Updated: 07/01/2009

Film, Radio and TV - 28

 

Television Programming

Probably the highest stakes "game" in the world is television programming.

According to how well the players do in this game, hundreds of millions of dollars are won and lost each year. The players are primarily the New York network executives who decide what programs should and should not be on U.S. networks, on what day they should be scheduled, and in what time slots.

The programs that come before and after each show must be carefully weighed, as well as what the other networks are offering in each of these same time slots.

Added to this are target audience demographics (characteristics such as age, race, sex and economic level), program promotions, and advertiser appeal. Each of these factors is crucial for having a successful show and a successful season.

In this module, we'll look at the strategies for this high-stakes business game. We'll also provide some insight into why some programs succeed and some disappear from television after a short time -- and even why many programs that are developed are never aired.

Considerations In TV

Show Success and Failure

Even though predicting the elements of a successful TV show is far from being a science, there are some guidelines.

First, we'll discuss some scheduling and success factors for prime-time dramatic shows and sitcoms. But, even before we get to that, you'll want to consider your own perspective on "good" and "bad" shows.

You Are Probably Abnormal!

First, you have to accept the fact that you are probably "abnormal." (Sorry!)

By this I mean that your taste in television programs probably doesn't coincide with that of normal (average) U.S. viewers. This is the LCD or lowest common dominator network target audience we discussed in a previous module.

But, don't despair; that's probably good. (Who wants to be "average," anyway?)

If you are in college and of college age, that makes you "non-normal" in itself. Most TV viewers do not have a college education, and they are older than you are. That means that they will probably like and dislike different things in life -- including TV programs.

Viewers who say, "That program is terrible, why does it stay on TV?," or, "That was such a great show, why isn't it on any more?", aren't taking this into consideration.

The Program Managers of TV stations where I've worked often scheduled programs they didn't personally care for -- but the ratings showed that a large share of the audience did like them. So, if they wanted to keep their jobs....

Zeroing In On Your Target Audience

In almost any game aiming at the wrong target can mean you lose the game. The same goes for television programming.

For example, if you are scheduling a program for a network or local station that's opposite "Monday Night Football" (an extremely popular TV series with men, in case you've just arrived from another planet), you will probably not chose another program that appeals to men.

Unless you have something that will draw more men than the major football teams -- and that would be difficult -- you would probably be better off scheduling a program that appeals to women who aren't interested in football.

This technique is referred to as counterprogramming.

Counterprogramming can also involve other demographic characteristics. For a program that appeals to an older audience you might want to counterprogram with something that appeals to a younger audience. For a program that appeals to a sophisticated audience, think about a program that appeals to a not-so-sophisticated audience.

Deciding on a target audience also involves your advertisers.

A show that has commercials for expensive cars, designer clothes, exotic vacation spots, and upscale restaurants will have to appeal to an audience that can afford these things. If you are trying to sell designer jeans, you don't want to buy commercial time in a show that appeals primarily to an older audience.

Although advertisers are interested in the number of viewers that watch a show, they are even more interested in the show's demographics. In fact, demographics are important to advertisers in any of the mass media: TV, radio, newspapers, magazines and books.

Because the major networks with their LCD target demographics are continuing to lose audience share, the LCD factor isn't as significant as it once was.    With so many cable and satellite options available, audiences now tend to be fractured into narrower areas of interest.

Scheduling Strategies

Viewers of network television tend to stick with the channel they are viewing unless they have a good reason to change. Therefore the audience that leads into your show is important. This is especially true for viewers who get TV free off of the air, rather than from cable or the Internet, where their many more options. If your show comes after one that has high ratings, your show will benefit through audience flow.

When a station or network schedules a number of programs consecutively that have a similar demographic appeal, this is referred to as stacking. Often, networks will stack a series of sitcoms together, assuming that audience flow will hold viewers for several hours.

By putting a new or weak show between two popular shows, audience flow will tend to bring up the new or weak show through what is called the hammock effect.

Rather than switch channels between two strong shows (and maybe join a program in progress on another network, or be forced to tune away from  it before it ends) audiences tend to stay with the network, even if they try to do something else during the interval, like going to the kitchen and fixing themselves a ham sandwich. This, of course, helps the new or weaker show -- and may result in it "catching on" and becoming popular in its own right.

Somewhat related is the concept of tentpoling, or using popular, well-established TV shows scheduled in pivotal time periods to boost the ratings of the shows around them.

As the power of the networks keeps diminishing and  people get used to selecting programs from a variety of available channels, these traditional scheduling strategies are diminishing in importance.

Related programming techniques include:

Hotswitching where programmers eliminate any pause between the end of one program and the start of the next one -- generally at the top of the hour. The idea is to immediately get viewers involved in the next program before they are tempted to switch channels.

Cross-programming involves the interconnection of two different shows. The story line of one program continues into a different program, generally with a mixture of the key people appearing in each.

Bridging is used when one TV program intentionally extends beyond the normal end point of programs on the other channels. With these programs already underway when the first program ends it discourages the audience from  changing channels and joining another program "in progress."

