Tuesday, February 02, 2021

Saturday Night Flatline

This is rather shocking.  Last Saturday night (January 30th), the four major broadcast networks COMBINED attracted an audience of only 8 million people in primetime.  That is a staggeringly low number.  

In the ‘70s CBS used to draw 30 million all by themselves (with shows like ALL IN THE FAMILY, MASH, THE MARY TYLER MOORE SHOW, THE BOB NEWHART SHOW, and THE CAROL BURNETT SHOW).  GOLDEN GIRLS in the ‘80s was bringing in 20 million a week on NBC.  

The addition of cable and premium services took enough of a dent into network viewing during this century that networks gave up on Saturday night long ago.  They threw in the towel, programming reruns (from shows aired earlier in the week), cheap news magazines, and reality shows.  

And Fridays are heading in that direction.  Wrestling, reality shows, and more news magazines.  

Face it, networks are one step away from showing informercials on Friday and Saturday nights.  

Broadcast networks, as we’ve known them since the beginning of TV are dead.  

Here’s what I predict will happen:  Each of the major networks (with the exception of Fox) are currently owned by a mega- conglomerate.  They all own a streaming services.  Streaming is the future.  Comcast’s main focus will be on Peacock not NBC.  CBS and ABC are set to become respective bastard children too.   Their competition is Netflix, and Hulu, and Apple, and Amazon, and HBO Max, and whoever else I’m missing.  BRIDGERTON has been seen by 80 million on Netflix we’re told.  Four networks combined get a tenth of that.  

Stick a (tuning) fork in it.   

I think there will be a flip.  Original scripted programming now debuts on the major broadcast networks and then go to their streaming services.  Very soon it will be the other way around.  A new show will premiere on Disney + and then a week later appear on ABC. Broadcast networks will be for the residue, folks that don’t want to pay for additional platforms.   For the Time-Warners and Viacoms they will become an afterthought — a way to pick up some additional change, the way their radio divisions and billboard divisions are.   How long until the Super Bowl is no longer on broadcast TV?    

Y’see, here’s why the conglomerates are so excited about streaming:  They can double dip.  Let’s say NBC has the Super Bowl.  On their broadcast network they collect the advertising revenue.  Should they go to Peacock they rake in the ad money AND you’re paying a subscription fee on top of that.   But wait!  There's more!  The Super Bowl will lure a lot more people to subscribe and THAT’S where the real money is.  

8 million people between CBS, NBC, ABC, and Fox for one night?  Hold a mirror up to the body to see if it’s still breathing.  


49 comments :

JBerg said...

Doesn't help that they've barely been able to film anything new in a year

Mike Barer said...

I remember watching Saturday night programming with All In The Family, Mary Tyler Moore, and Mash, as well as Saturday Night At The Movies. Does anyone remember the Movie Of The Week? It was often a movie that we had seen at the theatre with all the f-words and sex and violence taken out.

LoganYenser said...

Ken, do you think the FCC has anything to do with the decline of the networks? Because think about it: If the FCC wasn't in place, then the networks could air cable/streaming quality without fear of fines or violating the rules set in place. Or is it just the rise of cable and streaming that brought down the networks?

Michael Hagerty said...

Ken: Already happening. The Frasier reboot is back in play---if it makes it, it goes to Paramount Plus, not CBS.

Cory said...

The Fox Broadcast network has said they are moving toward becoming a sports network with football, MMA and Wrestling. I woudl imagine they will try for hockey and basketball the next time those contracts are up.

I also think that the networks will keep paying through the nose for Football, as it's the only thing that still pulls in big audiences, but the games are already being streamed for some of the minor games.

Pat Reeder said...

I watch a lot of YouTube series these days because I find the videos that people are making on their own more informative, creative, entertaining and original than anything on the networks these days. Last Saturday, I was watching a YouTube video and mentioned to my wife how it was funnier than anything I've seen on "Saturday Night Live" in years. I then realized that it was shortly after 11 p.m. on Saturday night, and I was actually watching that instead of the new episode of "SNL." That's when I got a similar revelation to yours that network TV is on life support.

crankypants said...

