"Change" is always a powerful sales pitch, but as a good rule of thumb be wary of politicians, mortgage lenders or showbiz execs bearing "We must change the way we do business" promises.
The current crop of presidential candidates have all seized upon the change theme, and network brass are now sounding similar notes regarding what a post-writers strike TV world will look like. The latest salvo came from NBC Universal prexy Jeff Zucker, who in a speech at the NATPE convention called the strike a "forest fire," the catalyst necessary to alter the industry's profligate ways. Zucker essentially declared the traditional pilot development process a dinosaur and the upfront presentations a waste, following other NBC mandates that include scheduling only inexpensive reality programs at 8 o'clock.
As a recovering news guy, Zucker inherently knows that most of the media suffer from short memories and won't bother going back to hoist him on his own rhetorical petard. Yet the truth is that measurable change to TV's ingrained practices generally occurs at a snail's pace -- relegating execs determined to boldly chart new courses to the role of following trends, not leading them.
The business is undergoing a technology-driven evolution, but major breakthroughs seldom come in great, lurching bursts or in response to network-dictated policy shifts. If anything, they historically grow out of unexpected reactions from the audience, whether it's a surprising embrace of gameshows (think "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire") or the renewed success of serialized dramas.
Consider this brief rundown of bogus or premature assertions that, even when eventually borne out, experienced fits and starts along the way:
n Fox first announced pilot season was a thing of the past in the early 1990s, unveiling a year-round "trimester" development plan. The exercise didn't last but keeps resurfacing like Glenn Close in "Fatal Attraction."
n Around the same time, then-ABC Entertainment prexy Bob Iger predicted the major networks would eventually reduce costs by paring down their primetime rosters from 22 hours a week to 15 or even 10.
n Iger's successor, Ted Harbert, concluded that viewers no longer had the patience to sit through TV theme songs, before the themes from "Friends" and "Party of Five" became major hits.
n CBS' Leslie Moonves began griping that sweeps periods were wasteful and passé not long after arriving at the network in the mid-1990s. He was right, but that attitude only began to take hold in the past year or two.
n Riding high on "Home Improvement" and other lucrative sitcoms, Disney brass stated they were dialing back on developing dramas, only to see Warner Bros. register a massive smash with "ER." (A few years later Disney pinched a few pennies by bailing out on a little show the company developed for CBS, called "CSI.")
Every few years some network exec makes a prominent display of issuing a call for fiscal austerity, but old habits die hard. Such pledges are only as good as the discipline of those in charge -- and when desperate enough TV honchos tend to fall back on throwing money at their problems.
Fallout from the writers strike could indeed yield lasting changes, and the short-term consequences for writers will be unintended and unwelcome -- including fewer pilots and development deals and more reality TV.
Yet the broadcast networks operate like ocean liners, not speedboats, making it difficult for them to quickly adjust course to catch each rapidly fluctuating new wave, no matter how much they might like to try.
Forgive a degree of skepticism, then, regarding how prophetic Zucker's pronouncements might be -- not that there's reason to doubt a guy simply because he dubbed Donald Trump and "The Apprentice" the "Must-See" heir to "Friends" and downplayed the prospect of networks generating runaway scripted hits ("The game has changed," as he put it) months before ABC launched "Lost," "Desperate Housewives" and later "Grey's Anatomy."
To be fair, there's little doubt the TV business must continue adapting to unsettling new realities. Still, as one veteran executive observed, just because the networks need a tune-up, an overhaul or even the equivalent of a brand-new car, doesn't mean the best way to achieve that is to drive the old one off a cliff.
Contact Brian Lowry at
brian.lowry@variety.com