (that isn’t a disaster behind the scenes) off the air after 2 weeks. Every show — even ones like “TBL” that got, like, a 1 share — has people who are watching it. How likely are those people going to be to give another one of a networks’ shows a chance when the network shows them that they’re not willing to give their own shows a chance? Let’s just say I don’t personally believe it was entirely what cable was putting on that caused a lot of viewers to jump ship from broadcast as it was how long cable was leaving what they were putting on.
Flashpoint is included on that list? IIRC, it can pull around 9 million viewers and around a 2.0 demo on a Friday night. Compared to the other shows listed, thats not too bad.
ABC had Kelsey Grammer do a “Hank” bumper to air in front of the Peanuts special tonight to tell viewers it’s back on next week. (which was more promotion than I saw for last week’s episode). I kind of doubt ABC would go to that trouble if they weren’t planning on running it during November.
I think we are forgetting that the viewers are the product. The true customers are the advertisers. As long as the shareholders, advertisers are happy be dammed to the viewers. (I’m being sarcastic)
Look at commercial radio in the late 90’s and early 2000 they pushed and maximized advertising while standarding programming nationwide so their rating are way down now.
You have to see it from the broadcasts point of view. Rating will continue to slide, there is just to many other forms of entertainment. While producers want $2-$4 million per episode. Something has to give and the accountants know it.
Don’t shoot the messenger its just a fact of the everybody has budgets and they have to live by them or go bust.
When Broadcast nets cannot increase viewership, they have little choice but to find other ways to improve the bottom line.
Not saying its easy to attract more viewers, but with more choices and the viewers themselves becoming more diverse (ethnically, culturally, even regionally, etc.) Programming that appeals to the masses is going to be harder and harder to create.
If Christine was saved because of syndication, why was similarly low rated Gary renewed? And why would CBS care about the syndication? Isn’t it a WB production?
I think that save had a lot more with CBS’s iron determination to have a second comedy block than any syndication considerations.
Also, Flashpoint didn’t really have bad ratings. They weren’t great, but they were OK. And they didn’t renew it for the US until it was obvious that 3 Rivers was DOA.
Ugly Betty was renewed for syndication, but it wasn’t too far away from safe on the index anyway. Besides, even with Betty they still premiered 9 shows this fall (including Shark Tank which actually launched in the summer and V next week), so it’s not like ABC was pressed for room on the schedule.
I’m not saying that accountants aren’t playing a major roll in scheduling/cancellation decisions (exhibit #1, Leno!), but I’m not sure those three shows are good examples for your premise.
I think the News Corporation strategy to recast MyNetworkTV as a programming service was a decision influenced by accountants and pessimistic sales staffers who wanted to sell only two nights of ad time this fall instead of six.
Bottom line as we’ve said before: broadcast networks – and eventually movie studios and every other form of “intellectual property” – are doomed.
Or at least doomed to be a shell of their former monopoly selves.
Meanwhile, Sanctuary on SyFy is doing great despite having no studio backing at all. They have to raise money to produce the show each season from angel investors. Despite which, they have pushed the envelope in every way possible: cinematography, scripts, casting, all of it.
Sanctuary gets a whole $200k from Syfy and they have to make up the difference with foreign rights and still are a little under breaking even, hoping that they can earn enough to actually profit some time in the future. The low cost filmmaking model is great but it still isn’t the model of profitability anyone would envy. Time will tell.
That’s 200k per episode. Not even close to covering costs, even in Canada.
dumont, I agree about MyNet, but what was the 6th day? MyNet dropped Saturday night after the first year. MyNet still has “network sales” but they’re handled by the Twentieth Television sales team. http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=115464
(SD, 5th Grader, and The Unit are 20th; movies are MGM; Deal and CI are NBCU.)
This doesn’t surprise me one bit. Broadcast TV is in trouble, they know it, we know it, and like most businesses that start to fail, they start penny pinching. It’s that simple. They have no money to waste, so once they invest in a program it’s going on the air…
…unless you’re NBC and your programming slate is 75% dreck already.
Hmmm, Maximizing profits vs a pizzing content to see who has the biggest ratings. Under circumstances where the ratings are based upon 1960’s demographics and it’s not a question on whether the old school networks will continue to lose market share; just one of how much and how fast.
A sane business approach: Sacrilege!
Hey, I am insulted by the title of this article. I am an accountant\CPA and I would never approve of the crap they are airing on TV now or the way they are making money by lowering costs. Accountants always want higher revenues as well as controlled costs. Making money by reducing expenses only is a band-aid and is only used for the short term.
Daniel, the asterisk really blaming the CFOs didn’t work for you?
how is Scrubs lumped in with shows that are approaching Syndication? There’s 169 Scrubs episodes. And what channel on the dial hasn’t run Scrubs? Isn’t this a case that they are trying to launch Scrubs the Next Generation?
Corey3rd, the “syndication” label above was broadly used. Scrubs was brought back to increase the episodes available for syndication, other shows (like Ugly Betty) needed enough just to get into syndication.
