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OTA TV in 2016 and Beyond: The Futures of The CW and MyNetworkTV

M

MMVRBfan

Guest
I'm well aware that this is still a couple of years away, however, it's not too early to speculate what might occur regarding the entities that rose from the ashes of their predecessors, The WB and UPN. What do you believe might end up happening to the network and 'broadcast syndication service' in the not too distant future when affiliate contracts are expected to expire? I know that everyone in entitled to have their opinion regarding them now and what he/she wants to see on them...or not...or not see them at all any longer, but I'm looking for realistic industry perspectives about what might happen to them and their affiliates and stations a couple of years from now. Thoughts?
 
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MyTV is only a network in the loosest of terms. As most 'independents' are owned by large station groups, none of which have much, if any interest, in custom programming each station, I think it endures as a provider of syndicated reruns. It's cheap to do and probably provides positive cashflow.

The CW gets almost zero ratings, but still tends to draw a young audience. I think the same circumstances apply here. No station group wants to program primetime for non-major stations and the CW takes care of this. Since they offer original programming, it's quite a bit more costly to run. I could see the amount of original programming they offer being reduced with clearing of reruns in prime time by 2016.

Otherwise, I think both endure. Like with so many things, station owners want profits without the work. Kind of a allegory for what's wrong with the nation.
 
The CW isn't going away, it makes a lot of back-end money for WB and CBS.

If Tribune dumps them in 2016, the CBS stations will scoop it up. For Tribune markets without a CBS-owned station, the MyNet stations will likely take it.

CW itself isn't all doom and gloom as people make it out to be. The network sells advertising based on the A18-34 demo, rather than the A18-49 demo the Big 4 do. In that respect, The CW tied ABC and NBC last night, and beat NBC in M18-34.
 
I think in this day and time even a network called NUT NUT showing the Three Stooges all night would survive. It will take an earthquake or typhoon to get rid of MyNet and the CW!
 
gregg75 said:
I think in this day and time even a network called NUT NUT showing the Three Stooges all night would survive. It will take an earthquake or typhoon to get rid of MyNet and the CW!
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people want them to go away thinking the good old days of indie stations will come back
 
When ownership limits allowed, too many (IMO), stations to be placed under a single owner, that fact ensured that what made indie stations great in the 70s and 80s would be no more. As did the emergence of Fox, UPN and the WB. These networks didn't build new stations, they simply affiliated with existing independents making the content more homogenized. That doesn't necessarily make it bad, but that's kind of how it's worked out. Again, just a personal opinion.

Who can blame the indie owners, when these new nets came about they offered cash to affiliate and reduced the effort owners would have to put into their stations. From a purely financial point of view, and these are businesses after all, the owners would have been crazy not to affiliate.
 
gregg75 said:
TRUE.....they have ruined the indie stations.

OR

did the indie stations ruin themselves?
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Neither. Competition came along in the form of basic cable networks willing to bear the cost of producing new television series. That turned out to be a better and more reliable venue for those who wanted to produce TV shows outside of the OTA networks. The independent stations couldn't get good first-run syndication programs any more, because those shows are now on TNT, A&E, AMC, The History Channel, etc. If it was still the 90's, shows like The Walking Dead, Rizzoli and Isles, Breaking Bad, Falling Skies, The Vikings, etc., would have all been first-run syndication.
 
Avid Listener said:
Neither. Competition came along in the form of basic cable networks willing to bear the cost of producing new television series. That turned out to be a better and more reliable venue for those who wanted to produce TV shows outside of the OTA networks. The independent stations couldn't get good first-run syndication programs any more, because those shows are now on TNT, A&E, AMC, The History Channel, etc. If it was still the 90's, shows like The Walking Dead, Rizzoli and Isles, Breaking Bad, Falling Skies, The Vikings, etc., would have all been first-run syndication.
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Yeah! I was wondering what happened to shows like Xena and Hercules. The answer , basic cable.
 
brettbutlerisok said:
Yeah! I was wondering what happened to shows like Xena and Hercules. The answer , basic cable.
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My wife and I were thinking about dropping cable, but when we went over our favorite programs, the ones we never miss and really enjoy, all but a few are basic or premium cable. The broadcast network shows are Revolution, Under the Dome, Big Bang Theory, and Two and a Half Men. Everything else we really make a point of watching is cable only, though Cosmos is on both Fox and NatGeo, though we can only watch it OnDemand because it's opposite Walking Dead on Fox and we don't get NatGeo.
 
Avid Listener said:
Neither. Competition came along in the form of basic cable networks willing to bear the cost of producing new television series. That turned out to be a better and more reliable venue for those who wanted to produce TV shows outside of the OTA networks. The independent stations couldn't get good first-run syndication programs any more, because those shows are now on TNT, A&E, AMC, The History Channel, etc. If it was still the 90's, shows like The Walking Dead, Rizzoli and Isles, Breaking Bad, Falling Skies, The Vikings, etc., would have all been first-run syndication.
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It really wasn't the first run programming on cable networks that killed the independent stations -- it was the reruns and the childrens' shows on cable that killed the independent stations. The business model that let independent stations thrive in the seventies and eighties involved counterprogramming the big three network affiliates of the time with childrens' shows before and after school, syndicated reruns in the early evening against the news on the network affiliates, and prime time movies and sports. Unfortunately, the late nineties, all of that was available on basic cable, diluting the audience that independent stations could get with that sort of programming.

As for first run programming on cable -- if you look at it, the timing is wrong. Independent stations went into decline long before cable networks were offering much in the line of good first run drama.
 
I really don't know anything about television. However, there are some existing examples of O&O independent television stations that seem to be doing fairly well. It seems that most of these lone survivors feature very localized news programming that the public really enjoy. We have a station like this where I live. The news coverage is top notch, while the rest of the station programming tends to be movies and reruns of sitcoms.
 
Avid Listener said:
Neither. Competition came along in the form of basic cable networks willing to bear the cost of producing new television series.
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While that's true, many of the networks survived for the first couple of decades with a lot of reruns, much like the independent stations. It's hard for the local station to compete with shows that are available on other channnels (Sometimes SEVERAL other channels).

We could play armchair quarterbacks with the topic of how those stations could have made a better future for themselves, but I think most were simply trying to keep their existing business alive and weren't looking for out-of-the-box options.
 
umfan said:
Who can blame the indie owners, when these new nets came about they offered cash to affiliate
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Actually, most of the newer networks (starting with Fox), did not offer cash "compensation" to the affiliates. In fact, they required, and continue to require, the stations to pay the networks (reverse compensation). But the stations still only get a couple of minutes per hour of ad time. The hope was the network programming would draw larger audiences, meaning the stations could charge higher rates for those few ads.
 
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