Wednesday, April 07, 2021

EP219: The State of Television — THIS Minute


Longtime NBC/Fox scheduler/guru Preston Beckman discusses the current television landscape — all the the changes and where things might be heading. TV is evolving quickly. If you want to break in, you need to know who’s out there, what they’re looking for, and where you fit in. Preston Beckman can help guide you.

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4 comments :

Richard Williamson said...

Friday Question.. Have you been listening to the "Office Deep Dive" podcast on Spotify - there are some very interesting in depth interviews with Greg Daniels, Ben Silverman and Kevin Reilly (along with a load of others) and their comments about network views and interference (especially from Reilly who was head of the network at the time) are very interesting.

Jeff Boice said...

Thanks. I suppose we could use the children's cable networks as an early indicator. I read that ratings for the kids networks have plummeted-probably due to the startup of Disney+. I also notice Nickelodeon has essentially become the SpongeBob/Friends/Mom network.

I also see that NBC is shutting down its NBC Sports cable network and moving the sports programming it has (NHL, Premier League) to USA Network.

Mike Barer said...

My guess is that Bravo will go strong, as will the Food Network. ESPN has had it's ups and downs, but so far, has it's hand in enough platforms to survive, same with CNN, which is about the same age and has spread out in similar ways.
That all can change in a heartbeat, though.

LMNtrees said...

As a parent, I think kids watch a lot less tv because they are gaming online. Even young kids are on Roblox all the time. Or Minecraft, which is a bit like an infinitely sized playground. You can have your own server with just your own friends. There's a whole subculture of Minecraft stories and memes out there. They also watch, on youtube, other people play videogames. No adult understands why this is fun for them but they can spend hours this way.

I think children's tv has also become a lot stranger and less comforting. My kids are happy to watch tv if its something they can watch with us as the parents, which basically means a completely vanilla storyline. But outside of that, they've lost interest in tv.