It's December, and you're asking the obvious question: Where is my family-friendly TV entertainment?
Sure, you could go to the likes of Hallmark Channel, or maybe believe that NBC's
"Parenthood," Fox's "Raising Hope" or ABC's "Brothers & Sisters" is your "family" programming. But, of course, you'd be wrong.
TV and advertising executives want a bigger platform, one
where the entire family can watch a TV show. (Like the bone-crunching, sexy-cheerleadering Super Bowl, which tthe NFL will tout as family programming).
Last season Procter & Gamble and
Wal-Mart funded two made-for-TV movies on NBC on Friday night, and
another just this past weekend. Now it looks like P&G also wants to do the same on Fox. (But we're not sure where. Fridays? Saturdays?)
Some wonder why P&G would only set its sights on the
low-rated Friday-night time period. That's easy. Networks typically invest less in that night, and would have no trouble pre-empting their schedule in April, July, and in December, when those movies
ran
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The Association of National Advertisers still has its Alliance for Family Entertainment group, in which 400 national advertisers
like P&G, Wal-Mart, and others contribute seed money for TV screenplays with a family-viewing bent.
The Alliance has been around for a while. But it has never seemed to be enough to
convince networks to make family programming a key part of a network's overall strategy -- especially where marketers want to see family programming the most, in what had called the "family hour,"
from 8 p.m. to 9 p.m.
The fact of the matter is, broadcast networks have got bigger issues to deal with these days -- profitability, survival (for some), and ever-decreasing value. TV
marketers pushing for family programming realize this and are shooting somewhat lower -- looking for time periods or nights of the week where they can make a start.
Fridays night for
families? Saturday night for families? That's an approach some networks might consider.