Oprah, Yankees Get It. Leno, Not So Much - Steve Rosenbaum - MediaBizBloggers
The Yankees got it right. Oprah is quick to follow. Leno, likely to be a featured obit in the soon to be written end of Network Television.
The Yankees saw the writing on the wall early. In 2002, the team's owners, in conjunction with the Nets, combined forces to create the YES Network. The idea was simple - if you have an asset that the audience will seek out and watch, then why be on somebody else's network when you can be the network?
Now the most wealthy television personality with a license to print money is making the move from syndication to her own network. If ever there was a canary in a coal mine regarding the future of Broadcast Television, Oprah is that canary. And she's flying off to cable - leaving daytime TV in the dust. She's partnering with Discovery to build and launch "OWN The Oprah Winfrey Network." Good call. She's doing what all smart talent does, franchising her value and expanding her reach beyond the one powerful hour that she currently controls on television.
Meanwhile, Jay Leno has thrown his lot in with a tough franchise. And let's face it -- he had a TON of leverage back when he was exiting "The Tonight Show." He could have hedged his bets, asked to have the new Jay Leno channel simulcast on cable, offered on a VOD basis on Hulu, re-run earlier the next day on MSNBC, CNBC or Bravo, or found some other way to reach folks. But instead, Leno's experiment is going down in flames.
Who knew?
It turns out that for lots of folks, 10:30 is a better bedtime than 11pm. And while an hour drama like "Law and Order" was enough to keep folks awake through the half hour, an hour-long talk/variety show almost invites folks to check out long before the local news at 11. According toThe Wrap, the New York-based WNBC took a major hit in the adults 25-54 demo, falling 65 percent in the 10PM hour, and 37 percent at 11PM. Meanwhile, competing networks fell significantly less, or -- in the case of WCBS -- actually increased. Similar patterns were experienced by the remaining four markets. Given that Oprah was almost single-handedly keeping local news ratings up on the affiliates that she led into, and that Leno is proving to be a painful loss for local at 11PM, the combined one-two punch of Leno and Oprah will hit the local TV business hard.
In fact, the impending sale of NBC to Comcast is likely to make the long term survival of NBC as a Broadcast Network uncertain, or actually unlikely. Of course, NBC can quickly become a cable network, which would protect the national advertising revenues. What that leaves is of course the NBC Owned and Operated (O&O) stations, and all of the various holders of the local NBC affiliations. The math here is a bit complex as NBC has significant investments in local TV stations, and NBC and the NBC affiliates make significant revenues paid in by cable called retransmission fees. Robin Flynn, an analyst at SNL Kagan, has said that it's just a matter of time before Comcast turns NBC into a cable channel and charges other cable and satellite providers that want to carry NBC.
So, to recap -- things are changing in broadcasting quickly. NBC's likely sale to Comcast - notwithstanding Vivendi's last-minute attempt to play hardball for a few extra dollars - will put Comcast in the position of both paying and collecting retransmission fees. Being on both sides of that transaction, they have to be careful. The retransmission knife cuts both ways - they may not be concerned with NBC's long-term survival as a TV network, but they certainly want to maintain and grow the franchise fees of the other cable networks.
Broadcasting is likely to be a whole lot less broad in the near future - heck, maybe Leno can still scramble and create JLN (Jay Leno Network). On the other hand, probably not.
For more MediaBizBloggers commentary on Oprah, check out the following:
Oprah and the TV Dinosaur - Charlie Warner - MediaBizBloggers
Ed Sullivan Oprah Winfrey - David Houle - MediaBizBloggers.
Steven Rosenbaum is the CEO and Co-Founder of Magnify.net - a fast-growing video publishing platform that powers more than 50,000 web sites, media companies, and content entrepreneurs to aggregate and curate web video from a wide variety of web sources. Currently Magnify.net publishes over 50,000 channels of Curated-Consumer Video, and is working closely with a wide variety of media makers, communities, and publishers in evolving their content offerings to include content created by, sorted and reviewed by community members. Rosenbaum is a serial entrepreneur, Emmy Award winning documentary filmmaker, and well known innovator in the field of user-generated media production. Rosenbaum Directed and Executive Produced the critically acclaimed 7 Days In September, and his MTV Series Unfiltered is widely regarding as the first commercial use of Consumer Generated Video in US mass media. Steve can be contacted at steve@magnify.net Follow Steve Rosenbaum on Twitter: www.twitter.com/magnify
Read all Steve’s MediaBizBloggers commentaries at Steve Rosenbaum - MediaBizBloggers.
Follow our Twitter updates @MediaBizBlogger
