Category Archives: Quartz

Finally, Instead of Re-Runs Over the Summer, New TV Shows Will Premiere All Year

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finally instead of reruns

As upfronts wrap today, I wrote this Quartz piece about one big change to this year’s proceedings: the networks are finally serious about programming year-round, and they’re actually putting their money where their mouths are.

But as broadcast ratings continue to erode, those networks can no longer assume that their viewers will stay loyal and return in the fall. So when CBS took a chance on adapting Stephen King’s Under the Dome as a “limited series” last summer, and it became the highest-rated scripted summer series in 21 years, the network kept it in the same spot this year (it returns June 30). With the addition of Extant and other summer shows, CBS will have 90 hours of original programming this summer.

It’s a big change from the broadcasters’ traditional hands-off approach to summer, allowing the cable networks (and more recently, Netflix) to swoop in and take all the audiences for themselves.

Finally, instead of re-runs over the summer, new TV shows will premiere all year

Television is Taking a Cue From Summer Movie Blockbusters

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television summer movie blockbusters

It’s upfronts time once again: the annual week in which broadcast execs unveil their new TV lineups to advertisers. And as I wrote at Quartz, as networks grapple with season-to-season ratings decline, they are trying a new tactic: approaching their lineups as if they are summer movie schedules.

The networks are coming to the same conclusion as the movie studios: the best way to potentially attract huge audiences, both domestically and internationally, is by relying on “safe” projects featuring well-established, beloved brands. That’s a big reason why Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. was one of the few new series to get a renewal this year.

And if a network picks up my NCIS: Avengers idea, I’d better get a cut of the profits!

Television is taking a cue from summer movie blockbusters

Not Even Those Who Run Netflix Shows Know How Popular They Really Are

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not even those who run Netflix

This is crazy to me. We’ve all known for years that Netflix has stubbornly refused to release any ratings information on its shows. Now, I wrote at Quartz, it turns out that not even the people who make Netflix’s most popular (we think) shows have any idea how many viewers actually watch their programming.

“It’s like, ‘I’m a hit —I think,’” Orange is the New Black creator Jenji Kohan told The Hollywood Reporter. The lack of viewership metrics from Netflix “makes it hard to negotiate later,” she says, referring to the standing industry practice in which the stars and producers of hits shows leverage ratings success for significant raises in a show’s third or fourth season.

I also wrote about Netflix’s excuses for withholding that data — and why they don’t hold water.

Not even those who run Netflix shows know how popular they really are 

NBC Wants You to Make Its Next Hit Sitcom

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NBC wants you to make

At long last, NBC is admitting the truth: it doesn’t know how to make funny sitcoms anymore. So it’s launching NBC Comedy Playground, and inviting comedy writers to pitch their series projects and bypass the usual drawn-out pilot season process. As I wrote at Quartz,

NBC Entertainment President Jennifer Salke called the move a direct result of “what’s happening on the Internet and what’s happening at the network.”

Or more accurately, what’s not happening at the network, which hasn’t had a hit sitcom since The Office, which debuted in 2005. That show averaged 9 million viewers in its heyday; now most NBC sitcoms, like Parks & Recreation and Community, are lucky if they pull in half that audience.

At least NBC is admitting that its current development system is broken. And if that prevents another monkey sitcom from making it to air, then we’ll all be winners.

NBC wants you to make its next hit sitcom

U.S. Morning Talk Shows Have a New Strategy: If You Can’t Beat Them, Steal Them

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us morning talk shows

As Josh Elliott leaves Good Morning America for NBC Sports, I wrote at Quartz about NBC’s new approach to morning show success: if you can’t beat them, steal them.

Of course, poaching is nothing new in the morning show wars (CBS hired away Today’s Bryant Gumbel in 1997; he began hosting The Early Show in 1999), but this is a new evolution as media conglomerates have continued to expand. NBC Universal can in essence kill two birds with one stone: fill a vital need in one area of its company (NBC Sports was searching for a viable heir apparent to Bob Costas, the Weather Channel was looking to keep viewers tuned in more than 15 minutes each morning) while simultaneously boosting another property—Today—by damaging a competitor, and the tight-knit five-person anchor team that propelled GMA to first place. Suddenly, two of those five anchors have been snapped up by NBC Universal.

Watch your back, GMA!

US morning talk shows have a new strategy: If you can’t beat them, steal them

How Apple Can Make Its Streaming Service Better Than Netflix

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apple streaming service

Last night, the Wall Street Journal reported that Apple is in talks with Comcast to team up for a new streaming-television service that would use an Apple set-top box. At Quartz, I suggested four ways that Apple could make a splash and make its new service instantly better than Netflix. For starters, Use the Force:

In 2010, Apple finally landed exclusive digital rights to the Beatles catalog. Now, it should aggressively pursue the holy grail of exclusive movie digital rights: the Star Wars films, which still have yet to be released via any digital platform. (Remember, Lucasfilm is now owned by Disney, whose chairman and CEO, Bob Iger, sits on Apple’s Board of Directors.) Using the films to launch Apple’s streaming service, especially as anticipation builds toward the next Star Wars film, due out in December 2015, would be reason enough for many viewers to immediately get on board.

Assuming Apple goes ahead with the service, it needs to once again embrace its traditional role of innovator, not follower.

