The explosion of cable networks since the early 80’s was supposed to bring a cornucopia of choice to US TV audiences, but plenty of cable networks that started by aiming at narrow audience niches have remade themselves to grab for the big general interest audience that has been migrating away from broadcast television for more than a generation. What was hoped to be a diversity in programming has become a vanilla soup of reality and broadcast repeats.

This isn’t a new trend, but it was highlighted again this week by discussions about SCI FI changing its name to Syfy. One stated reason is so they could have a trademarkable name, but their intent to shift away from their science fiction, fantasy, paranormal programming roots towards more general interest fare is likely the biggest driver.

Bravo was originally dedicated to indie film, drama and the performing arts to reality, makeover, fashion and celebrity. Six of the top 10 audiences on the network last week were for Real Housewives of New Jersey.

TLC, originally The Learning Channel, began as “a place for learning minds”. Is now featuring “life surprises”. Like the surprise of an overexposed mediafied family imploding in public. Jon & Kate Plus 8 had 8 of the top 20 audiences on the network last week.

A&E, no longer Arts & Entertainment, ceased being about biographies, documentaries and drama some time ago. Now it’s all reality and broadcast reruns.

The four networks I highlighted in the graphic above were just the first that came to mind, they’re certainly not the only ones. As I said in comments on the Syfy press release, I can’t fault these networks for grabbing for bigger audiences on business reasons. That audience shift away from broadcast networks is a once in an industry trend. Once it slows down, it’ll be a lot harder to gain audience share.

But where do the niches go now? Smaller cable networks? Hulu? You Tube? Digital multicast channels?

This interview in Broadcasting & Cable with the President-General Manager of FX Networks makes the point that if you took away the sports franchises from FX’s major competition (like TNT, TBS and USA), their overall 18-49 average would be within shouting range of FX’s territory. Only problem is that no major sports franchise is currently available, and even if one were FX might not be able to afford it. So, what’s the point again?

There is only one thing FX Networks President-General Manager John Landgraf doesn’t have that could afford his network a shot at challenging his basic cable rivals for the top of the ratings chart: sports.

“I’d love to have a major sports franchise,” Landgraf says. “It’s just a question of which one, and how do you make the economics work? If you look at FX versus TNT to date, we’re up 5%; they’re probably up 4% or 5%. But look at them without sports. Entertainment to entertainment, they’re down 7%; we’re up 5.”

FX has a strong history in highly rated original series and a pipeline of new development ready to be tapped, but originals don’t really move the needle, Landgraf says. FX can maintain its perch as the fifth-highest-rated basic cable network in core demos with its current strategy, but if the network is going to move up, it needs wrestling, playoff baseball, a Thursday package of NFL games, a NASCAR package—something. FX parent News Corp. looked at the Bowl Championship Series college football playoffs, with one scenario putting it on FX, but that didn’t pan out.

“It’s going to be virtually impossible for FX to ever challenge TNT, TBS or USA without sports,” Landgraf says.

“Look at their average number of adults 18-49 per hour in prime,” he continues. “We’re at about 750,000 on average year-to-date. We’ll finish the year in the 700s, just as we have the last three years. I can see with our current strategy being in the 800s at some point. TNT and USA are getting incremental 100,000 or 150,000 on average in prime out of sports. No channel is getting anywhere near 1 million adults 18-49, 21 hours a week, 365 days a year, without sports. It’s not going to happen.”

[...]

Right now, FX has no plans underway to acquire a major sports property. If one becomes available, the question for the network is whether it can acquire sports in a way that would be profitable, according to Landgraf. “There are a lot of guys at News Corp., from David Hill and Ed Goren to Chase Carey and Tony [Vinciquerra], who know a heck of a lot more about the sports business than I do. So, it’s not going to be my decision,” he says. “It’s a very, very big business decision to go after a major sports package, and it’s not going to be made at my level. I’ll be consulted along the way, but it will be made for big, strategic reasons.”

via Broadcasting & Cable.

