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A Former CBS Executive Suggests TV Schedulers Are Becoming Irrelevant. Is He Right?

M

Mikey Radio

A Former CBS Executive Suggests TV Schedulers Are Becoming Irrelevant. Is He Right?​

deadline.com

A Former CBS Executive Suggests TV Schedulers Are Becoming Irrelevant. Is He Right?

During a summer visit to Los Angeles this year, Jim McKairnes — a former SVP Planning for CBS who’s spent the past 13 years teaching TV history at the college level — had dinner with a …
deadline.com deadline.com
“Scheduling doesn’t really run the game anymore,” McKairnes wrote in his column. “Lead-ins and lead-outs and hammock shows and tentpoles and companion pieces and four-stacks and Sweeps and retention have given way to analytics and optimization and algorithms. The new strategy is curation.
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But linear schedules still are relevant, even though consumers now watch television the way they want to watch it. “Look, the schedule is not a bad thing,” said one high-ranking broadcasting exec. “It is a recommendation engine. It is a marketing tool. It is a limiting factor. I’ve heard more than one streaming executive mention talk about the paralysis of choice, right? Viewers flip through these endless tiles and can’t find something that they want to watch. The schedule forces us to prioritize what is important to us at this moment in time, and to communicate that to the viewer.”
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McKairnes ends his column by saying: “But for some — those of a certain stripe, say — a new TV season these days is just plain more about what was (the magic that used to be the creation and execution of a 22-hour prime-time TV week) than what will be. As a career? These days, Scheduling is up there with switchboard-operator or farrier: The work’s still done, but it’s not exactly in high demand.”
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The figures favor what he's saying. Streaming is reaching more than 50% of the audience. But does that mean that TV networks should ignore the minority? Those of us in radio have been dealing with this reality for ten years, and we continue to program radio as a linear broadcast medium, even though people use it differently. We are content creators, and how the audience uses that content is up to them, not us.
 
TheBigA said:
The figures favor what he's saying. Streaming is reaching more than 50% of the audience. But does that mean that TV networks should ignore the minority? Those of us in radio have been dealing with this reality for ten years, and we continue to program radio as a linear broadcast medium, even though people use it differently. We are content creators, and how the audience uses that content is up to them, not us.
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It’s going to take full demos to die off before it really changes. When Gen Z is at retirement age.
 
TV schedules mattering less and less began with VCRs over 45 years ago, I got a Betamax VCR in 1984-12 and a VHS VCR in 1985-05.

I got a little carried away videotaping TV shows, once, going through my pile of recorded tapes, I found a TV movie I had recorded a year before, I put that in and watched it (due to the odd scheduling, I'm videotaping Stargate off Comet TV now).


Kirk Bayne
 
kfbkfb said:
TV schedules mattering less and less began with VCRs over 45 years ago, I got a Betamax VCR in 1984-12 and a VHS VCR in 1985-05.

I got a little carried away videotaping TV shows, once, going through my pile of recorded tapes, I found a TV movie I had recorded a year before, I put that in and watched it (due to the odd scheduling, I'm videotaping Stargate off Comet TV now).


Kirk Bayne
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Stargate is on Amazon Prime Video and Pluto.
 
I'm really cheap though :)

I use a TV antenna and a 15 year old digital TV converter and I have several VCRs from thrift shops to record TV shows with (and I watch on a TV with a picture tube).

Since I got my 1st VCR about 39 years ago, I more often than not videotape the TV shows I like, so the carefully planned Network schedules doesn't really influence me, I just need to find out when the shows are broadcast.


Kirk Bayne
 
kfbkfb said:
I'm really cheap though :)

I use a TV antenna and a 15 year old digital TV converter and I have several VCRs from thrift shops to record TV shows with (and I watch on a TV with a picture tube).

Since I got my 1st VCR about 39 years ago, I more often than not videotape the TV shows I like, so the carefully planned Network schedules doesn't really influence me, I just need to find out when the shows are broadcast.