And some of the streaming networks frustrate me. Netflix and Prime have been doing it for a while, but the first time I tried CBS All Access it was a mess. I loved Good Fight but I refuse to pay for CBS All Access (and I heard it got weird in later seasons anyway). But the CBS show Evil, now that's a great show! It gives me hope that major networks can still show original, well-written programming even if it doesn't have the nudity and swearing of cable shows (and now Evil is on Netflix--hope more people discover it). I'm sure I'd enjoy Picard and Twilight Zone too, but until they move it to regular network TV or Netflix, I'll never know.

Jason V said...

Don't have cable, use a Fire TV and AppleTV to watch things.

Which means I *can't* watch broadcast network programming without paying for more. I'm already in on Amazon Prime, Netflix, Disney+ and HBOMax.

So no, I'm not going to pay extra for CBS All Access or Paramount+.

Joseph Scarbrough said...

I think part of the problem too is network television broadcasts nothing but garbage nowadays. Just my thinking.

mwolf said...

Broadcast networks are not doing so bad when you consider that in 1975 the only options you had at 8 p.m. on a Saturday aside from All In the Family were Emergency! on NBC, Kung Fu on ABC, an old movie on channel 41 and something super-boring (to my 11-year-old self) on PBS. The broadcast networks did great because since we didn't have a VCR or Cable yet, that was it. Now the only options to broadcast tv are 400 cable channels, a billion things on YouTube, video games, hundreds of old tv series, and just about any movie ever made. So the fact that competing with all of that they're still pulling in 5% of their old audience is kind of impressive.

Ere I Saw Elba said...

If anything, YouTube has been the biggest factor in how media content is consumed. News, SNL, late night shows like Colbert, etc., come from there, and not from streaming. I have not watched any network television for probably 15 years, and I think many people are the same. I suppose there is a business model in page clicks and in ad revenue. That doesn't bother me.

What does bother me is the rise of authoritarian alt-news and social media in their attempt to subvert truth and journalistic standards, as if they are even trying to be shy about that. I would ultimately look to the FCC to get more aggressive about the ocean of bullshit that is actually changing our perceptions of reality.

Unknown said...

Sounds like a chicken and egg thing, no one is watching because nothing is on. But nothing is on because no one is watching.
If you're collecting data, I usually will watch what is on TV, but if nothing I like is on, then we go to streaming of old shows. Watch Monk, Madame Secretary, Schitts Creek, Community, Firefly, Barney Miller, etc, wait for 10 o'clock news, which gets interrupted by the Daily show, then to bed. No time at night to watch full movies, don't enjoy stopping/starting movies, but hey, I'm not a robot.

blogward said...

While streaming services are screaming for tempting content (mainly fancy-dress melodrama), there's going to be an interesting bottleneck as the continuing lockdowns restrict productions. There are now contractors to monitor on-set Covid compliance.

No doubt there'll be remakes of Zorro, The Lone Ranger, Man In The Iron Mask, etc.

stephen catron said...

Broadcast is boring and dreadful. Look what they did to the British series Miranda with that abomination called Call Me Kat. Kat is just god awful while Miranda is funny and acted wonderfully. I have been discovering British shows that are far superior to US broadcast shows.
If it wasn't for football, I'd never watch broadcast.

Troy McClure said...

The most entertaining thing on network TV this month that's guaranteed to get good ratings will be the impeachment trial in the Senate. Trump has hired a lawyer who was going to represent Jeffrey Epstein before he died, and a lawyer who as DA refused to prosecute Bill Cosby.

Bwahahahaha! Birds of a feather, etc.

Right now, Trumptards are experiencing serious cognitive dissonance as they try to work out why their messiah has hired a lawyer who was going to defend a sex trafficking pedophile whom they've tried to connect to Democrats.

