TORONTO – Last week the three largest private English language broadcasters all laid down their cards and showed their hands for the upcoming fall TV season.
While some of what we heard and saw was predictable (Rogers is hockey mad, Shaw’s Global is drama-happy and Bell took a shot or two at the amount of money Rogers spent on hockey…), there were some surprises, as well. The biggest is that Rogers has compressed what it considers Citytv’s prime time from 8 to 10 p.m. only, leaving the 10-11 hour primarily to CTV and Global (and CHCH, too).
What’s the deal at 10 p.m.?
For Shaw and Bell, that meant less competition for programming and decreased spending at the L.A. screenings in May – and will mean increased sales opportunities in the fall with Rogers out of the picture then. However, Rogers Media president Keith Pelley says the decision to strip in syndicated repeats of Two-And-a-Half Men and Two Broke Girls at 10 – and back to back Modern Family episodes from 7 to 8 – is driven by the shifting TV sands, and that he believes they will still pull enough viewers in just 120 minutes of new, prime time programming per day (that, and the fact they’ll have a zillion hockey games on the Sportsnets at the same time, too).
“The conventional model is changing… advertising has structurally changed – and we looked at how much U.S. programming we need to generate enough GRPs (gross ratings points) to be able to satisfy the advertising need and we figured we could do it in the 8 to 10 slot – and we’d put in high profile, strip programming at 7… and 10 and 10:30,” said Pelley last Tuesday during Rogers upfront day.
But given the number of ways fans can see older episodes of popular shows, how much life is left in syndicated repeats? “They have another two or three years left in it,” said Pelley, who added those strips have to be “incredibly high profile, really a top-10 show.”
Both Barb Williams, SVP content at Shaw Media, and Kevin Crull, president of Bell Media, see potential dollar signs in Citytv’s retreat from 10. “We see a real opportunity,” to own the 10 p.m. time slot, Williams said Wednesday on her company’s upfront day.
“I think we’ll win 10 o’clock, probably five out of six nights, if I ignore Saturday. Maybe six out of six,” said Crull on Bell’s upfront day Thursday. “It is a great and important lead in to the national news.”
“We were able to pick up some things that even surprised us, at prices on some individual programs that were 50-60-70% lower.” – Kevin Crull, Bell Media
The best thing about the LA screenings though is that costs dropped. “The pricing has to continue to come down to reflect all of the changes in the business,” he added. “We were able to pick up some things that even surprised us, at prices on some individual programs that were 50-60-70% lower.”
Are these upfront weeks a relic of TV days gone by?
New content is added all the time. Replacement series for failed new shows, new specialty programming and all sorts of OTT content is released whenever the likes of Netflix feels like (or when their algorithms say is the best time to release new stuff). So, why do we still do these big upfront presentations and concentrate so many TV resources in September? Are these things an anachronism?
“The upfronts are changing,” said Pelley. Years ago, these presentations were only about what’s going to be on conventional TV in the fall. Now it includes specialties and any other media the broadcaster might want advertisers to purchase. “It would have been unheard of to do an upfront and have a very large chunk of it being about Sportsnet, or having publishing and radio assets as part of it,” he added. “The upfront will change from a pure television upfront to a media upfront,” and may well happen at a different time of year, he said.
However, as long as TV (in whatever form) remains popular, that Christmas remains on December 25th and so many companies concentrate their ad buys in the fall as people shop for gifts, the upfronts are probably not going anywhere, added Williams.
“We’re moving to much more of a 52-week schedule, where there is an opportunity to launch content at various times during the year and strategically you probably want to be rolling stuff out in staggered ways,” she said. “I think one of the mechanisms of our business today that still keeps driving us back to the upfront is the sales side of it. The programming may be all moving to a 52 week schedule, but sales is still, at this point anyway, still very much driven by that big buy for commercial time in the fall and with buyers needing to be able to plan their year.
“So much of the business is still driven by a once a year planning cycle that I think we may be in the upfront business longer than you think." – Barbara Williams, Shaw Media
“So much of the business is still driven by a once a year planning cycle that I think we may be in the upfront business longer than you think,” she explained.
Besides, adds Crull, celebrating the medium with a nifty presentation (Crull (right) was a four-part hologram for part of CTV’s shindig…) and a party is necessary and fun. “We love this time of the year because it is where a lot of the creative community comes to unveil its work,” he said. “They’re, not for us, going away.”
What will you tell the Commission this summer and fall?
With the CRTC’s all-encompassing TV Policy Review scheduled for September 8 (and written submissions due June 25), the companies have lots to say, but the executives weren’t revealing much last week.
Shaw didn’t mention the proceeding at all and while Pelley stated something he’s said before in front of the Commission – that conventional over-the-air TV is a challenged business, he’s happy to have NHL hockey to mitigate the risks of a business under extreme pressures. “Our hockey has positioned us very well to let us become less reliant on U.S. programming. It’s getting out of the Sunday night U.S. programming and, I think that everybody right now is asking, where is the future of conventional going?”
“The conversation at the Lets Talk TV hearing in September is going to be nothing short of fascinating,” Pelley added.
“Our hockey has positioned us very well to let us become less reliant on U.S. programming. It’s getting out of the Sunday night U.S. programming." – Keith Pelley, Rogers Media
As for Crull, he said the company is pulling back from its past stance on non-simultaneous substitution. Simsub is a Canadian invention where the Canadian feed of shows purchased by Canadian broadcasters for our market is inserted over top of American channels by BDUs – as long as the show is airing at the same time on the Canadian channel and the American broadcast stations in question. Non-simultaneous substitution would see the Canadian feed (and all Canadian ads) substituted no matter what time the shows were scheduled in the U.S. or Canada. That’s now off the table, said Crull.
“There are always times where I long for it. Grey’s Anatomy, we’re going to pre-release that at 10 o’clock on Wednesday. (8 p.m. on ABC on Thursday). We would probably have a 20 or 25% bigger audience if we had non-simultaneous substitution,” he explained.
“We’ve done a lot of work on that but as we come into the fall hearing we’re going to say we acknowledge that’s tough to do. It’s operationally too difficult on the players in the system. We’re certainly going to say simultaneous substitution is critical to maintain the system, but non is just too hard to implement.”
As well, Crull said he isn’t looking for major change from the CRTC come this fall (although he’d like some genre flexibility so he wouldn’t have to air 12 hours of music videos that so few watch anymore on MuchMusic). “I’m optimistic through the fall process there are actually going to be some solutions that give this business a healthy runway,” he explained. “I feel more optimistic about the television business today than probably during any of my four years here. The quality of television, the viewer engagement, the seemingly insatiable appetite to consume scripted quality entertainment is actually pretty uplifting.
“We think it’s great that everything is on the table… but we don’t think that dramatic, earth-shattering change is necessary or advisable… and I think broadcasters, distributors and producers are aligned on 70 or 80% of it.”
