My del.icio.us
Syndication
Here is the line up for ABC this week:
This week we’re trying a totally different strategy - almost all our shows are syndicated. This means they are cheaper and less work for us as the descriptions tend to be copied from the originals. We needed to do cheap shows this week as advertising budgets were tight and Jason, our Stern student, insisted that we not commission any shows at a loss.
So creativity and inventiveness has lost out to the bottom line - we are counting on the recognition of our shows pulling in viewers who aren’t interested in any of the other offerings, which should give us ratings approximately as good as our ratings were last week, which wasn’t great.
This class is so weird - no action has a simple predictable effect. The ban on using real actors, which was intended to promote creativity has actually lessened it. Rather than people coming up with original ideas that they then stick a famous actor in to get it promoted and win an audience, people are coming up with ideas entirely based on familiar stories because you don’t get ratings with things that are unknown.
Also the Producers’ Union has not had the desired effect of raising the payment of producers, it’s just changed how people bargain over shows - so now they negotiate over what grade of show it is rather than how much producers should be paid. This will make it harder for producers to improve their margins as far as I can see. I’ve always been very pro-Union, but having to deal with an incredibly difficult union rep last week gave me some sympathy with business owners who don’t want to be locked into inflexible contracts that might put the whole business in jeopardy when the union behaves in a hostile and unco-operative manner.
When somebody starts a negotiation by telling you that if you don’t agree to their terms they’re going to strike and make you go bankrupt, it feels more like blackmail than give and take and your reaction tends not to be terribly sympathetic. My reminders that producers and networks were mutually dependent fell on deaf ears. And I thought the union was a good and fair idea until I saw what it turned into in reality.
So an interesting week and a line up I’m half ashamed of, half utterly tickled by.
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