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CAN'T INDEPENDENTS BE AS PROFITABLE AS NETWORK STATIONS ?

anotherguy said:
Although I don't watch much of anything on CW and can't get MNTV at all, the thing I'm afraid would happen is that if they folded a lot of their stations wouldn't be like the earlier independents with movies and syndicated reruns and first run series like in the 80's, but would instead be more trash talk, courtroom shows, or worst of all infomercials. Although I don't like much of anything on CW or MNTV, in a lot of cases the other options would be worse.
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I don't know how it is in other markets but you've pretty much described Fox, MNTV and CW here in Phoenix. The Mother Ship seems to be the one saddled with syndicated talk (Wendy Williams) and all-weekday schedule of courtroom crap. MNTV (a subsidiary of Fox10) carries a full schedule of old Fox shows with a couple of exceptions (it carries an hour of CBS' BBT). CW is a programming subsidiary of local indie KTVK and carries old reruns with occasional lifestyle programs.

All three of them could disappear tomorrow and probably not be noticed.
 
In Memphis MNTV going away would actually be an improvement. It's on WLMT's 30.2 subchannel that carries ME TV the rest of the time. I'd definitely like to see them go away there.
 
Robnoxious said:
I would much rather The CW blow away so KTLA-5 in Los Angeles can go back to being the great independent it had become. Useless CW programming simply bogs down their schedule that could be better used with something else.
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There's the million dollar question that nobdy has answered yet. What is the "something else" the station would show if they didn't have a network affiliation? Independents like WLNY and WRNN in the NYC market aren't showing anything that's going to pull in ratings. The best you'll find on WLNY is Law & Order CI and old movies that you can watch on 5 other channels. WRNN is mostly infomercials with 1 episode of Fraiser thrown in there every night. My point is, if there was enough programming out there to make an independent more profitable than a network station then I'm sure they would have found that solution by now.
 
In the past, an indie could survive and prosper on a diet of sports. In Phoenix, KUTP (indie, then UPN, then MyNetwork) carried Phoenix Suns and Arizona Rattlers games, while KTVK carried Arizona Diamondbacks after they began play in 1998. Prescott's KUSK, operating on a shoestring, survived by airing Giants, Athletics and Padres games before the Diamondbacks came along. In NYC, WPIX broadcast Yankees games and WOR/WWOR had the Mets, IIRC. Rochester NY's WUHF used to import the WPIX broadcast of the Yankees in the early going.

Those sports have now all moved to cable/satellite, so indies have a large chunk of time to fill during part of the year that they didn't used to have. I would imagine that sports programming was probably an easier sell for local commercial time, so not having it poses a greater challenge for the sales department.
 
dhett said:
In the past, an indie could survive and prosper on a diet of sports. In Phoenix, KUTP (indie, then UPN, then MyNetwork) carried Phoenix Suns and Arizona Rattlers games, while KTVK carried Arizona Diamondbacks after they began play in 1998. Prescott's KUSK, operating on a shoestring, survived by airing Giants, Athletics and Padres games before the Diamondbacks came along. In NYC, WPIX broadcast Yankees games and WOR/WWOR had the Mets, IIRC. Rochester NY's WUHF used to import the WPIX broadcast of the Yankees in the early going.

Those sports have now all moved to cable/satellite, so indies have a large chunk of time to fill during part of the year that they didn't used to have. I would imagine that sports programming was probably an easier sell for local commercial time, so not having it poses a greater challenge for the sales department.
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The old-style indepedent formula for success relied on sports, kids, and counterprogramming the early evening news.

The kids shows earned high ratings (even though those ratings never did translate to anywhere near the revenue that successful adult-targetted shows could generate) and brought viewers to the stations that could be cycled into other time slots -- ie, if Junior switched on channel 44 to watch "Scooby Doo", his mom might leave it tuned to the station to watch "WKRP" instead of the evening news later in the day.

In the early evening hours, running reruns of old sitcoms against the news on competing stations also turned out to be a way to attract high ratings, making the time between 5 and 8 PM (7 PM in the central and mountain time zones) the most profitable hours for a typical independent station.

Prime time ratings, however, typically weren't so good -- the movies were more filler than anything that could really compete against the big three networks most of the time. But for the stations that managed to put together strong sports packages, those did translate into high ratings in prime time, which is why sports was so lucrative. Like the kids shows, it brought lots of viewers and high ratings -- and (unlike the kids shows) it was an audience that advertisers would pay a premium for.

Unfortunately, every last one of these niches has been pretty well preempted by cable. About all that indpeendent stations have left today is the nostalgia factor for folks like us who have fond memories of these stations. That, unfortunately, doesn't really translate into ratings or profits.
 
TexasTom said:
The old-style indepedent formula for success relied on sports, kids, and counterprogramming the early evening news.

The kids shows earned high ratings (even though those ratings never did translate to anywhere near the revenue that successful adult-targetted shows could generate) and brought viewers to the stations that could be cycled into other time slots -- ie, if Junior switched on channel 44 to watch "Scooby Doo", his mom might leave it tuned to the station to watch "WKRP" instead of the evening news later in the day.

In the early evening hours, running reruns of old sitcoms against the news on competing stations also turned out to be a way to attract high ratings, making the time between 5 and 8 PM (7 PM in the central and mountain time zones) the most profitable hours for a typical independent station.

Prime time ratings, however, typically weren't so good -- the movies were more filler than anything that could really compete against the big three networks most of the time. But for the stations that managed to put together strong sports packages, those did translate into high ratings in prime time, which is why sports was so lucrative. Like the kids shows, it brought lots of viewers and high ratings -- and (unlike the kids shows) it was an audience that advertisers would pay a premium for.

Unfortunately, every last one of these niches has been pretty well preempted by cable. About all that indpeendent stations have left today is the nostalgia factor for folks like us who have fond memories of these stations. That, unfortunately, doesn't really translate into ratings or profits.
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The same could be said today. Reruns of "The Simpsons," "The Big Bang Theory," and "Two and a Half Men" most likely attract more viewers to stations attached to The CW or MyNetworkTV than the actual "network" programming. Right now, CW/MNT fills 10 hours a week of prime-time for these stations, but in the case of The CW, it's basically expensive branding for the independent station. I think the stations wouldn't even miss it if they went away tomorrow, considering a lot of the stations affiliated with these services are the "junior" stations in a duopoly/subchannel situation.
 
WHAT ABOUT ION?

People "were" watching it a few year ago. Now hardly ever. It seems just having a bunch of
stations showing something together (CW,ION,MYNTV) is enough to keep them alive.

Who needs good shows or ratings if they've got stations showing Mary Hartman,Mary
Hartman and it pays the electric bills.................seems to be all they are concerned with.

Now you and me, if it was our network we'd want to stand out and do the best possible to get
the biggest audience.
 
P.S.

Much like one of the low power independent sub channels here. They seem to be perfectly happy showing old public domain programs (the same 20 episodes of each series over and over). Their audience is not much but they do have adds. And as bad as their stuff is......it still beats infomercials.
 
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