There has been a lot of nonsense written about the Comcast/GE/NBCU deal so far (and certainly more to come), but Ben Grossman's piece in Broadcasting & Cable is a refreshing change. He brings up 10 points; most of which are actually worth thinking about.
Here are two interesting ones:
Versus/NBC Sports. Amortizing rights fees over the cable side could give Dick Ebersol a new sling of arrows to fire at some major sports acquisitions. While a deal like the NFL on NBC is a money loser (as are all NFL network deals) having a full-time cable outlet, as well as some regional sports nets, opens up a whole new ballgame. Whether or not they “go after ESPN” is not the point; there is plenty of room for both if Comcast can grab a big-time property or two.
ESPN is the most valuable cable network, by a long shot. If Comcast/NBCU wants to emulate it, it'll have to invest some real money and time (as did Disney with ESPN), but its definitely in the realm of possibility.
The Friday Night Lights Model. A while back, Steve Burke told me that if the right opportunity arose, Comcast would look at a similar model to the DirecTV deals, in which the satellite provider gets a first run of a show and picks up a chunk of the production tab, with the second run airing on a network. It'll be interesting to see if Comcast experiments with some reverse-windowing now that it has its own network, or if that model is just dead.
This was news to me, but it makes sense. Comcast's cable business is all about gaining relative advantages vs. satellite and telco TV services. The downside? Steve Burke just added himself to the contact list of every crazy TV fan looking to save their doomed show.
via Broadcasting & Cable.
That’s it, I’m sending 20,000 barbie dolls to Steve Burke so he’ll pick up Dollhouse. Who’s with me?!?
I’m already on this! I’m sending out a bunch of Dolls to Burke right now! I’m fairly certain it’s going to work!
Dollhouse is the best thing since sliced bread!
@Namelessguy
You might as well send dolls to Joss, ’cause he says Dollhouse is surely dead and he will move to another project^^
But anyway i’m with you \o\o\o
as a gay male dollhouse has shit the bed thank god it shoild never have been put on the fox lineup to start with but its a goner now if they fox puts on a hunky stud guy show im there so enjoy that SLUT while you guys can you want to be pleasured on friday nights pickup a playboy and go to town with it because theres n o chance of it coming back so send in all the barbie dolls u want it aint gonna help at all my self i jerk off to my ken doll and playgirl freshmem men unzipped and i have a blast bye bye dollSHIT HAHAHA
It’s funny the conversation turned to Dollhouse because this deal does represent a way to save low rated shows. Never has a company controlled the complete supply chain from production to the DVR box. I remember calculating once that American Idol made $.64 per viewer per hour (based on published ad rates). If Comcast could get a small amount of viewers to pay $2.99 per episode (going rate for HD content) from their On-Demand service it might be enough to make some low rated shows profitable.
They say they’re open to new revenue models like the one FNL used. Since they went to all the trouble to build up an On-Demand service they might as well see if they could use it to make money of under performing shows.
I told you guys before the new cable style for NBC is going to open up doors that they didn’t have before which is more control over each hour of the day, seven days a week. I would love for NBC to grab either the MLB or NBA package. ABC and FOX do horrible jobs at sports now in days.
I do not understand how any NFL programming can be a money loser. They do well in the ratings and bring in good advertising dollars. Also, the Super Bowl is the highest rated program of the whole TV season, and that means big dollars. Also, the main reason FOX first bid on NFL Football was to help give exposure to their prime time programming, and it worked. NBC’s Sunday Night Football is one of the week’s highest rated shows. Having the NFL on a network is a money maker for the whole network. ABC started to grumble about MNF and looked for an opportunity to dump it. Now, I’ll bet they wished they had an NFL TV contract again.
Greg, because NFL gets such huge ratings, they also charge an armload for the rights to air. Fox paid through the nose for NFL and it paid off for them, not because they made money on NFL but because they were a brand new network and needed the exposure. That is not the case for NBC. Showing promos during SNF has not helped and won’t help, at least not to the extent that NBC needs at this point.
As for MNF and ABC, Disney decided it made more sense to move MNF to ESPN, another network they own. If they wanted to move it back to ABC, it wouldn’t be too difficult to do so. Since they haven’t and have no plans to, I would guess they like how things turned out. (Though I know ABC affiliates aren’t too happy with it.)
Greg, the deals are VERY expensive. If my memory serves me (admittedly a risky proposition) FOX paid around $700 million/year for the NFC package and CBS around $600 million a year for the AFC package these numbers are likely rounded but the CBS deal was definitely less than the FOX deal.
