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Idea to improve WABC TV - Get Yankee Baseball when it becomes available

M

Marckd

Guest
WABC TV has been very down in the ratings through little fault of their own. Ove rthe past 15 months WABC TV's programming has been overhauled with negative results. 2 of these changes came at no fault of ABC while 2 others were network decisions and one was a local decision. In the past 15 months Live WIth Regis, Oprah Winfrey, All My Children, and One Life To Live all became history. ABC should have had the brains not to shock viewers with such a turnover. They should have held on to the two soaps at least another year while its O & O stations and some others recover from losing 2 syndicated icons. These two were produced at ABC but syndicated to all the ABC O & O stations and many affiliates while in many other markets these two syndicated talk shows ran on Non ABC stations.

When Oprah Winfrey ended her show at her own will, WABC TV should have simply kept her show in reruns till the fall and maybe move Rachel Ray into that time slot that fall of 2011 till Katie Couric became available in 2012. Instead they chose to add another hour of Eyewitness News which is doing only mediocre. That September the network decides (well they made the decision April but carried it out September) to end All My Children after spending tons of money to move the show to the west coast and make it HD. yes ratings were down but not down enough to end the show at that point.

They should have held onto All My Children till at least the end of 2013. Then the same day in April they announce they will also end One Life To Live in january of 2012, several months after All My Children ended. That November Regis is canceled by his decision which runs on about half the ABC stations. Kelly is still doing a seperate show in that slot but that is doing horrible. ABC is so desperate to get viewers that during GMA, stations running Live show Kelly getting make up put on and her hair done which is more of a turn off. In place of Oprah is a mediocre newscast. Kelly alone replaces Regis which is bad enough.

AMC is replaced with the Chew (I call it the "Spew") which is doing horrible. Then the Revolution begins in january and does so bad it does not even survive the time people still are reeling over the loss of One Life To Live. Then instead of reinstating AMC or OLTL, ABC replaces the Revolition with repeats of Good Morning America called Good Afternoon America which is doing badly as well. Then in the fall when they could have reinstated AMC and OLTL and can the SPew - what do they do??? This Fall they decide to move General Hospital to 2 PM and give the 3 PM hour back to affiliates. WABC TV and other O & O's will air Katie which in essence replaces Oprah. What should have been done is put Katie on at 4, keep GH at 3, and move OLTL to 2, and reinstate AMC at one. BUT NO ABC insists they did the right thing.

As for WABC TV - the best thing they should do is bid on the New York Yankees for several dozen games The Yankees Network gives back to Broadcast TV. ABC has the deep pockets to purchase these rights and Yankee Baseball would look great on WABC TV. WABC TV should get a deal to run all trhe weekday afternoon games and BUMP the horrible shows ABC has and either run them overnight or air them on DT-2. Also run some Yankee Prime Time Games as well bumping prime time shows on lower rated nights to overnights. WCBS TV did this 10 years back. This would be a sure boost for WABC TV. Plus a few weekend games as well. I believe the Yankees are up for renewal in a couple years and WABC TV should bid for them. This would help their summer ratings at least.
 
The Problem here is that Disney Does not own Secondary local stations this is why I think WABC can't get the Yankees. With one Exception DIsney has contracts with Granite in San Francisco to air KGO ABC7 News at 9pm on KOFY TV 20.in the market. Its not like NBC where KNTV can air Giants games produced by Comcast Sports and they simply air the NBC shows late Night or CBS O&O's like KPIX San Francisco would air 49ers pre-season games and would send the CBS shows to their CW station in the market KBCW. Or in the case of LA KCBS2 will air CBS content while KCAL9 airs Laker games.
 
Don't know what good a limited menu of Yankee games would do for a station that has a major network in its pocket as a program source, especially a network that's doing OK in prime time like ABC (remember, nearly all weeknight and some weekend games start at 7 PM ET). It also has to be kept in mind that most Yankee games, all but about 20 every year, are exclusively fed to their proprietary channel, the YES Network.

These aren't the days when a team fed its games to an OTA station and collected rights fees. That was 40 years ago.
 
Two different points:
One is ABC's and ABC O&O's daytime planning and scheduling
Other is rights for Yankees games which are generally aired in the evenings, and would likely pre-empt network hours.

The only difference that would have made more sense for 2011-2012 would have been to save 'One Life to Live' over 'General Hospital'. The latter moving to 2pm might lose more viewers. It's only a matter of time before ABC cancels GH anyways, and the 1-3pm hour is less important.

In Philadelphia, I think WPVI has had better success with its 4pm newscast. In New York, if it can't do well, WABC could just slot Millionaire there, and perhaps pick up 'Family Feud' from WNYW.
 
WCBS TV ran Yankee Baseball from 2002 to 2004 and they did not preempt the prime time schedule but ran it on overnights or a Saturday afternoon. They had about 30 games (0ne to two per week). WABC TV could agree to take weekday afternoon games (maybe one a week) plus a weekend game. WCBS TV did it with longer hours a day of CBS shows than WABC TV has for ABC shows. Who cares if the Spew or Katie is bumped to overnights.

