Late Night Shows to come back in January !!?
By fred | December 16, 2007
There’s been quite some development lately, and many things are still being worked on at this very moment. Nothing is certain yet, no official and definitive announcement have been made, so I will address the latest news.
As you probably know, negotiations between WGA and AMPTP are ended once again, and the AMPTP has entered a new campaign aiming at blaming the WGA for the failure. It seems that they’re objective might also be to get the strike to last a little longer, because they’re greedy assholes some of the big media companies are claiming that the strike will not really have an impact (read: on their gigantic profit).
Of course it will have one, as ratings will drop / are dropping already (look at ABC), but their idea is that while this take place, investments required in order to produce content will also drop significantly. Because it is obviously much less expensive to produce a crappy reality TV program or yet another silly game imported from God knows where, than it is to pay all the staff required to create a great high-quality series.
And so they’re thinking that they’ll be alright, all in all, and could even benefit from this mess. The TCA winter press tour has already being canceled, and this is only part of what they actually want to do, in order to reduce cost and change the way things work, something networks have been willing to do for some time now already.
The strike will also have an effect of the upcoming pilot season, during which each network usually shoots 15-20 pilots during the January-April period. Some intend to scrap that completely, and pushing things into year-round development and programming. “When everyone tries to launch 30 new shows in a week in the fall, we end up screaming in the wind. We spend $200 million collectively in off-air media to get the word out, and we have to change that.”
Not that there’s anything wrong with that idea, an idea I’m sure many TVoholics and regular viewers out there have had for years. But while they try to lower the impact of the strike, especially in short-term basis, reality kicks in. The facts are these, with fresh scripted content vanishing out the networks have seen drop in their ratings. So far that three major networks are compensating advertisers with extra commercial time already.
This isn’t new. Advertisers often seek for more commercial time, or “make-goods”, as compensation when the ratings they were promised were not reached. But now that scripted content is out, a new problem arises because advertisers prefer to be in scripted content, and will not always agreed to be put back in some low-quality reality show, not when they paid for quality-scripted content.
The truth is that NBC already had to pay back some of their clients, because they couldn’t offer anything else acceptable. Such a move could be a possible precursor of things to come, should the strike last. Jeff Immelt, CEO of General Electric - owner of NBC, as any 30 Rock fan would know - admitted recently that the strike was already having an impact on NBC Universal, and GE had to cut profit projections for the fourth quarter.
See, that’s the kind of language investors understand : profit loss. Money going away. And that is what the strike is already producing. Late night shows were the first to vanish from the air, since due to their nature and format shows aren’t written in advance, but on a day-to-day basis. NBC’s leaders late night shows, The Tonight Show with Jay Leno and Late Night with Conan O’Brien have been greatly impacted as well.
Reruns haven’t done too good, and half of the average audience has gone away already. Meanwhile, hosts and producers Leno and Conan have been paying from their pockets the non-writing staff of their shows, so does Jimmy Kimmel (less payed, and rumored to be coming close to bankruptcy) and David Letterman - whose company, unlike others, do own the shows.
And after months of strike, rumors are that NBC soon announce that both Leno and Conan might come back on the air, starting January. This would not be done with the blessing of the WGA, obviously, and while back on the air the shows would still not have writers - and guest refusing to cross picket lines will not appear.
This is when David Letterman comes in.
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