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

[Don CT]

Somehow, the stations find enough audience to make local news profitable. Otherwise they'd just run off-net sitcoms all day.

It’s probably cheaper to run local news vs syndication.

 

[landtuna]

It’s probably cheaper to run local news vs syndication.

Especially when the majority of 'local news' is actually commercials in disguise and/or human interest stories or duplication of the national news.

 

[Cordelia Chase]

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).

Do you know how to repair your own TV? I mean, when the last tube set I had broke down years ago, there was no place left to get it fixed, and that forced me to get a flat screen.

 

[kfbkfb]

My 19" picture tube TV (a good size for the compromised picture quality of VHS SLP) was $99 in 2006-12, I use it several hours/day, I'm amazed it still works, when it breaks, I'll call the "GOT JUNK" people...(I bought a 32" LCD TV in 2022-11 to replace it).

Anyone searched for 30 to 40 year old articles about Network TV show placement strategies not working as well due to VCR proliferation?


Kirk Bayne

 

[AbrahamJSimpson]

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.

Yes, though that still required the show to be on the broadcaster, at whatever time. Ok fine, you could delay watching, but you generally couldn’t just pick whatever episode of any of hundreds or thousands of shows at any given moment. And it was cumbersome to manage if someone recorded a significant amount. The rental and ownership of movies made those less appealing for broadcasters, of course.

Even if mass home recording had never come to pass, and we went straight into the on-demand world, we’d be in largely the same place.