ERROR! ERROR! SINGLE BRAINCELL MALFUNCTIONING! NEED FRIED GRITS TO RECHARGE!

Craig Russell said...

So the big networks and streaming services have effectively cut out the middle man. Cable (or satellite) Used to be you paid a cable company for retransmission, and watched ads to boot. Now you pay the networks directly, along with seeing ads. Pretty good racket they have got for themselves.

Michael said...

It must be all of the creativity the networks encourage.

Ahem.

Jeff said...

It's called Bridgerton, by the way.

Jeff Boice said...

I had a similar shock a couple of weeks ago when I read that the Tonight Show was drawing under one million viewers-my reaction was to wonder it that had ever happened before. Well, maybe during the America After Dark period in 1957- but that would be it. I just figured Tonight would retain a few million viewers just through the force of inertia.

Ted. said...

"SNL" is now being broadcast on the West Coast at 8:30 p.m. and again at 11:30 p.m. (as opposed to just delaying it three hours till 11:30, as it was for decades). That seems like a great strategy, because it allows a show with "Live" in the title actually to be seen live in much of the country that couldn't before. But it's also an acknowledgement that NBC has nothing else to broadcast in prime time on Saturdays. (And there are only so many "Dateline" murder reruns people are willing to watch.)

blinky said...

Couldn't happen to a nicer bunch of suits!

JED said...

We dropped DirecTV (AT&T has ruined it) and are too far from Boston to use an antenna so we're using CBSN on our smart TV to get the local Boston news. It's exactly the same anchors, sets and features as the broadcast station. There are commercials but they are different than the ones shown on satellite TV. But over half the commercials are ads for their broadcast shows and "CBS All Access" (soon to be Paramount+)! And the commercials are cheap and repeated over and over. Why can't they just show the same commercials they show on broadcast and use that to pay for CBSN?

We have Netflix but I am not about to pay for a bunch of other streaming services just to get a couple of show I like. Do they expect me to pay $5 or $6 a month to watch a couple of limited series?

The other strange thing about CBSN is that you can't see "CBS This Morning" or "The CBS Evening News" until the next day. Why can't they show those on CBSN with commercials - like they already do for broadcast? They don't have to pay for high powered transmitters and engineers to run them. Does the FCC force this?

Maybe things are just changing too quickly and the suits at the networks have forced out all the talented, creative people so there is no one left to do the smart thing.

YEKIMI said...

I refused to pay for cable and now I refuse to pay for streaming, ESPECIALLY if they're showing ads. Case in point: CBS [which stands for Complete Bull Shit] has their CBS All Access streaming service and the big draw when it started up was a new Star Trek series, Star Trek Discovery. Two years later I'm dialing around and what do I see on regular OTA TV? Star Trek Discovery! I had already seen it on DVD a year before but if I were a paying customer of All Access I'd be incensed! If they're going to do that I can wait a year or two to see it for free. Oh....they do have breaks "built in" where commercials would go and one of the commentaries on the DVD explained they were there for when they sell the show to overseas broadcast networks that show it FOR FREE so they could insert their commercials. So basically it's: Let's fuck & fleece the American TV Viewer cause they're too stupid and naive and impatient to wait for it to be free.

Murrow Boy said...

Shouldn't the headline be "Saturday Night Dead"?

We dropped DirecTV about a year ago for YouTubeTV and are so glad we did. In addition to saving nearly $100/month on the subscription, we still got broadcast TV and the main channels we followed on DirecTV, and discovered that YTV has unlimited "cloud" DVR "storage" and partly acts as an on-demand streamer. We already had Prime and Netflix, so adding additional services still put us well below what we were spending on DirecTV, which we probably only watched about 30% of the time. That said, regular broadcast TV shows have pretty much fallen off our radar.

DBenson said...

A question: Cable and streaming have cut the viewership pie into increasingly tiny slices. Has the pie itself grown or contracted?

Also: Will we see an even greater concentration of content ownership? Where the remaining independents and boutique outfits all end up as subsidiaries of conglomerates who control ever more access to audiences?

