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KSL/Salt Lake City Says No To "Playboy Club"

DToTheJ

DToTheJ

The same NBC station that's known for delaying or pre-empting "Saturday Night Live" is turning down a new fictional drama series influenced by the magazine. It's set in Chicago - where Playboy's headquarters are located.

And even though the program is scheduled to air in the 10 PM time slot, and even though the show's content won't entirely be related to things you might find in the popular magazine - like, say, articles ;D - the president of KSL steadfastly says it's "clear" what the brand "stands for." They will make arrangements for an area station to carry the show.
http://www.broadcastingcable.com/article/469614-KSL_Salt_Lake_Rebuffs_Playboy_Club_.php
 
DToTheJ said:
And even though the program is scheduled to air in the 10 PM time slot...
Click to expand...

Which is 9 PM Central & Mountain. I guess KSL doesn't want all those
SLC area teenagers corrupted by the show being on its station! ;D
 
Ok, there needs to be a no tolerance policy from NBC Universal with this B.S. KSL benefits by being an NBC affiliate, they take all the NBC viewers and sell local ad-time based off of NBC numbers. With that, they can't pick and choose what of NBC show's they want to carry, and which they don't. It doesn't work that way. What's with these markets who mix business with personal beliefs? It's so unprofessional.

NBC should yank their affiliation with KSL.
 
Radio3787 said:
Ok, there needs to be a no tolerance policy from NBC Universal with this B.S. KSL benefits by being an NBC affiliate, they take all the NBC viewers and sell local ad-time based off of NBC numbers. With that, they can't pick and choose what of NBC show's they want to carry, and which they don't. It doesn't work that way. What's with these markets who mix business with personal beliefs? It's so unprofessional.

NBC should yank their affiliation with KSL.
Click to expand...

Tell that to the FCC, which has long held that the final responsibility for determining whether program content is appropriate for a community lies with the licensee of the local station.

Networks are not allowed to enter into contracts with affiliates that bar the affiliate from exercising that local control.

You or I may disagree with the judgment being made by Bonneville and KSL, but NBC knew full well what Bonneville's policies were when they entered into the affiliation contract in the 1990s, and as long as the Peacock can find local clearances elsewhere (KUCW, usually) for the shows KSL preempts, the situation seems to work OK for everyone involved. KSL wouldn't be #1 in the market, and by a wide margin, if it were making programming decisions that didn't resonate with its viewers.

And after all, if NBC really felt that strongly about not being preempted in Salt Lake, they could have kept KUTV as an O&O when they had the chance.
 
CBS occasionally had the same problems with KSL but
understood that the Mormon church owns the station
and that the community is heavily Mormon. I'm
sure NBC understands as well.
 
Well, NBC seemed to have a much bigger problem with their Boston affiliate refusing to air (or attempting to refuse) The Jay Leno Show back in 2009. I don't think they have even commented on KSL's decision not to air Playboy Club.

Perhaps they know they aren't making any money from the viewership in SLC and thus don't care.
 
"The Jay Leno Show" was a guaranteed smash hit, airing five hours a week. "Playboy Club" airs just one hour a week and doesn't have nearly the star power that Leno had -- or the payroll.
 
Gotta agree this is a good move on KSL's part. More than the show's content itself, the lead actor Eddie Cibrian isn't exactly the paragon of family values (walking out on his wife to have a lousy affair/later marriage with LeAnn Rimes during the making of a bad Lifetime Christmas movie), and the show has been already declared the worst of the "Mad Men" clones coming out there.

Remember last time in 2004 when they decided not to air the American remake of "Coupling"? Gone within three weeks. "Playboy Club" will likely meet the same fate (though run slightly longer because of business economics to get the most out of the run). NBC knew what they were getting into 16 years ago when they sold off KUTV to get their #1 lineup on the #1 station in the state, and they've worked well with them despite the ownership concerns. KUCW will be happy to take the show as they do with "SNL" and if it doesn't work out, nobody's going to remember this ever happened beyond the Wiki article entry in six years.
 
This is a somewhat unique situation -- as already noted, KSL is owned by the Mormon Church (through a for-profit subsidiary, Bonneville Corporation). And the station serves a very heavily Mormon market -- while there are quite a few non-Mormons in SLC itself, once you get outside the city, the rest of the state (and TV market) is very, very heavily Mormon.

As such, KSL's programming decisions probably reflect the overall taste and values of the market they serve quite well. Which is why -- as someone else has noted -- KSL is strongly dominant in the local ratings.

As an aside, the Mormon Church used to own a second TV station -- KIRO-TV, the CBS affiliate for Seattle/Tacoma. As a church owned station, KIRO-TV also did frequently preempt network programming, and since Seattle/Tacoma is a very secular market that is not remotely socially conservative, those programming decisions were *not* a good fit for that market. KIRO-TV typically underperformed the CBS network's national ratings and was more often than not a third place finisher of the "big three" network affiliates in Seattle. In the affiliate shake-ups of the mid-90s, the station was sold off, leaving KSL-TV as Bonneville's sole TV station.

It all serves as a good reminder that broadcasting is and always has been a local business -- and if you know and respect your local market, you can do very well. KSL-TV does that and prospers...KIRO-TV didn't reflect it's market and was rewarded with poor ratings.
 
I wonder if KUCW-30 will be allowed to pick up this show as it does SNL.

My feelings are mixed on this. Of course, Scott Fybush sums it up best with his discussion of what affiliates can and can't do. In many ways, these rules seem quite reasonable.

However, I tend to also think that if an affiliate demands exclusive rights to a network (to the extent that they don't allow another affiliate to be provided via cable or dish), they should probably provide that service to the people who are in that territory. If they decline programming, that programming should be made available elsewhere. KSL has had this worked out with another local channel (KUCW) for many years now and, in doing so, has been quite reasonable. I hope that they continue to do so here. Not that this show seems worth watching, but it's still nice when you get to make your own programming decisions, rather than having them dictated to you.
 
@nomadcowatbk: SportsBeat Saturday, a sports wrap-up program, remains from the CBS days.

I also should note that The Book of Daniel, the other controversial religious program NBC aired in the last five years, was cleared on KSL despite not airing on the NBC affiliates in markets like Little Rock and Tupelo.
 
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