If you assume
1718 weeks with some weeks getting the equivalent of two national games — at least if you total up all the regional coverage — and throw in preseason and the playoffs, even if you wind up with 30-40 games you need to make more than $15 million per game to break even.I doubt the deals are huge money losers on a revenue basis, but that they’d lose money doesn’t surprise me. In the end, it’s the best promotional tool for the networks’ other programming, or at least the networks think it is, and that isn’t factored into the “money-losing” deal comment.
My opinion is that the notion that ABC “dumped” Monday Night Football on to ESPN is a wrong-headed myth. That “dumping” helped ESPN charge gargantuan cable carriage fees, which alone bring ESPN nearly $5 billion a year in revenue according to estimates.
don, what point are you really trying to make. I don’t think people want to know about your personal life. Having said that, I think that viewers would only worried if this would have an effect on their favourite shows.
Could this give hope to MERCY if it gets canned by the peacock?!
Well, I have a feeling that Chuck will get higher ratings because they are doing better advertisements for it during Football than they have in the past. There’s also another difference this time. They’re promoting Chuck on Football not just periodically. They’re promoting at almost every stop they can. It’s not like last year where they promoted the show as little as possible. They’re definitely treating Chuck better this year.
All the networks’ slogans are ethereal at best and are likely useless in attracting viewers. However, first order of business for Comcast should be to eliminate NBC’s “More Colorful”. Not sure what the promo people were thinking. Maybe they were using Don Draper’s team at Sterling Cooper?
They’re doing a similar deal with Subway and Chuck.
Commenting again on NFL revenue, I know if you look at the SNF games themselves, then it is a money loser. However, if you look at the revenue generated across all programming levels, it is a big boost for the network.
Also, something that doesn’t get discussed often on this website is the fact that NBC is solid in programming in other time slots except prime time. NBC has the #1 rated morning show in “Today.” They have the #1 evening news coverage and up until this fall, “The Tonight Show” was the most watched late night programming. NBC even fairs well in the ratings with SNF. The only weak spot is prime time, which is the area the network wants to do the best ratings in. It is the only place NBC really has to shore up to being dominant all the time.
With the economy being down these last fourteen months, money wise it was a smart move to put Jay Leno on the schedule for five nights a week. It was also probably done to help get profit under control for the potential buy from Comcast. Any big corporation will cut costs to the bone when they are being courted in a buyout situation. I worked in radio broadcasting for twenty years and I was involved with three ownership changes. By the third one, I got smart when the manager was telling me to hold off on making big decisions and telling me “no” to even small purchases.
Jeff Zucker wanted the books to look good to Comcast and that probably influenced some of the programming decisions for the fall. After Comcast fully takes over, then the changes that need to happen will start to happen.
I can’t wait for Jeff Zucker’s reaction if he ever has a programming argument with Steve Burke.
Greg, the entire NFL package for each of Fox, NBC, ESPN and CBS is commonly understood to be a net money loser just based on ad revenue for the shows vs. their cost. However, if what you’re saying is that the promotional capabilities (and in ESPN’s case carriage fees) outweigh those net negative costs, and that is the commonly understood situation, then we agree.
You are correct we don’t spend much time on Morning News and Broadcast Evening News on our site. We used to devote more effort to both, but there was very little reader interest. No question that the Today show is, and has been, NBC’s gold mine, and historical credit goes to Zucker for that. By far the biggest reason he is where he is. And yes, the NBC Nightly News is #1, but its only a half hour five nights a week. Do not overestimate its revenue potential. And in the last 6 months, NBC has gone from #1 in late night to pretty well tangled with CBS and ABC.
Certainly, until the deal gets regulatory approval (~1 year) there will be no big changes. Even after that, your (an other suffering NBC fans) faith that somehow “the changes that need to happen will start to happen” may be disappointed.
Parenthood, I think Steve Burke places far less emphasis on the importance of NBC broadcast primetime schedule than you do.
The idea that Comcast is some sort of white knight in shining armor come to rescue suffering NBC broadcast primetime fans is grossly misplaced in my opinion.
What makes you so sure about that?
To fans, everything’s about NBC primetime, in the new combined Comcast/NBCU business, NBC broadcast primetime is a tiny portion of the entire business. 70% of the combined businesses’ revenues are from cable subscriber fees, and the fastest growing part of the business are likely his cable networks. Where do you think Burke’s attention will be?
And while I think you could read too much into this, Hibberd had an interesting item on the Comcast analyst briefing. Note, there’s barely a mention of NBC primetime in the Comcast slide on the benefits of NBC.