Since the 50s at least, recording companies and movie studios would put money into Broadway plays to secure the record and movie rights. There may well be a point where any substantial stage production needs to show long-range value to Time Warner before it can reach a live crowd.

Kevin FitzMaurice said...

In retrospect, Johnny Carson's biggest competition came not from Steve Allen in syndication, Les Crane on ABC, Joey Bishop on ABC, Merv Griffin on CBS, Dick Cavett on ABC, Jack Paar on ABC, Alan Thicke in syndication, Joan Rivers on Fox, Pat Sajak on CBS, or even Arsenio Hall in syndication.

It came from the man who followed Carson on NBC beginning in 1982, twenty years after Carson took over "The Tonight Show" ...David Letterman. Once Letterman's NBC show caught on, the generation gap and contrasting attitudes between the two programs was glaring and made the Carson show irreversibly dated.

thirteen said...

I dropped DirecTV when they dropped another rate increase on us without any corresponding boost in service. I just don't care enough about TV to spend more than $200/mo on it. Cable is (much!) cheaper and gets us high-speed internet service as well.

VP81955 said...

This unfortunately brings out the TV snobs who decry much of broadcast, particularly the beleaguered multi-cam sitcom genre Ken and I champion. Yes, "Call Me Kat" isn't very good, though I dearly wanted it to be, but there remain many splendid multi-cams such as "Last Man Standing," "Mom" (which runs opposite "Kat" and airs a new ep next Thursday), its Chuck Lorre stablemate "Bob [Hearts] Abishola" and so many more.

Oh, and speaking of Lorre, come April 1 the CBS 8-10 comedy block will be all his shows -- "Young Sheldon," rookie "B Positive" (Annaleigh Ashford is terrific), "Mom" (still a fine ensemble in the post-Anna Faris era) and the premiere of "The United States Of Al" (an Afghan interpreter settles in Ohio with the Army officer he worked with).

Liggie said...

I want to see what happens when the NBC Sports Network winds down this year and its properties move to Peacock. NBCSN's strategy was to obtain exclusive rights to sports with not as widespread but fiercely devoted followings -- such as the NHL, NASCAR/IndyCar, English soccer, rugby, Notre Dame (outside football), Olympic sports like track and skiing -- and broadcast as many games as possible of them. As most of these are the sports I follow (except replace the other auto racing with my favorite Formula 1), I spent most of my sports attention with them.

Now with the emphasis on streaming service Peacock -- whose premium tier is available free if your cable provider is NBC-owned Comcast -- will those sports properties draw fans to Peacock? I've noticed that the service not only has reruns of classic NBC shows like "Cheers" and "The Office", but also a few popular '90s movies and even non-NBC properties like "Everybody Loves Raymond" and the original "Charmed".

As for the mere seven-digit audiences for the major networks, I wonder ... were those 30-million numbers for shows in the '70s and such really that accurate? My faint memories of my college statistics course recalls mathematical tests you can run to verify the validity of a statistic result;. But extrapolating 30 million viewership from a few Nielsen surveys always struck me as a stretch. And even then, didn't a lot of people do things at night like bowling, dining out, going to movies, reading books, or even working a night job instead of watching terrestrial TV?

Liggie said...

P.S. Mayim Bialyk posted a YouTube video summarizing her reactions to criticisms of "Call Me Kat", and also defended her decision to utilize the same fourth-wall-breaking as the British original did. https://youtu.be/SXAQetZvOpQ For the record, I haven't seen either show yet, so I'll withdraw from offering an opinion.

Gary said...

It's an ironic point that David Letterman's show made Johnny Carson look dated, since Letterman was basically doing Steve Allen's old show, and was very open about admitting that.

McAlvie said...

I’m an outlier, that person who has actually watched less tv this past year. That includes streaming. I occasionally watch PBS, and sometimes a movie on Netflix or prime. It’s a combo of not finding much I want to watch, and having more leisure for reading. I did have a few network shows that were worth the effort, but I’ve lost track of whether they are still on.