About their current daytime schedule - I say bring back AMC and One Life as 30 minute shows at 1 and 130 PM with GH at 2. I doubt GH will be canceled anytime soon. I thought this time last year it might but I think ABC is committed to keeping that show going a few more years.
 
If WABC-TV is down in the ratings, it's due to the lack of audience appeal for each of its programs, and slipping a few ball games in the schedule, that might draw a bigger, but totally different, audience isn't going to make the regularly scheduled programs into permanent bigger draws.

Unlike radio, where the entire station format is directed at specific demographic groups, in TV each program stands on its own. And if WABC is in ratings trouble, it needs to find more appealing regular programming.

ABC Corporate types would balk at WABC-TV taking a few Yankees games, probably at a financial loss, while preempting ABC Primetime Network shows in the top TV market in the country.

And the Yankees have a completely different audience than the regular viewers of ABC daytime fare, who would be offended at having their regular "shows" removed to make way for a baseball game. These daytime viewers pitch fits when the networks break into regular programming for a significant news report, such as a major Presidential News Conference, a few times a year. At least the other networks usually carry the news event too, while a ball game would stand alone, and the offended viewers might find an alternate program they like and decide to stick with.

Way back when there were just a few TV stations, there was a reason why the baseball teams were on non-network independent channels like 5, 9, and 11. Those reasons are just as valid today, except there are dozens and dozens of other channel choices, and the last places to put a local ball game would be the big network affiliates and the all news channels.
 
I would guess that when the Yankees' current deal with WWOR-9 ends, all their non-network games will be on YES, with no local over-the-air telecasts.

Since the Yankees own YES, the team may find that they will make more money by keeping the 20 or so games that had been sold to broadcast-TV on YES (and pocketing the revenue from sponsors, minus production and transmission costs) than if they were sold to a broadcast station.

Something similar happened here in Boston: In 2006, the Boston Red Sox abandoned over-the-air local telecasts and put all their non-network games on NESN. The team, which owns 80% of NESN, found that they made more money by keeping all the local telecasts on NESN than were they to sell a package of approximately 30 games a year (which was the number of games WSBK-38 carried in 2003, 2004, and 2005) to WSBK or any other local TV station.
 
The New York Yankees should return home to WPIX-11 and send the New York Mets back to WWOR-9. WPIX would gladly air NY Yankees games on prime time during the summer months(ditto for WWOR airing NY Mets games). If and when the CW closes at least 2-3 Yankee games would fill air time on WPIX during the week and on Sunday afternoons.
 
I don't think this topic is even worth discussing. I checked the schedule and there are a total of 17 games broadcast on MY9 this year. Out of 162 total games that's pretty insignificant. I think the team is just throwing their fans a bone by putting a few games on broadcast TV. I think it's just a matter of time before then entire schedule goes over to YES, similar to the Red Sox putting all their games on NESN and eliminating them from broadcast TV.
 
ansky212 said:
I don't think this topic is even worth discussing. I checked the schedule and there are a total of 17 games broadcast on MY9 this year. Out of 162 total games that's pretty insignificant. I think the team is just throwing their fans a bone by putting a few games on broadcast TV. I think it's just a matter of time before then entire schedule goes over to YES, similar to the Red Sox putting all their games on NESN and eliminating them from broadcast TV.
Click to expand...

A much longer version of what I said in my earlier post on this subject.

Why, oh why would a Big Four network O&O carry a major sports contract (not including NFL preseason) in this day and age? The only such stations that still do are WJZ-TV (Orloles) and KNTV (S.F. Giants), and in both cases those contracts are for a very small number of games. The issues stemming from prime-time pre-emptions are obvious...do you really think Fox and CBS liked their NYC flagships preempting network programs for Yankee games between 1999 and 2004? If it were any other team, probably not much, but if I remember correctly most of the Yankee games that aired on WNYW and WCBS-TV were scheduled between Memorial and Labor days. Based on that alone, this whole Yankees/WABC-TV thing should have stayed locked away within the original poster's mind.

As far as baseball is concerned, we all know the days of teams having a sizable amount of their games carried locally over-the-air are long gone. Everything is locked up with cable, where the money and audience potential are guaranteed. Heck, teams are even creating their own networks so they can claim total control of that revenue stream. Of course, the assumption that all fans have access to cable/satellite is an incorrect one. To offer disenfranchised fans a slate of free games is merely goodwill for those teams that have their own networks (Yankees, Mets, Orioles, Nationals, Giants, Red Sox, Indians; am I missing any others?)

For the record, I would personally love it if the Yankees went back to WPIX and the Mets went home to WWOR, but don't think that'll happen any time soon. I don't think either team will be on OTA outside of Fox in another five years.
 
It makes perfect sense at this time for WWOR to carry the OTA Yankees package. Their prime time line up is now 100% reruns all year and noone cares when whatever would've aired gets pushed back to midnight. Viewers get a post game / wrap up show, something WCBS & WNYW never did and WPIX stopped doing for years. It makes no sense at this point for them to be on any other station.
 
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