By Joe Flint
This is busy season for Andy Kubitz, head of scheduling for ABC,
as he lines up shows the way a baseball manager arranges the
batting order.
Should ABC keep the Wednesday comedy lineup intact or move
sitcom "The Middle" to boost Tuesday or Friday? What about shifting
one of its strong Thursday night dramas such as "Scandal" or "How
to Get Away with Murder" to Sunday, a night that was challenging
for ABC this season?
Similar calculations are happening at NBC, CBS and Fox, and will
culminate in the networks' "upfront" presentations the week of May
11, an annual ritual when they unveil their lineup of new
programming to concert halls packed with advertisers.
Here's a bigger question for Mr. Kubitz: What will his job look
like even just a few years down the road?
The idea of organizing TV output by specified time slots during
the week might seem anachronistic to a new generation of video
consumers who stream shows on Roku or Apple TV. People are getting
more flexibility to watch shows whenever they want. From Netflix to
the DVR to cable video-on-demand, options abound for
"time-shifting" of shows. TV listings for a Tuesday at 9:30 p.m.
would seem to matter less and less.
But today's schedulers defend their craft. They point out that
some 76% of broadcast prime-time viewing still happens the
old-fashioned way, as shows are airing, according to Nielsen. And
prime time is where broadcast networks make the lion's share of
their revenue.
While time shifting will increase, schedulers say a show's
success is still indelibly linked to strong viewing during initial
air times.
"Let's be honest, TV is still passive to some degree. Once
[viewers] sit down, you have to give them a reason to turn the
channel," said Mr. Kubitz, executive vice president of planning and
scheduling for Walt Disney Co.'s ABC. "Good scheduling still
creates a night of appointment television."
Hit prime-time shows also have a strong shot at a cash-filled
afterlife in reruns, especially on the Web, ready for the
binge-watcher. Witness the recent licensing of "Friends" to
Netflix.
Schedulers have tremendous sway not only over which shows go in
which time slots, but which get made in the first place. For
decades, schedulers have been the behind-the-scenes consiglieri to
network entertainment presidents. Most schedulers come up through
ranks of research and ratings analysis. As such, their views often
clash with the programming executives over what will be a hit and
what will be a flop.
The programming executives "saw the script from birth to
production. And then you have to come in and call their child
ugly," said Mr. Kubitz of ABC. "That's what our job is."
Schedulers also prefer to operate in secrecy. NBC's head of
program planning, Jeff Bader, eschews having a scheduling board
visible in his office.
"Whenever you're playing with it, the wrong person walks by and
sees," he said.
Networks always have high hopes heading into the upfronts, but
the stakes keep getting higher. As the September-to-May TV season
winds down, ABC is the only network up in total viewers and in the
18- to 49-year-old demographic that advertisers pay a premium to
reach, when factoring out sports programming. CBS Corp.'s namesake
network is up in total viewers but down in viewers under 50.
NBC, controlled by Comcast Corp., is flat with total viewers but
took a tumble with younger viewers. Fox is down 10% in both viewers
and the 18-to-49 set but can at least brag about "Empire," the
biggest new drama. The Wall Street Journal and Fox's parent
company, 21st Century Fox, were part of the same company until
mid-2013.
With all the viewing options out there, networks are more than
aware that crafting a foolproof schedule is virtually impossible.
"Because there are so many networks with so many shows, you'd have
to say today scheduling is less relevant," concedes Ted Harbert,
the chairman of NBC Broadcasting, who climbed the ranks as a
scheduler at ABC.
Networks also are less interested in using scheduling as a
boxing match, as they did in the past. When the sitcom "Seinfeld"
was a massive hit for NBC in the 1990s, CBS, Fox and ABC typically
tried to counterpunch with dramas hoping to appeal to a different
audience. And former NBC scheduler Preston Beckman says he and his
bosses wanted Jennifer Aniston so badly for "Friends" that the
network scheduled popular made-for-TV movies against the CBS series
she was on, "Muddling Through," hoping to kill it. The gambit
worked, he said.
These days, schedulers instead are often looking at how shows
perform on other platforms to determine the best time for a show.
One aim is to convert delayed viewers into live viewers.
Schedulers agree that the faster viewers watch a show on DVR and
VOD, the better the odds of converting that delayed viewing into
live viewing.
"The longer something sits on the DVR, the less likely it is to
be viewed," said Dan Harrison, executive vice president of
strategic program planning at Fox. Fox has scheduling challenges on
Tuesday, Thursday and Friday nights this year, as most of its new
shows, with the exception of "Empire" and "Gotham," performed
poorly.
Another goal, schedulers say, is to keep viewers from surfing
between shows once the TV is on. For years, ABC tried out lots of
comedies aimed at young urban viewers to air in the Wednesday 9:30
p.m. time slot after its hit sitcom "Modern Family." None worked.
Then last fall, the network slotted in "Blackish," a comedy about
an upper middle class African-American family, and is has proved
successful.
Exploiting so-called launchpads remains a key to scheduling.
NBC's singing-competition show "The Voice" draws a huge audience
and the network was able to use that last season to get its drama
"The Blacklist" off the ground. That worked so well NBC figured
"The Blacklist" could become its own launchpad on Thursday night at
9 p.m.
Unfortunately for NBC, "State of Affairs," the show it put in
the Monday slot after "The Voice," tanked. The audience for "The
Blacklist" declined as well.
NBC's Mr. Bader defended the move, noting that "The Blacklist"
has improved the overall Thursday performance. "It's not as high as
we hoped it would be but it's certainly fixed that time period and
given us another launchpad," he said
But the prized 18-to-49-year-old demographic promises to get
more elusive as time goes on.
Jim McKairnes, a former CBS scheduler who is now a professor at
Temple University, recounts how he was chatting with a student
about a TV show and asked when it was on. "Professor, no
disrespect, it's on when I turn it on," the student replied.
Write to Joe Flint at joe.flint@wsj.com
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