ABC may drop dime on 'Millionaire'

ABC may drop
dime on 'Millionaire'

Cites sweeps ratings tumble and need to rebuild

    The show that ushered in what promised to be a whole new era in television, reality programming, may be ushered out.
    ABC says it may well not bring back "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire" when it airs its new primetime lineup next fall.
    The announcement, made yesterday, comes in the wake of the network's worst-ever sweeps performance.
    Though final November sweeps numbers are not due out until later today, ABC appears securely locked into a distant fourth-place finish behind Fox, NBC and CBS.
    ABC is also lagging in fourth place for the first two months of the season.
    A year ago the network ranked No. 1 in adults 18-49 and had four shows in the top-10, all of them airings of "Millionaire."
    ABC executives said a decision on whether to drop "Millionaire" will come as part of a larger refocusing of the network back to what executives call its core family values as an entertainment network.
    Many of ABC's troubles in the ratings can be traced directly to the decline of "Millionaire."
    The show has lost half of its audience over the past year and it has aged in viewership markedly over time.
    After CBS's "60 Minutes," "Millionaire" is now the oldest-skewing show on television and among the lowest-ranked shows in the 18-49 demo.
   "Millionaire," which debuted two years ago as a late-summer filler, was the surprise hit of the season and took the network to first place just a year ago.
     For a long time the show seemed invulnerable, revealing little evidence of audience burnout even when airing three and four times within a week. It was also highly profitable for the network, generating between $400 million and $600 million last year.
    The show was also highly mobile, meaning network executives could move it around the primetime schedule knowing that its audiences would follow. This enabled the network to pit the show directly against competitors' hit shows, often with disastrous results.
    The show, which was a knockoff of a British show of the same name, continued to defy predictions of demise, even among seasoned media buyers interviewed by Media Life. Moreover, few seemed able to pinpoint just what there was about the show that made it so popular that at times it brought in audiences of 30 million.
    But ABC executives faced a quandary early on, as they admitted. Should they bulk up the schedule with "Millionaire," doing vast short-term damage to competitors but at the risk of overkill?
    Or should they avoid overexposure in an effort to extend its life?
    They chose the former, and many media people believe it was the better choice, since there was no assurance the show would maintain its audience levels over time.
    Executives were hoping to use the show's success as an umbrella under which they could build a new roster of successful sitcoms and dramas. But they admitted yesterday that the umbrella collapsed earlier than expected, leaving the network in its present state in the ratings.

Printer-Friendly Version | Send to a Friend
Cover Page | Contact Us