• by P.J. Bednarski , Staff Writer @pjbtweet, May 14, 2013

The new broadcast network schedules being announced this week include the typical ballyhoo, but it seems like the events are commemorating a era that is in the past, as if Upfront Week is the media equivalent of Oktoberfest.  

The Big Four network upfronts have their traditions, rituals and icons.  Leslie Moonves will predict some outrageous increase in upfront revenues. A network—this year it’s NBC—will resurrect old TV stars or shows or both because it cannot otherwise attract an audience. Fox will show something that seems to be just too-south of tasteful.  A variety of network suits will announce that, even in a fractured media world, nothing attracts a crowd like network television. It’s just a much smaller crowd, most of the time.

The New York Times today is talking about how all of the networks are announcing more programs that will come on and go off at various times. The idea of a fall season and a “second season” does seem to be fading away. Some new shows won’t require the usual 22 episodes.

Indeed, DVDs and especially online video services like Netflix, Amazon and others may be hurting television by siphoning away its audience. But it’s also creating a market that was previously limited. It isn’t necessary for network shows to run four or five years so they’ll get into syndication; now a compelling 12 hours or even less, can turn a profit, downloaded from streaming services. What is surprising is that with an explosion of online video, broadcast television hasn’t found many inventive opportunities to cut itself a way into exploiting second screen tie- ins. NBC’s cross-platform efforts seem the best  developed, including a TV game show with an online component, “The Million Second Quiz.”  But no network has developed a killer app, and certainly none that actually involves an app.    

Even now with its own dual revenue stream from retransmission fees, broadcast TV still orients itself toward the old way of doing business that seeks broad advertiser acceptance of programming fare that is making a mistake if it even nearly raises an eyebrow, even at a time that it’s the advertisers that are challenging the conventional boundaries, often with commercials that first appear online.  Broadcast seeks out familiar, with the softest of edges—only a mildly spicy sauce over a very familiar cut of beef. “You know they say TV will rot your brain,” Alec Baldwin told us in one of those classic Hulu ads. “That’s absurd. TV only softens the brain, like a ripe banana.”

And that’s kind of true, especially about broadcasting. It may be witless and safe but it’s not thinking outside the box. Because it is the box.

pj@mediapost.com