December 13, 2008 Jay Leno’s Move Hints at Future of Prime-Time TV By BRIAN STELTER NY Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/13/business/media/13shift.html?_r=1&ref=television&pagewanted=print LOS ANGELES — Jay Leno is putting a big dent in the “checkerboard.” With one sweeping shift this week, the ailing NBC network reordered the playing field of prime-time television. The introduction of a five-night-a-week program starring Mr. Leno, beginning next fall, was a concession that TV norms cannot continue, at least not at fourth-place NBC. The programming and viewing habits of the last 50 years — exemplified by the checkerboard of competing programs on the broadcast networks — are being replaced by an Internet-influenced time-shifting model of scheduling. As a result, the very definition of prime time may be changing. “We do have to continue to rethink what a broadcast network is,” Jeffrey Zucker, the chief executive of NBC Universal, a unit of General Electric, said at an industry conference Monday, hours before the news of Mr. Leno’s new assignment emerged. He warned that if changes were not undertaken, “the broadcast networks will end up like the newspaper business or, worse, like the car companies.” Maybe Mr. Zucker has seen the future; after all, his network has lost 50 percent of its 10 p.m. audience in the last three years. The announcement of Mr. Leno’s show continues to reverberate on studio lots and executive corridors here, as the Monday-through-Friday “strip” is unprecedented in the modern network television era. NBC framed the decision in terms of competitiveness and cost-effectiveness, because it defuses the risk of Mr. Leno’s move to another network and saves untold millions of dollars a year. But it also reflects the increasing irrelevance of the network schedule. The irrelevance is partly because of digital video recorders, the bane of many a television executive. Viewers in the 28 percent of homes with DVRs are recording programs at 8 and 9 p.m. and playing them back later in the evening, hurting the 10 p.m. hour. Of the 10 prime-time programs that gained the biggest audience from DVR usage this year, none were on at 10 p.m. The biggest gainers from DVR viewership were dramas. According to statistics on time-shifting released by Nielsen Media Research on Friday, the NBC series “Heroes” benefited the most from DVRs, with a 35 percent increase in its audience after seven days of time-shifted viewing. The new Fox drama “Fringe” experienced a 26 percent increase, and the ABC series “Lost” had a 25 percent increase. But TV recording is only one component of a larger shift in entertainment consumption. Time-shifting of all sorts — a combination of DVRs, Internet video viewing, cable repeats, DVD sales and other viewing patterns — is having a profound impact on all the networks. The always-on nature of content, inspired by the Internet, is freeing consumers from the previously all-powerful schedule. And it is making the networks think more like cable channels, which tend to repeat shows more often. “The whole nature of TV has become a lot more viewer-friendly,” said Robert C. Wright, the former chairman of NBC Universal and a senior adviser to Thomas H. Lee Capital. “There are more opportunities than ever before for people to watch a program that they’re interested in.” But the downside is evident to anyone who measures the gradual ratings declines for an ever-more-fragmented TV landscape. Advertisers pay for air time using ratings that include only the first three days of DVR playback, under the assumption that the ads become less relevant over time and that most viewers will watch shows by then. As a result, networks are looking to schedule programming that can encourage live viewing. On Tuesday, Ben Silverman, the co-chairman of NBC Entertainment, called “The Jay Leno Show” a “killer app,” not only because of the comedian’s talents, but because “you want to watch it that night, and you want to watch it the next night.” Mr. Silverman predicted that the program would be “totally DVR-proof.” That’s not technically true. “American Idol,” an event-style program, experienced a 12 percent increase in its audience from time-shifted viewing, according to Nielsen. “There’s no way to schedule around DVR viewing,” said Dawn Ostroff, CW’s president of entertainment. “You have to assume that a good number of viewers are going to wind up watching the content in a different way.” Due in part to time-shifting, many viewers, especially the younger ones who are prized by advertisers, do not know what is on at 10 p.m. And they increasingly do not care. There is a simple test of this scheduling shift: just ask a friend what time “Dateline NBC” is broadcast. The hard-to-remember answer is Friday nights at 10 — but not for long. Therein lies the potential benefit of Mr. Leno’s 10 p.m. move. Jay-at-10, if it succeeds, will not require a glance at the on-screen TV listings; it will be a consistent part of NBC’s schedule and identity. But the plan also comes with significant risks. CBS and ABC are expected to counter-program NBC’s 10 p.m. talk show with dramas, and NBC has already acknowledged that it expects to receive lower ratings than its network competition. And there’s always cable. At a panel discussion sponsored by the Hollywood Radio and Television Society on Tuesday, James Duff, the executive producer of “The Closer” on TNT, said NBC executives were “actively participating in their own demise” by cheapening their product. “The more that the broadcast networks transform themselves into reality and talk shows, the more that dramas will go to cable and be done properly — the way they can’t on broadcast anymore,” he said, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Cable channels, by and large, do not depend on a checkerboard approach to scheduling. TNT, the cable channel known for drama, attracted five million viewers for the debut of “Leverage,” a series starring Timothy Hutton, on Sunday at 10. TNT repeated the episode at 1 a.m., then directed viewers to the show’s Tuesday time slot, where the second episode was shown twice in one evening. This weekend, the two episodes will be repeated again. Scheduling moves like NBC’s this week hint at a similar future for the other broadcast networks. “It may just get too expensive to continue with the checkerboard model,” said Laura Caraccioli-Davis, an executive vice president at the media agency Starcom Entertainment. “Every network — whether they want to admit it in the press or not — is looking for creative, cost-controlling scheduling opportunities.” -- ================================ George Antunes, Political Science Dept University of Houston; Houston, TX 77204 Voice: 713-743-3923 Fax: 713-743-3927 Mail: antunes at uh dot edu *********************************** * POST TO [email protected] * *********************************** Medianews mailing list [email protected] http://lists.etskywarn.net/mailman/listinfo/medianews