BTW, the Scrubs fate is the only potential hope, although I see it as tiny, that Ugly Betty survives another season.
I’m sure there’s some real cost/benefit analysis out there, but I don’t think that additional episodes of hour long dramas, particularly for more serialized shows, typically pay off in syndication as well as additional 30 minute sitcoms.
That’s not to say there is no benefit, just not as much. Plus, I think According to Jim on TNT, hard as it might be to digest, is more lucrative than Ugly Betty reruns on The TV Guide Network (TV Guide Network licensed the exclusive cable rights for UB — currently its in season episodes on a delayed basis, but the plan is to strip them M-F in Fall 2010:
http://www.multichannel.com/article/316046-TV_Guide_Network_Gains_Exclusive_Cable_Rights_To_Ugly_Betty_.php?nid=2226&source=title&rid=5364469
I wouldn’t doubt it. TBS was running “America’s Funniest People” not too long ago, albeit at 5 a.m.
I can see Ugly Betty making huge amounts of money in syndication, especially in the version dubbed in Spanish. Betty Le Fea I believe was the original Spanish version of the show but it had low production values. Telemundo currently I believe gets better ratings than the CW. Plus I assume that Ugly Betty does very well in foreign sales especially to Spanish speaking countries.
What I find interesting is that some of your shows that were never in the top 10 do exceptionally well in syndication (example The Nanny), but a number that got high ratings originally are essentially flops in syndication.
In today’s economic climate if I was producing a TV series, I wouldn’t film it in the U.S. but in Canada. It’s cheaper and you can’t tell the difference (i.e. The X-Files or 21 Jump Street). Also there are a lot of talented Canadian actors. I’d also consider product placement deals and how well the show could would sell to the overseas market. Most of your cable shows are made outside of the U.S. typically Canada and they seem to be able to do it on a much lower budget without sacrificing quality.
I remember years ago reading that Buddy Ebsen was only making like $400 per week initially for The Beverly Hillbillies and he was the star of the show. The salaries of some of the actors on primetime are really ridiculous IMO and need to come way down.
Also in my opinion, if you have good writers they can still write good scripts but take into consideration costs of filming (sets, extras, special effects) and can write their storylines and scenes to convey the same things while reducing their costs.
Jonathan Frakes got the nickname 2-takes Frakes when he was directing. A good director with good actors doesn’t need to take excessive takes. They can keep costs down and still have a quality production. I believe that the production houses have gotten lazy and have been throwing money around when they don’t need to. They do need to get their costs under control.
J.R. Herbaugh says:
October 29, 2009 at 7:36 am
dumont, I agree about MyNet, but what was the 6th day? MyNet dropped Saturday night after the first year.
—
J.R., MyNet actually programmed Saturdays for three seasons: 1st season was the telenovella recaps and then ‘IFL Battleground’, 2nd season was ‘Control Room Presents’ and ‘NFL Total Access’, and then ‘My Saturday Night Movie’ which continued on through to the end of the 3rd season.
The movies seem to be a mix from various distribs…MGM, 20-T, NBC-U, even the odd Disney flick too.
===
Bill, one of the areas where the accountants do not prevail like they used to is the summertime / Saturday / holiday burnoff of busted pilots. You used to see dozens of failed pilots air over the summer season to earn back some of the sunk expense, in vehicles like ‘CBS Comedy Theatre’ type anthologies, but now, rejected pilots rarely make it to the air.
In fact, I think the only failed pilot to air on the six English broadcasters during the 2008-09 season (other than rejected backdoor spinoffs like ‘Lily’) was FOX’s ‘Virtuality’.
dumont — and I thought I had a sick amount of MyNet knowledge.
Robert, Bill, This Moonlight poster was way ahead of KS:
“The networks are being run by cowards, bean counters, and cowardly bean counters and if it doesn’t change, I am not the only one who has better things to do with my time. ” (May 2008)
http://www.deadline.com/hollywood/primetime-pilot-panic-cbs-officially-renews/
J.R., dumont’s MyNet data > all.
While I wasn’t first, I take solace in the fact I found a nice graphic
Bill, I also thought your heading was a bit unfair. For people who love numbers, many of you here seem a bit dim witted about the function that accountants actually serve.
In corporate america, we (yes, I am one) only report quantitative facts (not our opinions) to upper management execs. Based on what we provide, the financial decisions are made. With the bad economy where lending is extremely tight, of course networks are going to try to cut costs by not pulling low rated shows they already paid for. You don’t think networks borrow money to fund series development? The whole world revolves around lending and borrowing. In such a market, the networks have to decrease their borrowing due to stricter lending by banks and decreasing revenues. That’s not “bean counting” or “number crunching”. Its the reality of survival, and its how strong companies weather through a bad recession like the one were hopefully coming out of.
Tom, C’mon, I know *exactly* what accountants do. Do you know what headline writers do?