Part 1: Is TV, As We Know It, Finished?...Plus: Five Ways to Save Network TV
The language is stark, the message is unmistakable: The future is looking bleak for network TV.
That's the verdict from Time magazine, which paints a bleak picture of what's to come for the big boys of broadcasting.
"In network television, nothing adds up," according to the newsweekly. "The networks are still scrapping with one another for ratings supremacy, but the days when they dominated the airwaves so thoroughly are just a 'Wonder Years' memory. (The) companies that have virtually defined American television...are sick and fighting for survival."
"As the network audience dwindles," Time continues, "one of the Big Three may be forced to close down or sharply curtail its operations."
Scary stuff.
One caveat, though: Time's harsh warning about the state of network TV was written back in October ... of 1988.
Twenty years later, the Big Three have become the Big Four (plus the CW). Advertisers still pay a major premium to sell their wares on broadcast TV. And experts of various stripes are still forecasting the end of network television as we know it.
Take Bob Garfield, the longtime editor at large for Ad Age and co-host of NPR's "On the Media." He's just published "The Chaos Scenario," a dark tome that offers little good news for anyone invested in the current ad-supported model of free, over-the-air TV.
"Without being overly simplistic or melodramatic, the state of the Old Commercial Broadcasting Model can be summarized as follows: a spiraling vortex of ruin," Garfield writes.
In an interview with TheWrap, Garfield doesn't back down from his harsh -- some would call it Chicken Little-esque -- assessment of commercial TV's future.
"These forces are all converging," Garfield says of the factors leading to the end of ad-supported TV as we've known it. "The handwriting had been on the wall and then the recession came along to accelerate the path to demise."
As Garfield sees it, advertisers have already started paring back their TV ad buys, in part out of frustration that -- until this year at least -- networks seemed magically able to foist higher ad rates on buyers, even as their share of the viewing audience continued to decline.
As overall ad revenues fall, and backend profits for even successful shows become less predictable, networks will inevitably begin paring back their spending on first-run, high-quality scripted fare.
"Audiences are fragmenting so much that soon there will be no critical mass" against which to sell substantial ad dollars, Garfield argues.
Lower ratings will cause even steeper declines in ad revenue (with a few exceptions, advertisers generally don't value reality shows as much as scripted series, so a scheduled filled with "The Biggest Loser" isn't an answer).
That cash crunch will force networks to take fewer chances on developing hits.
"The upfronts have always given the networks the cash they need, upfront, to shoot 13 or 22 episodes of a show," Garfield says.
