Cable shows boost broadcast brethren
Net runs of cable skeins help create buzz
From "Psych" and "Kyle XY" to "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia" and "Brotherhood," each of the Big Four broadcast networks has gotten into the act, hell-bent on driving viewers to their cable-network siblings.
Jeff Gaspin, president of cable entertainment and cross-network strategy for NBC U, says the main goal of NBC's scheduling two primetime runs each of USA's "Psych" and Bravo's "Project Runway" in late July/early August is "to benefit our cable networks by helping to create more buzz for the two shows."
"Cable networks don't have the massive promotional platform of a broadcast network," says Tim Brooks, executive VP of research for Lifetime Networks. A broadcaster's signal penetrates every one of the 110 million U.S. homes with a TV set; only three cable networks have managed to inch their way above the 91 million threshold: Discovery, ESPN and CNN.
The most eye-opening example of help-your-cable-buddy altruism belongs to ABC, which is playing all 10 episodes of ABC Family's rookie series "Kyle XY" in what Steve McPherson, president of ABC Entertainment, calls "an experiment that has worked for both sides."
Calling the ABC primetime run "a marketing tool to steer viewers" to the premiere plays of "Kyle" on ABC Family, McPherson says the show has proved a pleasant surprise in the Nielsens for ABC. ABC averaged 4.6 million viewers for the first five runs of "Kyle," which is 17% higher than the time-period average for July 2005.
Similarly, the show's first six runs on ABC Family have averaged 2.1 million viewers, which is 15% greater than last July's average. Even more significant for ABC Family is the 30% jump in the number of adults under 50, the network's target demo.
All these tryouts are works in progress: What network researchers are finding is that surprisingly large numbers of viewers don't yet cross over from broadcast to cable.
John Landgraf, president and GM of the FX Networks, looked carefully at the 6.45 million households tuned in to at least one of the rookie-season half-hours of the FX sitcom "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia" that Fox net aired for three weeks in June. The scheduling ploy was meant to give a boost to the show's soph season on FX, which began June 29.
Landgraf says he was stunned to discover that only 86,000 of those Fox households watched the FX premiere, which drew a total of 1.2 million homes. But even though the Fox run helped FX only marginally, "Philadelphia," with Danny DeVito added to the cast, is averaging 32% more total viewers that the show's first season. An unusually high average of 64.7% of the viewers fall between 18 and 49, the demo that FX pitches to Madison Avenue.
Paul Lee, president of ABC Family, makes a virtue of the fact that the broadcast and cable audiences are so different. "ABC is putting 'Kyle XY' before a whole new group of viewers," Lee says.
ABC Family may be unknown territory to many of these viewers. But if they like "Kyle," a promo at the end of each episode tells them they don't have to wait a whole week for the next one on ABC: It's available in three days on ABC Family.
But not all the benefits flow to cable. NBC's two runs of "Project Runway" and "Psych" don't cost the network any extra license fees or union residuals because two runs are considered promotional vehicles for the cable plays.
And the license fees (which trigger union residuals) that ABC is paying for the 10 runs of "Kyle" end up in the coffers of Touchstone TV, which, like ABC, is a division of the Walt Disney Co.
One group of industry players that's not crazy about the repurposing trend is cable operators. Jerry McKenna, head of programming for Cable One, says, "I'm frustrated because I'm paying increased rates to cable networks, which help to underwrite the production of their original programming.
"They defeat the whole purpose of exclusivity by putting these shows on broadcast TV," McKenna argues. "My customers could very well say, 'Why do I need cable for these shows, I can watch them on broadcast without paying monthly fees.' "
But cable-operator criticism is not likely to have any effect on the trend. "There's a whole new world out there, with no fixed rules any more," says Bonnie Hammer, president of USA Network and the Sci Fi Channel.
"You may not hit a home run every time at bat," Hammer adds. "But my attitude is, 'Let's go for it. Let's break the rules.' "