No official press release from TNT on these items yet, but I did see these updates via TNT PR on Twitter:

1. Ratings update: The Closer’s 6/8 premiere was ad-supported cable’s top scripted series telecast for the month and quarter in viewers (8.4 m)

2. Ratings update: TNT was tops in the second quarter in total day delivery of adults 18-49 (703,000) and adults 25-54 (716,000)

3. Ratings update: TNT averaged 645,000 adults 18-34 in primetime in 2Q09, setting an ad-supported cable record for that demo.

Sort of a working vacation day for me, but this isn’t much work.  The list below represents the top 20 basic advertising supported cable program airings  for the month of  June through Sunday, June 28.

Please note — these numbers, especially for programs in the early part of June will look a little different than some versions of them you have seen elsewhere.  That’s because where Live+7 (live plus a week’s worth of DVR viewing) were available they were used and where they weren’t, the typical Live+SD (same day DVR viewing through 3am the morning after the show aired) numbers were used. Figure any airing on 6/15 or later is Live+SD rather than Live+7 (I have included show air dates in the table below).

This also gives us a little insight into the impact of the full week’s worth of DVR viewing on show’s like Burn Notice.  For example, Burn Notice’s Live+SD numbers for its premiere on June 4 was 5.992 million. But when the extra week of DVR viewing was factored in, it shot up to 7.449 million or an increase of  24.3%.

Special props to the top three shows below though, since those are all Live+SD numbers and didn’t even need the extra 6 days of DVR viewing to take the top spots.

Top 20 cable programs June 1-28, 2009:

Read the full story

via MTV press release:

MTV GREENLIGHTS SEASON TWO OF HIT SERIES “16 & PREGNANT”

“16 & PREGNANT” HAS REACHED OVER 31 MILLION VIEWERS SEASON TO DATE AND IS # 1 IN ITS TIME PERIOD ACROSS CABLE AMONG F12-34 AND ACROSS ALL OF TELEVISION AMONG F18-24

“16 & PREGNANT: LIFE AFTER LABOR” FINALE SPECIAL

HOSTED BY DR. DREW PINSKY

SET TO AIR ON THURSDAY, JULY 23 AT 10PM ET/PT

Santa Monica, CA/New York, NY – June 30, 2009 – Reflecting on one of the most controversial and thought-provoking topics, MTV President of Programming Tony DiSanto announced today that after only 3 episodes aired, the network is picking up a second season of the captivating series “16 and Pregnant.” In addition, MTV will also air “16 and Pregnant: Life After Labor” finale special, hosted by Dr. Drew Pinsky, on Thursday, July 23rd at 10pm ET/PT. “16 & Pregnant” can currently be seen on Thursdays at 10PM ET/PT.

The series follows the lives of teenage girls for 5-7 months as they navigate the unfamiliar territory and uncertainty of being pregnant.  MTV captured every moment and reaction in real time, including several of the births and how the young mothers and fathers dealt with new parenthood. The series tackles a variety of issues including marriage, adoption, attending school and dealing with gossip. Cameras continued to follow the teens for a significant amount of time after they gave birth to document how they coped with taking care of their infants in addition to balancing adult responsibilities with teenage life.

Read the full story

The series premiere of HBO’s Hung delivered 2.8 million viewers in its 10 p.m. timeslot Sunday. When its midnight replay is added, the series drew 3.7 million viewers its first night. That makes Hung, a drama about a down-on-his-luck high school coach who becomes a gigolo, the highest rated HBO series premiere since John From Cincinnati, which premiered in June 2007 after The Sopranos series finale.

Sunday’s installment of True Blood was the series’ best, bringing in 3.7 million viewers in its 9 p.m. timeslot

via Broadcasting & Cable.

Edit by Seidman:  And we all know how it worked out for John in Cincinnati! Though John’s premiere had something that Hung did not: the series finale of The Sopranos as a lead-in.   I watched Hung and liked it but didn’t love it, but will give it at least another episode or two before deciding whether or not to stick with it.

