Very interesting story about how the concept of television seasons is changing thanks to cable and its recent summer innovations.
Anyone who considers mid-August a dead time for anything original on television definitely doesn’t have an elementary-school-aged girl at home.
This week’s Disney Channel premiere of High School Musical 2 is a Friday-night date for millions of youngsters, and the latest example of how cable has stolen the buzz from its broadcast big brothers this summer.
There’s been a run of attention-getting series with big stars on cable, like Holly Hunter in TNT’s Saving Grace, Glenn Close in Damages on FX and Debra Messing in The Starter Wife on USA.
TNT’s The Closer routinely beats most of what the broadcasters offer on Monday nights. Army Wives became Lifetime’s most popular series ever and Ice Road Truckers did the same for The History Channel. Mad Men on AMC, Burn Notice on USA and House of Payne on TNT were other intriguing new offerings.
Add in returning favorites like Monk, and there are nearly 30 scripted cable series offering original episodes from June to September, according to Multichannel News.
“It’s a summer to remember,” said Tim Brooks, a television historian and Lifetime executive. “It’s kind of a game-changer in a way.”
On broadcast? Well, there’s always Big Brother 8. Or is it 14?
I’ve been a fan of The Closer and The 4400 since they debuted. I have not seen any of the other shows listed above, but have lately gotten into Dirty Jobs and TLC’s Big Medicine, which I somewhat ironically saw for the first time while I was in the hospital during my bout with pneumonia. I like it as much for the great background shots they gt of Houston as for the fascinating human stories they present. If you haven’t seen it, and aren’t too squicked out by surgery scenes, I recommend it.
Cable networks see an opportunity to snap up bored viewers while ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox essentially shift to autopilot in the summer. This year the trend has gone into overdrive, and it’s having an impact. Through midsummer, young viewership was down 14 percent from last year on broadcast schedules clogged with repeats, talent and reality programs. Cable was up slightly, Nielsen Media Research said.
The assumption that so many TV sets are turned off during the summer is becoming obsolete, said Jack Wakshlag, chief researcher at Turner Networks. In 1975, with fewer networks to choose from and fewer homes with air conditioners, summer viewership was 15 percent lower than the rest of the year, he said.
In 2005, that difference was only 3 percent — and it’s moving toward a day when there will be just as much TV-watching in July as January, he said.
Another factor in the summertime bounty of choice is the recognition by cable networks that their success increasingly depends upon having signature series that viewers will seek out. That’s why AMC, normally a movie channel, developed Mad Men.
The competition is keen. In 2000, the average home in the United States had access to 61 channels, Nielsen said. By last year, the typical home got 104 channels.
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Broadcasters are hardly blind to what’s going on.
They pay so much for scripted programming that economic reality locks them in to repeating episodes to get extra ad revenue. Ratings that may make a series a profitable hit on cable represent failure on the bigger stage of a broadcast network. Unless someone figures out something different, networks are locked in to concentrating on cheap reality programming in the summer, hoping to catch lightning with an unexpected hit.
“We all tried a little bit,” said Alan Wurtzel, NBC’s chief researcher. “But there is no way you can have a full-fledged, 52-week season, both financially and creatively.”
The result is ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox sitting back for another few months as the cable competitors continue to chip away at what has always made them special. That’s another few months of viewers not checking those networks first when they settle into their couches.
Doesn’t sound like it’s sustainable for the networks, does it? I think they’re going to have to figure out some way of maintaining viewer loyalty during the summer, or they’ll find they don’t have an audience coming back in the fall. I’m glad that’s not my problem to solve.