I think networks need to go back to what they used to do well instead of trying to compete with cable and now streaming. Given the popularity of me tv etc, there is clearly still an appetite for good family fare. They just forgot how to do that, with a few exceptions. People would watch network tv again if we had shows the caliber of MASH, Cheers, Frasier … and to show I’m not sucking up I’ll throw in Taxi, Golden Girls, and Murder, She Wrote.

JS said...

I subscribed to Peacock. For 10 bucks - I get more content than I can ever watch without commercials. I am okay with it - way better than Cable.

Also, movies, My SO and I want to see Godzilla v. Kong. We could pay $50.00 to see it at the movies (pre-covid) with ticket and snacks. Or, subscribe to HBOMax for a month and pay 15.00 for the 2 of us, plus whatever else they have we can watch that month. No-brainer.

Jeff said...

It's crazy how much of network TV is either reboots of old shows (The Equalizer, Hawaii 5-0, etc) or spinoffs of procedurals (Law and Order Jaywalking)

PQ said...

My wife and I grew up on the 3-Networks + Educational TV model, but nowadays, the only thing we watch on "live" TV is SNL. We watch "The Blacklist" on NBC's web site by way of Roku. Oh, and we'll watch a live news event too, but we use streaming even for that. We don't watch anything else on the broadcast networks. If it's worth watching, we can wait until it comes to Netflix, and if it doesn't, who cares. I think the last shows we made sure to watch were NBC's Thursday night comedies, which we watched for years and through many different shows, but when Parks & Rec and Community finally went away, that was it. And I work for a NBC affiliate (one that is still highly successful and heavily-viewed, thank you, but mostly by virtue of a stellar local news operation.)

Liggie said...

@VP81955: I was interested when Lorre cast Annaleigh Ashford in "B Positive", because I knew she won good reviews in the Broadway version of "Kinky Boots". Here's her character's signature number "The History of Wrong Guys", complete with comic double-takes and singing in what is clearly not her native accent: https://youtu.be/_fSeyBzQp28

mike schlesinger said...

It's actually worse than you think: Of that 8 million, 6.7 million were watching SNL.

Edward said...

For quite a number of years, on Saturday night during the Fall Season, ABC has aired a college football game in prime time. They figured out it's easier to pay rights fees to a college football conference than development of 3-5 TV shows.

Daniel Moniz said...

T.V. is all about commercials and putting color filters on shows. Notice CBS and NBC using a lot of blue more than they use to? I understand the reasoning they say for using filters, but it's sooooo overdone, that even the commercials for the show obviously showcase how terrible it is. All the shows are laugh tracks for no reason, during long pauses when things are not funny, the dialog makes no sense in real life without the laugh track to take up the lost space, the acting is subpar a lot of times, typically the SAME actors being used after they clearly have failed shows time and time again. It's just a mess, a BIG mess. Why would I EVER pay to watch anything on NBC, CBS, ABC, any of that crap? Even IF you find something that you may like (hey we all have different tastes) it's nearly a guarantee the show is gone after a season if it even makes it that long. THEN, seasons... seasons use to mean a new show a week. We're lucky for 12 episodes in a 12 month period. I have ZERO interest in paying for anything that looks like crap (filters), same people over and over again, no new stories, and will be canceled even if it seems like it may be decent overtime.

Side Note: Why are people paying $15 a month for several platforms just to see 1 or 2 shows they've seen a million times like Friends? You've seen it enough to know it all, shell out the cash for the box set... paying monthly for old shows means you don't care about new content at all and want to just pay for anything at this point. You're not helping the cause.

VincentS said...

It will be very interesting to see what gimmicks they will try to bring back viewers. And how long will the Super Bowl be popular now that we know about the severity of concussions? To digress for a moment, if I had a kid I wouldn't let him/her play football till high school at the earlies and I'm sure parents today feel the same way. Will it go the way of boxing? The Heavyweight Champion of the world was once the most coveted individual achievement in professional sports, today I dare you to fine three random people who know who it is right now. PS - You left out Fox's headstone.

