Commentary
TV Nowhere? Broadcast's Premiere Season Falls Off Radar
- by J. Max Robins , Featured Columnist, October 7, 2015
Network press release machines may be churning out what passes for good news these day about series like the solid NBC drama “Blindspot,” ABC's reboot of “The Muppets” or the CBS comedy “Life in Pieces.” But PR efforts can’t disguise an obvious — yet unmentionable — ennui.
None of these shows, or any other freshman series that jumps to mind, looks like a breakout on its own. “Blindspot” has benefited immeasurably from the megawatt “The Voice” as a lead-in, where the new show is heavily promoted.
“The Muppets” will get sampling just on the strength of the brand -- meanwhile, it has a median viewer age of 49. As for “Life in Pieces,” it may be the highest-rated new network comedy, but it loses more than half of the audience for “The Big Bang Theory,” which proceeds it.
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Just a year ago, ABC was scoring big with Shonda Rhimes' latest effort, “How to Get Away with Murder,” featuring breakout star Viola Davis. A year before that, NBC scored big with “Blacklist,” with its screen-chomping, tour-de-force star turn from James Spader. Anything coming close to that this fall?
The rise and rise of Netflix and other streaming services, and the growing strength of quality on cable, begs the question of if the fall season has any meaningful resonance. Is it still an asset for a new series to debut in autumn — or is it better to launch during a less-cluttered time of the year?
Some of the fallout for newbies this fall, no doubt, is due to what FX President and General Manager John Landgraf and others have decried as an overall glut of original series. By Landgraf’s estimate, in 2010 there were 280 original series, compared to 400 this year — which makes launching anything an increasingly difficult challenge.
Look at last year's monster breakout “Empire,” for example, which debuted on Fox in January and became the network's most buzzed-about show in years. It returned this fall to an even bigger audience and seemed to drown out all the new stuff on Fox.
Still, all may not be all doom and gloom for the fall's crop of newbies. My longtime pal Brad Adgate, Horizon Media’s senior vice president/director of research, notes the absence of a breakout hit, but cautions that there may be a frosh success waiting to happen in a world where DVR numbers are factored in, social media mentions build buzz — and there may be a lucrative secondary market deal in the wings with Netflix, Hulu or Amazon Prime.
A good candidate for sleeper series breakout status is “Scream Queens.” The heavily promoted Fox series drew a disappointing 4 million viewers in its debut, but ratings grew by 83% when Live+3-day ratings were counted.
Still, with the rising price of Netflix stock, the aging up of broadcast network audiences and the growth of non-broadcast programing options, I can't help but think we have come to the fall of the fall season.
Not that anyone noticed. There are too many shows left to binge on.
J. Max Robins has chronicled and critiqued the industry from the birth of modern cable through the advent of Snapchat. The former award-winning editor-in-chief of Broadcasting & Cable, Robins has commented on industry issues for virtually every major media outlet from CNN to the Wall Street Journal. Currently, executive director of The Center for Communication, Robins writes the weekly MediaPost column "TV Everywhere."
The demise of the simultaneous fall introductions for new primetime series has been predicted many times in the past---even when the broadcast networks had a combined audience share of 90%, not the puny 25% that now prevails. ABC's introduction of the second season concept in 1966 started people thinking about staggering their introductions over longer intervals and the Fox network has always avoided direct head to head clashes with ABC, CBS and NBC fare, often delaying its new series introductions well into October and, as shown by "Empire", even later.
One of the major problems that new primetime series have is lack of sampling. In times past, when there were only three options for most viewers, virtually all newbies were adequately sampled over the first 4-6 weeks and their fate was decided in time for the networks to cancel or order a new round of original "second sason" episodes for the February-May period. Now, many shows dont have the luxury of waiting 4-6 weeks before al of those those who might like their stars or concept get around to sampling them. Many latent fans simply have so many other channels to watch that they aren't even aware of most of the new entries by the time the networks have to make their renewal decisions in late November or early December to give the producers time to crank out 10-13 more originals.
The obvious solution is to stagger all of the introductions so new series are constantly being introduced, not all at once. At least that would improve their chances to be sampled, by reducing competitive pressures, somewhat. Unfortunately, this requires some degree of cooperation by the networks and, so far, they persist in operating by the old rules---even though the system is slowly breaking down.
The problem lies in awareness (and informing a heavily distracted public) about the "new" viewing opportunities.
I loved "Last Man on Earth" last spring. Never missed an episode (and it got me to watch my Fox affiliate like I never had before). I found out yesterday that the show had returned to Fox two weeks ago (I was assuming a March return -- I guess AMC and other networks have conditioned me).
I had no idea the program was back. But then, how would I know?
There are so many viewing options -- and I must confess more and more of my television consumption is delayed and rarely real-time -- and so many promotional/advertising places to communicate. (Obviously wherever Fox promoted the program was not targeted to my realm of focus).
It will only get harder to permeate consumer consciousness to garner success.
Sampling is yesterday's buggy when real time analytics exist.
What is there to hide?
Maybe networks didn't ever really need the feeding frenzy they created - and that the current upheaval while not harming traditional TV is teaching us some new things about introductions. After all, people tend to be loyal to shows - and not really care about all these new things. And they'll get their news (as they always did) through an indeterminate process where information creeps and crawls around.
So Leonard, I take it by your tenor that you reject sampling per se as it is horse-and-buggy and not resal-time.
So I assume when you're next feeling ill and go to the doctor and he orders a blood test, you will need to be hooked up to a machine that tests your blood in real-time 24/7. Fact is there are times and situations where samples are the better approach.
So if you miss a program for whatever reasons and you want to catch up, you go to On Demand. If you don't catch it in time, the first episodes disappear and starting in the middle ? On top of that, after you pay so much for this service, they decide to charge more to see programs on On Demand. Who loses ? Who sees more problems riding down the track ?