We’re calling out silly things in the TV trade media (like Variety) all the time, but it’s pretty rare that I do that for the Wall Street Journal. However, a piece today that suggests that the “TV industry” shrink the number of channels betrays a fundamental mis-understanding of why things work the way they do.

As the TV industry tries to come up with a new business model to deal with the challenges posed by online video, it should consider shrinking the number of channels.

It is doubtful viewers want as many as they have. In 2007, the average household tuned into only 16 channels of the 118 channels available, estimates Nielsen.

Indeed, the explosion of channels was driven by cable operators’ need for a marketing tool to convince people to pay for more choice, given the presence of free broadcast TV. That gave rise to a system where channels developed for cable are paid affiliate fees by cable and satellite operators. Broadcast networks, which individually draw much bigger audiences, generally don’t receive fees.

That is indeed why there are so many cable networks. Each new network pays the cable MSO (ex. Comcast) or satellite operator (like DirecTV) a fee to carry its feed. More networks = more revenue for the cable MSO or satco.

But what really distorts the picture is the absence of correlation between the size of the fees paid to individual cable channels and their audiences. Viacom’s Nickelodeon is the most-watched cable channel, averaging about 1.7 million households a day last year, according to Nielsen. Yet it ranked 10th among cable channels in terms of affiliate fees in 2008, excluding premium channels, estimates SNL Kagan.

Kagan estimates Nickelodeon’s annual affiliate revenue was worth $312 a household. In contrast, Discovery Communications’ Discovery Kids earned affiliate revenue of $1,871 for each of its 20,000 average daily household viewers last year.

Channels showing live sports, such as Walt Disney’s ESPN, draw the most fees per viewer, closely followed by channels owned by cable operators.

The industry can’t solve the online-video challenge without dealing with the disparities in these fees. Because broadcasters miss out, cable operators can’t stop them offering some of their best shows on the Internet, where they can seek an incremental audience. That has contributed to worries about people turning off their video subscription and using Internet TV instead.

Industry executives like to claim that people watch TV shows online because it is convenient. Maybe so. But some people also want to spend less on their cable bill. And one big factor driving up that bill is programming charges.

A first step toward reinventing the business model would be to link fees paid by TV distributors to viewership, with a minimum audience level set for any fees.

Some niche networks would likely go out of business. That would be a good thing. The TV industry suffers from an excess of supply. Shedding little-watched networks would restore some semblance of economic reason.

Money saved could be returned to customers through lower charges or redirected to broadcasters. That would level the playing field and make it easier for the industry to come up with a coherent approach to the Web.

Of course, cable MSOs would rather pay less for a network than more, and the networks would rather receive more than less (witness the recent travails of the NFL Network), but suggesting that fees from cable networks be tied to their viewership misses the fundamental relationship between cable networks and MSOs at work today.

Cable MSO’s scarce resource is bandwidth to the home (which limits the number of channels). In a world where they can basically force bundle those channels to subscribers (which is an entirely different issue, but it’s currently a given), their interest is getting the most money per channel they can carry, while simultaneously working to increase the number of channels they can carry.

“Shedding little-watched networks” would certainly benefit remaining cable networks, but why would cable MSOs do that? It doesn’t benefit them.

via WSJ.com.

We’ve written a bit about this already, but today Time Warner and Comcast announced their “TV Everywhere” initiative that will allow cable subscribers access to cable network programming online. The big issue of how to identify who’s a cable subscriber wasn’t included, but I’ll be keeping an eye out for that information.

Time Warner on Wednesday morning announced it has partnered with Comcast to develop a cohesive strategy for its “TV Everywhere” initiative, which looks to reinforce the subscription TV model by allowing subscribers to access cable network programming on-demand, via broadband and mobile platforms.

The first stage of the TV Everywhere model will go live in July, enabling Comcast subscribers to access content from Turner’s TNT and TBS properties online and through the cable operator’s video-on-demand service. When the consumer trial begins, Turner programming will be accessible on Comcast.net, Fancast.com and via Time Warner’s TNT.tv and TBS.com.

via MediaWeek.