'Monk' follows leads to syndie market
NBC U starts pre-selling reruns to TV stations
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Three TV stations have already engineered deals for two weekend plays of different episodes of "Monk": WNBC New York, KNBC Los Angeles and WFLD Chicago. The deals run for two years and cover 93 episodes of the series.
The WFLD contract is an indication, said Sean O'Boyle, senior VP and general sales manager of NBC U Domestic TV, that "we're not doing group deals but going market by market to get the highest-rated time periods with good lead-in programming." WNBC and KNBC are siblings of NBC U, but WFLD is owned by Fox.
The reason O'Boyle stresses time periods and lead-ins, as well as lots of local marketing support, is that stations won't pay cash for "Monk." Instead, they'll carve out seven minutes in each one-hour run and hand them over for use by NBC U, which pockets the money from national advertisers. (Each local station keeps the remaining seven commercial minutes.)
USA Network, another NBC U sibling, carries the original episodes of "Monk" and has already locked up exclusive cable rights to the reruns for Monday-Friday play.
"Monk" episodes are self-contained, so the reruns stand a better chance of drawing a sizable audience, O'Boyle said. They don't have overlapping plots that carry over through multiple episodes, like serialized dramas whose repeats tend to draw fewer viewers.
NBC U is pre-selling "Monk" early because fall 2008 could be crowded with weekend one-hour dramas making their debut in off-network syndication, including King World's "CSI: NY," Buena Vista TV's "Desperate Housewives," NBC U's "House," Paramount TV's "NCIS," Buena Vista's "Lost" and two from Warner Bros.: "One Tree Hill" and "Veronica Mars."
