|
|
hope for syndication
Show eschews tired formulas for feel of cable
By Daniel Frankel
For media buyers, attending NAPTE is a ritual not unlike attending funerals. What's different is that at this funeral it's the same corpse being buried each year. That may explain why attendance is falling.
NAPTE, the trade show where new syndicated TV shows are trotted out, unfolds this week in Las Vegas, and those attending this year’s much smaller show will be exposed to the usual and shameless copycatting of successful genres, such as the talk, game and court formats, the staples of syndication.
They will be exposed to much hype and some real excitement over the Oprah-spun King World talker "Dr. Phil" and the ABC-branded Buena Vista Television game show "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire."
Less notice will be given to one new show, but it may be the one most deserving of buyers’ attention.
This is a show that dares to be different, which in syndication is considered an overdose of arsenic.
The show is "Life Moments," an hour-long daytime series from Paramount Domestic Television featuring, in the words of the syndicator’s marketing staff, "inspirational story-telling by and about women highlighting the special events in their lives."
Somewhere in that promotional gush there is an idea. That idea is cable.
What separates "Life Moments" is that it is not of the traditional cable genres but rather adopts a cable model.
The thinking: Women, who watch daytime TV, are deserting syndication for cable viewing, so let's follow them there with a show that looks and feels like a cable show.
"If you look at the daytime landscape, the falloff in female viewers the last few years between 9 a.m. and 3 p.m. is pretty amazing," says Greg Meidel, president of programming at Paramount Domestic Television. "More women are watching 'the others' than are watching broadcast."
In Los Angeles, for example, 58 percent of the daytime audience is watching something other than broadcast television during the day, he explains.
"These women have all gone to cable. You look at the phenomenal success of channels such as Lifetime, Discovery and The Learning Channel—the reason why they’re successful is that they’re giving women what they want."
To produce "Life Moments," Paramount has teamed with Pie Town Productions, producer of the Learning Channel’s "A Baby Story," among other female-targeted cable fare.
It has announced a major group deal for "Life Moments," with NBC-owned-and-operated stations covering 50 percent of the country.
Launching this fall, "Life Moments" arrives in syndication amid horrible ad sales and ratings in daytime for the entire industry. Even the venerable "Oprah Winfrey Show" recently dropped below a 5.0 household rating for the first time.
With ad sales lean and few daytime series able to exceed a 2.0 national household rating in recent years, Pie Town will produce "Life Moments" with a scaled-down budget more akin to cable than a typical daytime syndie show, according to Meidel.
"Cable production is teaching us all a lesson in terms of the economic model," he says.
"Life Moments" will feature a national host (to be named later) and the ability for local stations to insert their own on-camera personnel for the purpose of branding and cross-promotion.
This week Paramount sales officials will be working to gain the remaining small- and medium-market clearances for "Life Moments" out of Las Vegas’ Venetian Hotel.
Cash-strapped and dissonant towards a trade show that’s diversified its constituency with international television and dot.com companies in recent years, all of the major syndicators are sending skeleton crews to the Venetian this week, shunning NATPE’s presentation at the Las Vegas Convention Center two miles down the strip.
By not setting up elaborate booths in the convention center this year, Dick Robertson, president of Warner Bros. Domestic Television and the executive who led syndication’s exodus into the Venetian this year, says his company will save more than $1 million.
According to rep-firm programming consultant Bill Carroll, vice president and director of programming for Katz Television Group, the show should resemble NATPE in the 1970s and early ‘80s, before the studios engaged in a veritable arms-race of ever-more-expensive booths on the NATPE floor.
"It was a much smaller event then, and it was very well organized," Carroll says.
However, with the NATPE organization totally left out of the loop in terms of organizing activities at the Venetian this week, Carroll says the 39th annual version of the trade show is a bit chaotic.
"I don’t think there’s a particular organizing group behind this, and that always adds to the potential for confusion."
January 22, 2002 © 2002 Media Life
-Daniel Frankel is a Los Angeles writer.
Printer-Friendly Version
|
Send
to a Friend
Cover Page |
Contact
Us
