Much consternation is going on right now due to the fact that NBC is cutting $750 million dollars from their budget, and that this means that there will be less scripted programming on the network next year, and more reality and game shows, which is a lot cheaper.
I have to admit, I don’t know what the problem is, aside from a certain snobbery regarding reality shows. True, most of them such, but so do most scripted shows. And entries like The Amazing Race and Survivor still hold their own, quality-wise, with the best of network television. Meanwhile, while some are stupid and go off the air quickly, some of the recent gameshows (Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?, Deal or No Deal) have been fairly ingenius.
While these critics moan that the networks don’t allow shows they like to stay on long enough to find an audience—which some shows have, but certainly not a huge amount—the fact remains that the producers of scripted shows are shooting themselves in the foot, like today’s movie stars, by charging too much for their product at a time when (again like movies) the concept is generally more important than the ‘star’ power.
The critically-acclaimed but poorly-rated Friday Night Lights, for instance, supposedly costs over $2 million an episode. A more notable case in point is perhaps this season’s most lauded series, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. Frankly, the only reason this show hasn’t been cancelled yet is that it would lose the network a tremendous amount of face. This was the program that the network spotlighted and blathered on about the most in the pre-season, with the connivance of the critical community.
As I’ve noted in the past, the problem isn’t that Studio 60 isn’t a good show, it’s that it does nothing to bring in audience members who haven’t particularly cared for producer Sorkin’s previous two series, The West Wing and Sports Night. Until Sorkin can figure out a way to stop making niche programming—and it seems likely that The West Wing featured the best setting for his style of fantasy politics and soap opera, one that will be hard to top—it remains entirely possible that he’ll never attract a mass audience again.
The real problem, therefore, is that NBC is paying $3,000,000 an episode (about $75 million for a whole year’s slate) for a show that is almost designed not to draw a mass audience. There will be much wailing and snide asides about how the non-viewers were too stupid to ‘get’ the program, but whatever, the fact remains that Studio 60 has shed additional audience share every single week. Sooner or later, NBC will have to bite the bullet and cancel the show.
What’s interesting is how often this happens. Making the Studio 60 debacle even more notable is that not only did NBC redo their entire prime time schedule to protect the program after it’s originally scheduled timeslot was shaping up as too competitive, but that it providentially got a tremendous break from ending up being placed after the show that actually is what Studio 60 was promoted to be; the season’s breakout hit. That program, of course, is Heroes.
There’s probably an interesting book to be written on how programmers keep getting these calls wrong, and that supposed toss away shows, that often just barely got on the air, are the ones that really hit it big. [Actually, that book has been at least partly written. See below.] This makes one wonder what potential mega-hits didn’t make the airwaves in favor of ‘star’-laden flavor of the month programming that quickly, and expensively, died on the vine.
The X-Files was pretty much entirely ignored by Fox and the critics in favor of its lead-in, The Adventures of Bronco Billy. (That was a good show, don’t get me wrong. But it was ‘supposed’ to be the hit, not The X-Files.) Same thing with CSI, which only got on the air at the last minute, and was scheduled as an afterthought to run after the supposed slam dunk hit that year, an expensive redo of The Fugitive. Like Studio 60, The Fugitive was kept on longer than was really justified because the network had made such a big deal about it.
In any case, as market fragmentation continues, the real answer for the makers of scripted TV shows, the stars and writers and producers and everyone involved, is that they will have to start making these shows cheaper if they want to avoid being replaced by the American Idols and the Deal or No Deals. Either that, or the networks will have to get better at figuring out which shows are in fact going to draw big enough audiences to justify such expense. And those audiences are going to get harder to get as time goes by.
In any case, anyone who is interested in this sort of thing should definitely check out the recent book Desperate Networks, which covers one year of programming amongst the various broadcast networks and reveals that every one of the biggest shows of the last several years; Lost, American Idol, Desperate Housewives, CSI, etc., just barely got on the air. It’s a great book, and a fascinating look into one of the most influential businesses in America.
