The Death of Broadcast Television?

There are two simple truths when it comes to television today.  First is that it’s a business, like everything else.  Second is that a lot of businesses are in trouble.  Television costs money to produce.  It gets money from advertisers.  Advertisers are spending less.  It’s a cycle that is causing some cracks to appear in the surfaces that might reflect some bigger problems under the surface.

It all started with NBC.  Things often do, just because they’ve been slipping in the ratings so that now they’re sitting in the cellar among the big four networks.  This has led the network to start scheduling for margins rather than ratings, see what can get the most profits rather than the most eyeballs.  Of course, what advertisers pay for are the eyeballs, so this turns into a losing strategy.  This program-for-the-margins strategy has been taking to an extreme: elimination of the 10pm hour of prime time, replacing it with Jay Leno in a move to both make the time between 8pm and 11pm cheaper to create and to keep Leno from going to ABC.

NBC defended the move by saying that three of their primary competitors don’t program for the 10pm hour.  And while it’s true that Fox has always just been an 8-10 network, that also means that they are using the CW and MyNetworkTV to justify their decisions.

Now, CBS is making a trio of moves that show it is suffering as well.  First they’re requiring every primetime program to cut its budget, no matter how much of a money maker the show is, especially by shrinking writing departments.  Second they’ve announced they’re drastically cutting the number of pilots they’re ordering this season.  Third, they’re canceling the program Guiding Light.  This isn’t like canceling a show at the end of its first season, this is Guiding frigging Light, a show that has been on first radio and then television for 72 years, making it probably the longest running…anything…ever.

This is troubling from the point of view of someone trying to break into the industry.  There’s increasing competition for fewer and fewer spots.  Five less hours of primetime.  Fewer pilots being ordered.  Fewer writers employed.  But this also speaks to a continued decline in entertainment quality, as there will simply be less available, and what is available will be produced on less resources.

We’ll see if things in television rebound when the economy does, but there will be the question of whether or not the economy rebounds soon enough, or whether networks will even see an incentive to return to full strength.  Hard to say what broadcast television will even look like in five years with the changes that are coming down the pipes.