Unknown said...

I don't know anyone under 60 who even has cable or would turn on broadcast tv for anything other than live sports or maybe election results. Seniors seem to just let the set run all day so they don't feel lonely, but anyone young enough to still be in the workforce has pretty well moved on to streaming models, which are just better for the consumer in the way that cell phones are better than land lines.

I don't know how we used to do it, sitting through ads and settling through whatever happened to be on instead of what we wanted to watch.

If they want anyone watching ad-suppprted scheduled content at all in 20 years networks better convince providers to bundle their channels in for free with internet access. Broadcast tv will soon be the a/v equivilant of those local newspapers that get delivered to your house for free without you asking for them: 70% ads, cheap content, few employees and straight to the recycle bin in most homes.

VP81955 said...

Some depressing recent comments. The TV snobs strike again.

A question, Ken: Has the (necessary) decision to do away with live audiences on multi-cams possibly hastened the genre's demise? I know how people despise laugh tracks (as do I), but producers honestly have few options in order to retain the tone of a series. I seriously can't imagine "Mom" or "Bob [Hearts] Abishola" filmed as a single-cam a la "Young Sheldon" or "The Unicorn," and I'm sure Chuck Lorre rejected that too.

LMNtrees said...

Families still benefit from comforting tv series that they can all watch together. A benefit of the move to the streaming model is that one can watch at any time that is convenient. A downside is that families are less likely to watch together, as each person can watch their preferred content individually. There is still room for gentle, nonthreatening (apolitical) content that families can watch together. My own family has enjoyed picking a series that we can all tolerate and setting up a regular viewing time that works for all our schedules.

Roger Owen Green said...

I read that, as of a couple years ago, there is now more new TV programming (non-sports, non-news) each year than one could possibly watch in 365 days. Most programs I read about but will never see.

Ken said...

The number of commercials have made almost everything on television unwatchable for me. That is all.

Brandon in Virginia said...

When "House of Cards" started getting Emmy nominations, I said that was the game-changer. Networks are now playing catchup ("Evil" on CBS is a good show, and surprisingly graphic for a network program), but in the end, people still love their gore, nudity, and profanity. Not that those are bad, but the networks are trying to push an envelope that's been turned into a crumpled piece of paper. That analogy works in my head, just go with it.

Even in a pandemic, people will still go out to dinner or drinks on a Friday night, so I guess the networks figure why not do another Dateline or 20/20 murder mystery? Remember when those shows did hidden camera reports on shady businesses?

If I were to add up every streaming service I subscribe to, not counting YoutubeTV, I'd probably have the equivalent of a basic cable bill. The interesting thing is, even with those and free services like Pluto, I have thousands of options, and yet still feel like there's nothing to watch at times. Being able to watch without constant pop-up ads for whatever show* or "squeezed" closing credits are a nice trade-off, however.

*Looking at you, Discovery Networks

Mike McCann said...

Eight million combined viewers last Saturday -- including a classic NBA rivalry game (Lakers v. Celtics). I was going to say, maybe if they put something more compelling on, viewers would tune in. But the basketball game was compelling.

The old net's are losing a golden opportunity to reclaim Saturday nights. People are home. No cinemas, theaters or attendance at most sports games. You have the maximum available audience. Try something new -- like MTM, MASH and so many other series were in their times. As a hero of ours, Dan Ingram liked to say, "Dare to be great!"

Of course, the textbook example of "If you build it, they will come" airs Sunday night 6:30pm ET/ 3:30pm PT. And it will draw the largest audience of the year.

forg/jecoup said...

Netflix counts 2 minutes as a one view so is it really a fair way to measure actual popularity?

Albert Giesbrecht said...

Something is happening, I'm not sure what though. I know of a YouTube channel that would get 10 million views per video, two years ago, that is barely getting 100 thousand views today.