Marathons are popular on some local stations and on cable and satellite channels such as A&E. For example, a half-dozen episodes of Law and Order, Stargate SG1, CSI, or even the old The Twilight Zone series might be scheduled with the potential of holding loyal fans for several hours. Marathons often take place on weekends and during holiday periods when viewers are apt to have more time to watch TV.

Stunting

In an effort to boost audience size you often see stunting (using special programming or plot gimmicks) by networks during sweeps (the four weeks or so when ratings are done)

For example, you may find that a key person in a dramatic series gets married, has a baby, gets shot, or whatever.

In the early 90s, it was discovered that weddings could boost a show's ratings by about three points -- so a lot of people in dramas suddenly got married.

Another stunting technique is to have a famous person appear in an episode -- typically, a famous actor, political figure, athlete, or singer. In each of these cases, "the event" is heavily touted in promos (on-air promotions for the show).

And then there are "reunion shows" that bring back the casts of popular series of the  past for a special show.

One of the earliest and most famous instances of stunting (in this case to hold the interest of viewers from the end of one season to the start of the next) was in "Dallas" (an weekly drama, 1978 to 1991). The key actor in the series (a man who everyone loved to hate) was shot by an unknown person and rushed to the hospital just as the series ended for the season.

Over the summer, the secret as to "who shot J.R." was afforded higher security than classified nuclear documents, which only intensified the mystery.

It was rumored that the tabloid press offered a six-figure sum to anyone with the series who would reveal the killer's identity before the new season began. However, several versions of the subsequent episode were filmed and no one knew for sure which version would air.

When the series did start again, more people were watching in the United States than voted in the previous presidential election. And, in case you're wondering, a girlfriend, not to be confused with his wife in the series, shot J.R. -- and he lived. (How else could the series continue?)

Today, of course, we commonly see such "cliffhangers" at the end of seasons.

Off-Network Programming

Local stations not affiliated with a network are left to their own devices to compete for ratings.

Although it's hard to compete against first-run network programming, local stations often capture at least three percent of the available audience (a critical figure when it comes to getting national advertising) if they run syndicated shows -- shows that ran on the networks and are subsequently sold in package deals to local stations.

Even though these programs have already aired, people may not have seen them, or, if they have, they may want to see them again. Shows like Law & Order, CSI, and Friends have done very well in syndication.

Late-Night/Early Morning Demographics

Generally speaking, people who have to get up early to be at work and possibly have to get their kids off to school do not watch much late-night television. The people who do tend to watch them have jobs where they telecommute (work at home via computer), set their own hours, or can get to work at 9 a.m. or later.  

People in farm belt areas will typically be tuning in at 5 a.m. for grain, weather, and market reports. At these times, local stations are apt to run commercials geared to agricultural interests.

Buying Ads According to

Numbers, Not Programs

Advertisers typically do not buy advertising time in programs based on their personal likes and dislikes about a show. Often, they won't even know in what shows their commercials will appear. They base their decisions on audience numbers and demographics. They want to know how many of the "right kind of people" (age, sex, socioeconomic status, urban-rural, etc.) will be watching their commercials.

Thursday nights tend to be very popular with network advertisers simply because there are more viewers. Saturday nights have the least number of network viewers. At the same time Saturday nights have the highest number of video rentals and viewers for pay-cable services, such as HBO (See table below.)

The number of viewers also changes, depending on the season. Many people have vacations and outside activities during the summer months and they tend to stay home when the kinds are in school. However, during most TV seasons viewing tends to peak at 9 p.m. on every week night except Saturday, when it peaks at 10 p.m. (These are prime time hours.) Apparently many viewers spend most of Saturday evenings doing other things, such as going out to eat.

The Relative Popularity of

Programming Themes

The graph below shows how a sample of about 500 people responded to questions on what they like to view in sitcoms and dramatic shows.

Interestingly, gun violence, a major element in dramatic productions, ends up being in last place. This raises questions about a possible difference between what people say they like (people are not supposed to like violence) and what they actually view. There is evidence to support the contention that in interviews and questionnaires people tend to "fudge" toward socially acceptable answers.

Religious Broadcasting

After suffering some setbacks as a result of scandals among popular TV evangelists, the area of religious broadcasting has made a rebound and is again growing rapidly. This link has additional information on religious broadcasting.

Good Show; Bad Time Slot

Even good shows can fail if they fall victim to unfortunate scheduling. We've already covered some scheduling strategies, but let's add one more.

If your show is scheduled against a popular and well-established show on another network, your ratings will probably be poor. If your show is not moved (and assuming it doesn't rather quickly generate some significant ratings), it will probably be canceled. Good show; bad time slot.

Offsetting this in recent years is the effect of personal video recorders (PVRs) where people record programs for later playback. This means that when two good programs are on at the same time, which is often the case, you can simply record one of them and see it when it's convenient.

Elements of Program Success

Although there is no "sure- fire" list of success factors for TV shows  -- otherwise there wouldn't be such a large percentage of shows that fail each season -- we can list some factors that have been associated with success.

