CBS serves up 'comfort food' on Friday nights and it's paying off
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Archived from the IMDb Discussion Forums — MacGyver
blackflag01609 — 9 years ago(February 07, 2017 08:52 AM)
http://www.latimes.com/business/hollywood/la-fi-ct-cbs-friday-night-20170206-story.html
If the TV industry gave out an award for the most uncool night of programming, CBSs Friday lineup would win it hands down.
MacGyver and Hawaii Five-O are reboots of old series, an anathema to TV critics who believe the industry is in a golden age of creativity. They lead into Blue Bloods, a combination cop show and family drama, featuring the 72-year-old Tom Selleck, the quintessential 1980s TV star.
None of that bothers CBS Corp. chairman Leslie Moonves, who maintains he will take ratings over Emmy statuettes any day. All three shows rank among the top 20 most-watched broadcast shows in prime time. Their success on Friday nights has helped make them highly attractive to international broadcasters and streaming services and valuable revenue generators for the storied broadcast network.
Friday night is the great unsung hero of our schedule, Mooves said in a recent interview.
CBS, which is the most-watched network overall, is dominant on Friday with 10.4 million viewers, doubling the numbers for its broadcast competitors ABC (5.7 million), NBC (5 million) and Fox (4.83 million). The growth has come on a night that has become less of a priority over the years for when TV network executives set their schedules. Expensive scripted shows with big ratings usually end up on Sunday through Thursday, when more viewers are at home and available to watch. Friday night is generally when most networks air low-cost reality TV programs, which are bought from outside producers, or news magazines.
CBS has taken a different tack. The network has instead used Friday to build and sustain scripted programming assets that can become ongoing businesses for the company. CBS has succeeded by scheduling escapist, broad-appeal fare that does not require a weekly commitment to follow the plot. These dramas offer up plenty of action with crime-fighting heroes who arent conflicted.
Its not House of Cards or Westworld and I think thats a good thing, said Kelly Kahl, senior vice president, CBS primetime. People get home at the end of the week and they want to put their feet up and be entertained. Our lineup is really good at that.
For CBS, finding new strategies to selling its shows is vital, especially at a time when ad revenue growth for the entire TV business remains in the low single-digit range. The company, split off from Viacom in 2006, is smaller than other media conglomerates that own NBC (Comcast), ABC (the Walt Disney Co.) or Fox (21st Century Fox). CBS does not have a stable of big cable networks or a major film studio that can generate significant revenue. Every piece of prime-time real estate on the broadcast schedule is needed to maximize its opportunities to create new shows that it can profit on.
CBS already has the two most-watched programs in the world with CSI, which ended production in 2015, and NCIS. Together they have generated billions of dollars in global sales. But nothing lasts forever, which is why CBS needs to use its schedule to launch and sustain new shows that it owns.
First year series MacGyver, reviving the character that uses his scientific smarts to get out of jams in unconventional ways, has improved its 8 p.m. time period by 29%. The ratings have helped lift the 9 p.m. show Hawaii Five-O by 10% to 12.2 million viewers. At 10 p.m., Blue Bloods has gained 6%, rising to 13.9 million viewers.
They have a strategy and its very consistent, said Preston Beckman, a former network executive and now a television consultant.
The CBS viewers on Friday have a median age of 63, which is well above the typical range of 54 to 55 for broadcast prime time. But the shows have a large enough audience that they also win their time periods in the 18 to 49 age group that is coveted by most advertisers.
CBS is like comfort food, especially for older viewers who are more likely to be home on that night, said Billie Gold, vice president and director of programming research for the media buying firm Amplifi US.
Gold notes that much of the viewing is done live instead of on DVR, which means commercials are more likely to get seen something that advertisers desire.
While CBS is turning a profit from the prime-time exposure of the shows on Friday, its the sale of the shows to streaming services and an expanding international market that is making them dependable assets that can generate revenue for years.
The thing thats changing in big territories France, U.K. and Australia are the streaming services, said Moonves. Its not only Netflix and Amazon, although theyve become very important, but its also local streaming video on demand services. Ten years ago in France I would have four people to sell a program to. Now I have 15. The price and the bids go up a lot because of that.
To be sure, CBS is hardly the only beneficiary of the trend. Executives at other companies say they are also seeing the benefits of streaming, which helps offset the