After the Strike

So maybe NBC isn’t so risk-taking after all.  quarterlife has been cancelled on NBC and will be moved to Bravo, probably.

NBC says they were experimenting.  Well, it sounds more like gambling blind to me.  Putting the premiere of a 20-something angst-ridden drama after 2 hours of The Biggest Loser on a Tuesday night, then planning to air the show regularly on Sunday nights makes absolutely no sense.  If the programming executives were thinking at all, it seems more like they were setting it up to fail.

quarterlife will go down as another example of just plain bad scheduling and planning.  And it also puts another needle into NBC’s voodoo doll.

At least you have to hand it to NBC for taking chances and experimenting in this post-strike world.  But maybe a series made for the Internet doesn’t have the same appeal to the prime time network audience.

quarterlife, the series that debuted on MySpace and was picked up by NBC last Fall premiered on Tuesday night to the worst time period ratings in 17 years.  Does this mean that made-for-Internet doesn’t mean good-for-broadcast?  Or perhaps it means that people who watch The Biggest Loser don’t care too much about (or don’t understand) a drama about urban twenty-somethings who blog.

There’s speculation that with such low ratings, the show will be cancelled.  But considering how much Ben Silverman has stood behind the show, not to mention his high-profile visibility on the quarterlife website, it’s more likely that they’ll wait it out and see how it does in its regular Sunday time slot.

If things don’t work out, then maybe we’ll realize that the quarterlife / social networking audience doesn’t really watch TV after all.

Well, here’s an admission by CBS that the Writers Strike was a good thing.

Today CBS announced its 2007 4th Quarter and Full Year earnings.  Although profits dropped significantly, it wasn’t attributed to the strike.  In his statement, CEO Les Moonves said:

As we predicted CBS sustained itself very well during the strike.  In fact, in the short term, we were able to manage operating costs at the network very effectively.  This was primarily achieved by significantly reducing our programming expenses and the termination of costly writing and producing contracts.  Our financial picture was not affected negatively by the strike in any shape or form.  Perhaps most importantly, many of the economic benefits we were able to achieve during the strike have changed the way we do business and will allow us to operate more efficiently going forward.

How are they going to operate more efficiently going forward?  Moonves said, “We’re approaching the upcoming pilot season with an eye on building a faster, leaner development model with fewer expensive pilots and greater cost efficiencies across the board.”

Another interesting comment was about The Internet:

“The Internet business is (a) truly an extension of our existing network business and we’ve got the sales teams in place to get that job done, too….Online is our strategy to reach people wherever they are and bring our content to them.  That’s why we created the CBS Audience network which has more than 300 affiliated websites and is the number one provider of online television programming in the business.”

Here’s more info about the CBS Audience Network.

Well, it seems pretty clear that CBS had a plan regarding the Internet well over a year ago and was ready for (or even allowed) the strike to happen so that they could effect various cost-cutting measures and have reason to change the pilot development process.

So what can we expect after the strike regarding pilots?

• Fewer pilots
• Lower budget pilots
• Pilots year-round
• More Internet-only content
• Faster development process

What’s your take?

If you want to listen to the full earnings report conference call, go to this CBS Corp PR page.

This may be one of the most significant shifts in paradigm to emerge after the Writer’s Strike.

NBC announced on Tuesday that they will no longer have a Fall season, but will now present a year-round cycle of programming.

The end of the Fall television season?  No more TV Guide Fall Preview?  No more back to school and back to TV?  Should we have a moment of silence as this tradition comes to an end?

Or maybe we should celebrate.  Now we’re going to get original programming throughout the year!

Wait a minute.  This is NBC — the network that went from #1 to #4 overnight.  This is the network that guaranteed us heavy doses of reality television.  This is the network that brought American Gladiators to primetime.  I suppose they’ve got nothing to lose by dumping tradition.

Honestly, though, I think it’s about time the networks finally got rid of the Fall Season.  I lived for a while in Japan and I was struck by the idea that there doesn’t have to be any television “season.”  TV is on 24 hours a day, so why would you limit new shows to only a certain time of the year?  In Japan there was original programming throughout the year.  In fact, some primetime TV shows ran for a full year with a new episode every week.  Imagine that, no reruns.

I think this is one of the major underlying causes of the decline in television viewers — the lack of original programming and inconsistency in scheduling.  When your favorite show is on for a few weeks, then repeats those same episodes, then changes day and time, how does a network expect to gain a following?

Let’s see if NBC can gain viewers’ trust again by not only introducing quality original programming throughout the year, but also by committing to those shows over a longer period of time.