Nets shuffle the deck for fall
New skeds rife with change
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"It's going to be noisy," says Mike Benson, ABC's senior VP of marketing, advertising and promotion. "The thing I'm worried about right now is the confusion. There's a lot of new product out there, as well as product moving all over the place."
At the same time, the pressure's never been greater for new skeins to break out of the box right away. The opening-weekend mentality that plagues the movie biz has spread to TV, which means if auds don't get hooked on a new show within the first few episodes, odds are they'll never give it a shot.
Among the changes viewers will have to comprehend next month:
- Two networks (UPN and the WB) will sign-off, replaced by a new outlet (the CW) made up almost entirely of shows from its ancestors. Viewers who once watched "America's Next Top Model" or "Gilmore Girls" on one channel will have to hunting around the dial to find their favorites.
At the same time, Roger Ailes and Rupert Murdoch will launch something called MyNetwork TV, which isn't really a network but will be marketing itself as such anyway. It'll also have unconventional content: American telenovelas featuring no-name newcomers and starlets who haven't worked since the 1980s.
- Elsewhere in primetime, big tentpole dramas are on the move at ABC ("Grey's Anatomy"), CBS ("Without a Trace") and NBC ("Law & Order"). TV's second longest-running primetime show, "Monday Night Football," is moving from ABC to ESPN, while NBC is calling its Sunday football franchise the new "MNF."
"I think on top of that, there's change in a move toward more serialization of comedies and dramas, and that could be a factor this season," says Preston Beckman, exec VP strategic program planning at Fox.
- There are also big changes going on in network news. Katie Couric's taking over the "CBS Evening News," Charles Gibson has shaken up the newly named "World News" and Meredith Viera is taking over on "Today." Even daytime's getting in on the act, with Rosie O'Donnell returning to TV on "The View" and the kidvid services at CBS and Fox getting extreme makeovers.
CW marketing chief Rick Haskins admits that he's got his hands full trying to launch a new network amid other major small-screen changes.
"Welcome to my world," he laughs, conceding that this autumn "is going to be more challenging than other falls.
"It used to be a rule of thumb that the typical consumer was bombarded by about 3,000 messages a week. Now they get about 10,000 messages every single week. Your message needs to stand out more than the other 9,999 to make an impact."
That's why the networks -- with the exception of CBS -- are employing a staggered fall launch. Rather than attempt to debut all of their shows within the traditional "premiere week," most of the webs are stretching their bows from as early as August to as late as November.
"It's spreading things out so that we're not taxing our promo resources," explains Mitch Metcalf, NBC's exec VP, program planning and scheduling.
Fox has been forced to navigate a tricky fall for years due to the net's October focus on baseball playoffs and the World Series. Because staggered launches and delayed starts are nothing new there, Fox enters fall as one of the more steady nets.
"We go into the new season being less of an agent of change than anyone," Beckman says. "This is probably a good time for us to be stable."
With new shows popping up all over the place -- on new nets, in new time slots and all sorts of new digital platforms -- marketers are working overtime this year to make more waves. For CBS, that meant grabbing headlines for a campaign to print promo messages on thousands of store-bought eggs.
ABC's Benson says the Alphabet is creating a more subtle approach with viral campaigns on the 'Net and "places people wouldn't expect."
And because there will be so many changes taking place this fall, nets will also have to focus their marketing muscle on specific niches.
NBC, for example, is making the pilots for "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip" and "Kidnapped" available via Netflix.com as a bid for the cinephile aud, rather than simply posting them on NBC.com.
Likewise, Haskins says he only cares about reaching potential viewers in the CW's target demo of 18-34.
"We're trying to dominate places where they live," he says.
That means targeting shopping malls rather than mainstream pubs like People or Reader's Digest.
But the most potent marketing tool nets have in their arsenals is their own air space. One webhead argues that all the billboards in the world don't have the same reach as a 30-second spot on his network.
CBS, Fox and NBC are all having decent summers ratings-wise, which means their messages are getting out to viewers. ABC, by contrast, has been dead to auds since May, which means the net may have to pump up its off-net marketing in order to hype the whopping 10 shows it'll debut before Thanksgiving.
On the other hand, the Alphabet has some of the biggest tentpoles in TV in "Grey's Anatomy," "Desperate Housewives" and "Lost." As long as auds come back to those shows, it should be fine.
Ultimately, it's up to viewers to find shows -- and net execs are optimistic they will.
"It never ceases to amaze me that viewers are able to navigate through complicated lives," Metcalf says. "They'll still find shows they want to watch and avoid shows they don't want to watch."
Haskins predicts that after a few weeks of "transition" -- read: chaos -- auds will figure things out. "Once people have found their shows, it's going to go back to the status quo."
