Posted on 04/13/2008 2:50:51 PM PDT by abb
Katie Couric may be the least of Leslie Moonves’s worries.
While the fate of Ms. Couric and the “CBS Evening News” is in the headlines, the entire CBS News division represents only a fraction of the CBS broadcast network’s revenue. More perplexing is the prime-time schedule, where no new hit has emerged this year, and as a result, CBS is likely to lose the crown of most-watched network to the Fox network.
And there are concerns over other parts of the CBS Corporation. The radio division is lagging. Pressure to make a digital acquisition is intensifying. Advertising revenue is softening. The good news includes the CBS billboard business, which seems to be doing pretty well.
The challenges facing the company fall squarely on the shoulders of Mr. Moonves, chief executive of CBS since 2004, a year before it was spun off from Viacom. Without the cushion of Viacom’s other properties, CBS has been more exposed to the struggles of the advertising market. In 2007, it earned $1.25 billion, down from $1.66 billion the year before. CBS stock closed at $21.40 on Friday, compared with $30.99 a year earlier.
Mr. Moonves’s next public hurdle, assuming that the situation with Ms. Couric is resolved, will be the earnings report on April 29.
Like many Wall Street analysts, Jessica Reif Cohen of Merrill Lynch expects a 3 percent decline in revenue, in part reflecting the fact that the network did not broadcast two major sports events in the first quarter of 2008 — the Super Bowl and the Final Four basketball tournament. And like most other analysts, Ms. Reif Cohen praises Mr. Moonves, who has been considered one of the smartest programmers and executives in the business.
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(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Network evening newscasts will go dark after the '08 elections and their news divisions disbanded.
ping
Believe or not Abb Katie getting kill by TMZ TV Show I am serious LOL!
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/14/arts/television/14curs.html?ref=business
April 14, 2008
NBC Tests Family Hour Boundaries
By EDWARD WYATT
LOS ANGELES — It was almost as if the NBC comedy writers had decided to test the limits of prime time taste just as the network unveiled a family-friendly philosophy of scheduling.
Thursday’s episodes of “30 Rock” and “The Office,” the first new installments to be broadcast since the end of the writers’ strike, each included coy references to a vulgarity: in one case it was bleeped out; in the other it was winked at in an acronym. While not unprecedented, the occurrences in the back-to-back prime-time shows were jarring. They also raise questions about the placement of “30 Rock” as an anchor of what an NBC executive, Ben Silverman, has designated the “family hour.”
In the case of “30 Rock,” the reference came in the form of an acronym — part of the title of a make-believe “Survivor”-like show — referring to a teenager’s crude designation of someone’s sexy mother. In “The Office,” besides the bleeping, the character’s lips were even pixilated to prevent lip reading. But it was not difficult for many viewers instantly to realize what was said.
Mitch Metcalf, NBC’s executive vice president for program scheduling, said in an interview on Friday that the shows were not breaking new ground: comedies on NBC and other networks have used the vulgarity before, he said, and cited a 1993 episode of “Seinfeld.”
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Mooneboy is known as a genius for what reasons, certainly not results.
Pray for W and Our Victorious Troops
Do evening network newscasts still make any money for networks anymore? I can’t see the economic justification for having a newscast when there are so many 24 hour cable news channels available now.
Come think of the OFFICE okay that was Brit comedy show I remember it on BBC America question I don’t remember it was that vulgar they got crazy on that show prove that Brit could write better comedies than us Yanks
In normal profit driven world, CBS would sack Couric and try to pry away O’Reilly or someone like that and then ratings would go through the roof.
However, in idealogy driven world, that is not an acceptable option.
It is my opinion that they never made any money. The news divisions are not broken out separately from the rest of the revenues and expenses. It is my opinion they have kept it that way to hide it from the stockholders. The entertainment always paid the freight for everything else.
If you look at how expensive it has to be to have all the high dollar talent and news bureaus and equipment and travel, there's no way it can pay for itself.
A decade ago, the expensive tv programming was undercut by reality tv, which used cheap “actors” and “unscripted” shows. Now it is being further undercut by YouTube, which is now the new model for programming.
If you look at how expensive it has to be to have all the high dollar talent and news bureaus and equipment and travel, there's no way it can pay for itself.
Maybe their "news" operations were a way to get leverage over government regulators, who held the licenses on their all-important broadcast affiliates. Their news programs might have been a way to get political power to bring the scales back into balance (from their point of view).
Not everyone has cable.
Careful. Unless you state the person's first name people will think you are talking about that idiotic fool Bill O'Reilly.
Or Rodney King, or O.J. Simpson. Slice and dice those demographics. Ex unus, plures.
I have only one thing to say about what has happened to the networks and it isn’t the internet. It is liberalism.
It has invaded every aspect of their programming. It is the same reason Airhead America stinks and has few listeners.
These people have destroyed their own livelihood and deserve what they are getting.
“...part of the title of a make-believe “Survivor”-like show — referring to a teenager’s crude designation of someone’s sexy mother.”
“Survivor: MILF” ? Now that has possibilities!!!
“Not everyone has cable.”
If one does not have cable or satellite then they
are pretty much lost in space.
The last time I saw network TV was probably in 1999.
There is an old Dilbert comic that held a great business truism. The gist of its message was that a business that is centralized needs to decentralize, and a business that is decentralized needs to centralize.
In the case of CBS, it is dying because its business model is almost hopelessly centralized.
Not too long ago, CBS was the sum of its parts. That is, it was independent affiliates banded together, with a far weaker central organization. Its strength was in the independence of its local affiliates. The only network that outsiders saw was CBS news—the one thing all the local affiliates shared.
But today, CBS affiliates are like McDonalds franchises. They are not the lords of the network, but just overseers who come and go. All they broadcast is network content.
This means, the logical thing for CBS management to do is to send its top management out to its affiliates, instead of having them push paper in the corporate offices, to do the day to day work in *local* TV stations. In other words, take the “Assistant Vice President in Charge of Blah”, and put him in Podunk as a station manager.
If he can’t run a local affiliate, get rid of him.
His mission should be to return the station to an emphasis on local interest and independent operations in that market. His goal should be to make that affiliate the #1 station in its area, *not* with standard network programming, but with what that *market* wants.
If that market wants locally produces shows, fine. Syndicated programs, also good. Even indy programming bought at trade shows. The market in Peoria will not be the same market in Birmingham or the one in Tacoma. Network programming is for prime time only.
If they bring in local ratings, and advertising dollars, and makes those the #1 local station, then CBS as a whole makes it big.
But it all boils down to decentralizing a corporation that has become far too centralized.
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