1. Role and actor "chemistry"  In order to create lively and dramatic interplay, your key actors must be distinctively different; i.e., they must have sufficient contrast in looks, personality, and actions.

At the same time their personalities must "mesh" or include interpersonal "chemistry." Often, that interaction is a major focus of the drama. At the same time they must have believable roles, and believable dialogue especially tailored to their character (as opposed to having dialogue that any other character could say).

An aspect of chemistry is likeability. Although it's almost mandatory to have "bad guys and gals" in order to have conflict (to be discussed below), there should be at least one character that the audience can relate to, maybe even admire -- even if that character does regularly demonstrate human failings.

In recent years lead characters have also had major personal flaws, but at the same time overriding admirable characteristics. The popular FOX show, House, and the BBC detective show, Cracker, are examples.

There should be enough character development in the production that the audience has an opportunity to care about key characters and what happens to them. Successful shows have characters that audiences get to know and care about.

Some script strategists euphemistically classify characters according to "good-good," good-bad," "bad-good," and "bad-bad."

• good-goods Characters are good all the time - not too realistic in real life, plus being very predicable in plots.

• good-bads These are good people with human failings, providing interesting internal conflicts and story uncertainties. 

• bad-goods are bad most of the time, but have elements of good, which can also create internal conflicts and story surprises.

• bad-bads are very predicable and probably best reserved for fairy tails that have wicked witches and totally evil entities.

These same strategists say that characters should stick to their defined nature -- be consistent. Audiences get comfortable with the nature of characters and to suddenly change them is not only disturbing, but probably unrealistic. (Audiences are even know to complain when a character changes his or her hair style.)

We like to see gradual (and believable) change in characters. They should learn by their mistakes. Sometimes this change is considered bad, or negative -- typically with negative consequences. But, at least things don't remain static and the story doesn't move in totally predictable directions.

2. Fresh, engaging story ideas and production techniques  You know how quickly you tend to change the channel when you can easily guess the progress of a drama, including how it's going to come out.

Although there may not be any totally new story concepts -- how many times have you seen boy-meets-girl; boy-loses-girl; boy-gets girl-back-again"? -- there can be new twists, new personalities, new subplots, new production techniques, and new ways of telling stories.

This includes important "ahead of the curve" elements, as discussed in some detail in Module 7.

3. Energy, pace, tension, and excitement. If you look at films and TV programs done a few decades ago you will probably be struck by the fact that they are less sophisticated in structure and production techniques than today's shows. They also tend to move more slowly.

If you ask a friend about a movie and she says, "It moved kinda slow," that will probably be a film you will avoid seeing. Slow is boring.

In this MTV-era we have gotten used to stories -- generally multiple stories or subplots within a single drama -- that move rapidly.

The pace of a show is largely psychological. Although time is generally compressed in dramatic stories, sometimes a simple event will be stretched out far beyond its normal (clock) time to add drama, tension, and excitement. (Ever see the 90-second timer on a bomb take 10 minutes of story time?)

Although story pace and editing are important, a large part of the tension and excitement of a production is provided by (good) acting. The best actors can make every scene so involving that you will not want to turn away.

4. Conflict. Although we've already wandered a bit into this area, an engaging production must have obstacles to overcome. They can be internal struggles, a clash of personalities or ideas, or overt physical battles.

The writer must build into the script certain "collisions" between characters, ideologies, or goals. Seeing how the characters deal with these is the essence of good drama. Successful comedy is also based on the collision of ideas, goals, attitudes, and misunderstandings.

Engaging news stories and documentaries should highlight the differences between opposing views. Therefore we must effectively present different sides of issues. One-sided presentations not only tend to be boring, they are professionally unethical.

If you think about it, all great drama centers on conflict and misunderstanding. In the case of comedy we are often entertained by misunderstandings and the struggle to set things right. In the case of drama and documentaries we should be emotionally pulled into the struggle.

5. Durability. Ongoing series must be able to sustain viewer interest across multiple episodes.

For one thing, this means that the story concept must present a variety of ongoing options. Detectives, doctors, lawyers, and police can confront a variety of cases in a variety of locations, whereas a story centered entirely in a home will have limited story options.

Most series have a variety of key characters -- typically six to ten -- each of which may have friends and acquaintances that can introduce story elements.

In order not to run out of story ideas some series have been forced to completely shift story locations and introduce new characters. "Uprooting" things in this way can be risky. It often comes down to the lesser of the two evils: upsetting audiences that have become comfortable with the characters and their locations, or running out of good story ideas.

Durability also relates to whether you get tired of characters and their roles (and limited story ideas), or whether the characters are engaging and likable enough to keep you coming back week after week.

Eventually, all series run their course. Some hang on until they are canceled by low ratings; others know when their popularity (or their story ideas) have peaked, and bow out while they are still held in high esteem.

The latter will positively affect both acting careers and the syndication of the series. A series that has durability should do well in syndication. (Don't we all have friends who never seem to get tired of seeing reruns of their favorite shows?) The fact that some series don't make a profit until they are syndicated makes this aspect of durability particularly important.

In the next module we'll look at cable and satellite TV services.

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