How Apple can make its streaming service better than Netflix

Just One Month In, Jimmy Fallon is Already King of Late Night—and YouTube

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one-month-jimmy-fallon

Thanks to Mitra Kalita for this suggestion. One month into Jimmy Fallon’s tenure as new Tonight Show host, I wrote this Quartz piece on how he’s doing better than NBC could have ever dreamed: keeping the show number one in late-night while also dominating his competitors online:

Yet while Fallon has successfully maintained Tonight’s ratings dominance while drawing a significantly younger audience, his biggest achievement during his first month is online, where for the first time, people are viewing and sharing Tonight Show clips in massive numbers. His 10 most-watched Tonight clips on YouTube over the past month (from Feb. 17, the day of his first Tonight Show, to Mar. 15) have all garnered more than 2 million views. In contrast, only five of Leno’s Tonight Show clips have ever been watched more than 1 million times on YouTube.

While Quartz is famous for its innovative approach to charts and graphs, very few of my stories lend themselves to including them. But for this one, I was able to contribute some of my very own, as I painstakingly charted the number of times Fallon’s, Jimmy Kimmel’s and David Letterman’s most popular clips had been viewed on YouTube.

The numbers make one thing clear: almost immediately, Fallon has made the Tonight Show relevant online in a way it had never been before with Leno at the helm. And in the process, he has validated NBC’s controversial decision to give him The Tonight Show despite Leno’s continued reign atop the ratings. Fallon’s commanding numbers—both on TV and online—have ended (at least for now) any second-guessing that Leno was ushered off too early.

Meanwhile, Fallon and Kimmel’s YouTube success illustrates a key way the late-night landscape has evolved since the early days of Leno vs. Letterman: it’s no longer enough of a coup to simply land a big star; you also have to do something unexpected with them. The majority of both Fallon and Kimmel’s most popular YouTube clips feature big stars doing unexpected things, as opposed to the standard talk show anecdotes that Letterman (and Leno) stick to.

Until I did this story, I was shocked at Letterman’s meager online presence versus his time slot competitors. And congrats to Fallon on a first month to be proud of.

Just one month in, Jimmy Fallon is already king of late night—and YouTube

How the Weather Channel Plans to Keep You Tuned In for More Than 15 Minutes

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weather channel

As the Weather Channel prepares to launch its new morning show, AMHQ with Sam Champion, I spoke with Champion and Weather Channel President David Clark (in interviews I conducted back at TCA winter press tour) about the network’s plans to keep audiences tuned in for more than 15 minutes.

Almost 10 million viewers tune in—and tune out—each morning. During the first eight weeks of 2014, the Weather Channel network enjoyed an enormous “reach” weekdays between 7 and 10am, with 9.5 million adults 25-54 (the advertising demographic most prized in cable news) tuning in for at least one minute. That number dwarfed the reach of the cable news networks during the same period: 8.3 million for CNN, 7.8 million for Fox News and 5.6 million for MSNBC.

But that morning audience isn’t sticking around. The Weather Channel’s average morning tune-in was 15.15 minutes, compared to 25.12 minutes for Fox News, 24.96 for MSNBC and 15.91 for CNN. “We have enormous reach in the morning, but it’s sporadic,” Weather Channel President David Clark told Quartz. “We felt there was an opportunity to put a big show there and change the relationship from a place where people come to check their weather to a place where people come to get a show and be part of their daily routine.”

Champion also talks about why viewers should watch the network as opposed to just getting weather info from the Weather Channel app, and his plans to expand the scope of the network’s weather coverage.

How the Weather Channel plans to keep you tuned in for more than 15 minutes

Daylight Saving is the Worst Thing That Happens to Television

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daylight saving is the worst

As Daylight Saving Time returns today, I wrote at Quartz why this is the worst time each year for TV execs and advertisers.

That’s because when the time change arrives, the industry must grapple with a corresponding drop in viewership (measured as Households Using Television, or HUT levels). That, in turn, translates into ratings declines across the board—especially in DST’s first week— for programs airing in the early evening, as some viewers choose to enjoy their additional hour of daylight away from their TV.

I was inspired to do this story by an observation that Kevin Reilly made at TCA winter press tour. Once again, I’m using my Quartz platform to tackle TV-related issues that few outside of the industry are aware of.

Daylight saving is the worst thing that happens to television

The Biggest TV Drama in America Gets No Attention

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ncis-biggest-drama

During TCA winter press tour, I had an opportunity to speak with NCIS showrunner Gary Glasberg for this Quartz story about how his show is one of the biggest on TV, yet receives on a fraction of the media attention and respect paid to all of the other shows it soundly trounces each week.

At this point, the show’s producers are resigned to NCIS’ fate as the Rodney Dangerfield of TV shows (i.e. gets no respect). “I try to stay really focused on the fact that as much as I would love for our cast and crew to get some attention, at the end of the day it just doesn’t seem to be in the cards,” the show’s executive producer and showrunner Gary Glasberg tells Quartz. “And I have to appreciate at the end of the day that although they haven’t gotten that kind of attention, that 20 million people every week are watching. The fact that I’m getting 20 million viewers in this landscape is kind of crazy.”

Glasberg also talked about the show’s success around the world — and how much longer he expects the run to last.

The biggest TV drama in America gets no attention