Kirk Bayne
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Can you still get VHS tapes?
 
Amazon has them, I bought about 15 S-VHS T-120s several years ago at a local closeout place.

It's a little unusual that only now, with the proliferation of streaming, that (linear TV) broadcast Networks are thinking that their TV show placement strategies don't help them get ratings.

Several times since 1985 I've used both my VCRs to record TV shows from 2 Networks at the same time, so counter programming didn't influence me, I saw both TV shows later on videotape (since I got VCRs, I don't watch TV shows "live" very often).


Kirk Bayne
 
kfbkfb said:
Amazon has them, I bought about 15 S-VHS T-120s several years ago at a local closeout place.

It's a little unusual that only now, with the proliferation of streaming, that (linear TV) broadcast Networks are thinking that their TV show placement strategies don't help them get ratings.

Several times since 1985 I've used both my VCRs to record TV shows from 2 Networks at the same time, so counter programming didn't influence me, I saw both TV shows later on videotape (since I got VCRs, I don't watch TV shows "live" very often).


Kirk Bayne
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Have you seen this thread? You‘ll love it:

Your VCRs are from 1985?!
 
I just had 12 channel cable TV 1985-89, 2 VCRs were suitable to counter most counter programming, my oldest VHS VCR now is from 1999 (it's getting a little flaky now though).

en.wikipedia.org

D-VHS - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org
D-VHS (standard and high definition)

I don't know the timeline of VCR ownership, my friends began to get VCRs in 1978, I would think that the Network TV execs would have noticed that their TV show placement strategies weren't working as well as they used to about 40 years ago.


Kirk Bayne
 
Being sped up greatly by the actor's strike. Writers may be back, and Stephen Colbert might be doing another night of political jokes, but without brand-new scripted programming, traditional TV falls by the wayside.
The younger demos have found streaming, as well as YouTube. They aren't going back to traditional TV...I bet local news is rarely watched by those under 40.
 
crainbebo said:
Being sped up greatly by the actor's strike. Writers may be back, and Stephen Colbert might be doing another night of political jokes, but without brand-new scripted programming, traditional TV falls by the wayside.
The younger demos have found streaming, as well as YouTube. They aren't going back to traditional TV...I bet local news is rarely watched by those under 40.
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Last I checked the actors strike is affecting streaming too. Networks have lots of reality shows scheduled, and young audiences love reality TV. The 10PM scripted dramas are for the boomers.
 
TheBigA said:
Last I checked the actors strike is affecting streaming too. Networks have lots of reality shows scheduled, and young audiences love reality TV. The 10PM scripted dramas are for the boomers.
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And a big reason why networks are losing interest in producing network 10PM lead-in shows. All the expense with diminishing audiences.
 
TheBigA said:
Last I checked the actors strike is affecting streaming too. Networks have lots of reality shows scheduled, and young audiences love reality TV. The 10PM scripted dramas are for the boomers.
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There is so much content to stream though. You would have plenty to watch. Maybe not all of it is good.
 
crainbebo said:
I bet local news is rarely watched by those under 40.
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Agreed, and I'd be willing to guess that's the case for people even older than that. Personally, I'd much rather go to a stations' (or local newspapers') website, peruse all the headlines and stories and take 5, maybe 10 minutes tops to read or watch the video of the ones I'm most interested in. That beats spending 30 minutes sitting through an entire newscast, much of which is either irrelevant to me, or that I'm simply not interested in.

It seems that many local TV stations are expanding the number of newscasts they offer throughout the day. Where I grew up and where some of my family still lives, they traditionally had local news at 6a, noon, 6p and 11p. Now they have at least 3 other, different local newscasts thrown in throughout the day and depending how network programming evolves in the later hours of what was once considered "prime time" through the week, they may ad even more. Maybe it works for that area as the population tends to skew older and they may watch, but while I get that TV stations might plug in more local news since staff are already there, video roll is in the can and it doesn't cost a great amount more to expand their local news, at the same time I can't imagine the numbers are great, especially among younger viewers.
 
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