Not gotta lie, this one hurt.
THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER’s Alex Weprin was among the more sanguine conveyors of what eventually dominated my personal algorithm yesterday afternoon:
NBCUniversal will no longer produce first-run syndicated TV programming, ending production of shows like Access Hollywood, Access Live, Karamo and The Steve Wilkos Show in a major strategic shift for the company.
“NBCUniversal is making changes to our first-run syndication division to better align with the programming preferences of local stations,” said Frances Berwick, chairman of Bravo & Peacock unscripted for NBCUniversal, in a statement. “The company will remain active in the distribution of our existing program library and other off-network titles, while winding down production of our first-run shows.”
DEADLINE’s seasoned El Intrepida Nellie Andreeva provided appropriate albeit depressing context for how this came to pass:
The drumbeat for the diminishing prospects of the first-run syndication business has been growing louder over the past few years amid a shrinking marketplace…Once a financial bonanza riding the wave of daytime mega hits such as The Oprah Winfrey Show, the first-run syndication business has been struggling for most of the past decade as linear viewership has been plummeting in the streaming era, with traditional talk shows often supplanted by video podcasts…Local stations, the buyers of syndicated product, have largely shunned first-run syndicated fare in favor of local news or only take those programs in on a barter basis, declining to pay license fees. That has made the existing dedicated syndication studio model no longer sustainable…
The move is expected to result in layoffs, both in terms of crew of the sunsetted shows and NBCU first-run executives…NBCUniversal has become the first major studio to rip off the Band-Aid, leaving the space altogether. It likely won’t be the last.
When I saw all of this, not to mention the personal reactions from the literally hundreds of people I know who are or have once been part of that division, I had a similar reaction to when I see an obituary of someone who continued to smoke, overeat or drive drunk. It shouldn’t have wound up this way. Particularly in the case of a company that had the unique histories and benefits that NBC Universal had.
When the broadcaster and studio combined forces in 2004 they finally had all of the necessary components in place for synergistic efficiencies that I had when I was part of the regime change that fused 20th Century FOX with the renamed Metromedia stations 18 years earlier. A legacy company with volumes of IP and decades of experience producing original first-run programming and a significant portfolio of major market television stations that guaranteed the ability to greenlight a project. Equally as significantly, those stations in theory provided a wealth of options of talent and venue to allow a host of non-Hollywood options to rise up and conquer the world in a much more cost-effective and grassroots manner. OPRAH began as AM CHICAGO on ABC O and O WLS, where it consistently delivered double-digit ratings at 9 AM local time, making it a no-brainer to roll out nationally. At that time, they did not have a vertically integrated national distributor to benefit from it. When Regis Philbin relocated to New York and eventually joined forces with Kathie Lee Gifford to produce a similarly strong performance on WABC-TV the ABC stations had been acquired by Disney and was taken out nationally by their newly created syndication division, Buena Vista Television. The successors to that foundation, LIVE! WITH KELLY AND MARK and Disney-ABC Distribution, are to this day best in what remains of their class.
My own experience with FOX should have provided NBCU with a similarly viable template. I worked both sides of the aisle as the companies joined forces so I had the benefit of hearing the full gamut of internal bitching and jockeying. Yes, the studio side was fat and lazy schmoozing their clients with lucrative sales of M*A*S*H and movies. Yes, the station side had pre-existing relationships with outside suppliers. One of the few things Barry Diller and Rupert Murdoch were united on is that we would prioritize our own product moving forward and become more self-sufficient, and that in success the rest of the industry would follow our lead. Our stations were ordered to come up with our own shows and test-drive them at an initial loss with the goal of reaching the point where they could be successfully exported.
In some cases, as we saw with the likes of COPS and AMERICA’S MOST WANTED, that end game was the fledgling FOX network. As I’ve previously mused, A CURRENT AFFAIR was the most successful idea that went to first-run syndication, and you too might be sick of hearing about that by now. But there were plenty of other far less successful and thankfully forgotten failures, including the likes of CITY UNDER SIEGE, THE D.J. KAT SHOW, NEWSLINE, THE JANE PRATT SHOW and TRIBES. There’s no such thing as a perfect track record in any business. But as is the also the case in any business, one hit can make up for a host of failures. We may no longer exist in a time where leadership has either the foresight or patience to be open to such risk, but at that time the opportunity at least existed for those who could get out of their own way and optimize their attempts.
This is where NBCU missed most egregiously. At the time they came together, they already had successful partnerships with Universal’s first-run distribution group on several talk shows including JERRY SPRINGER and SALLY JESSY RAPHAEL. Ironically, Universal’s success with those shows came from their absorption of assets from Multimedia Entertainment, which was the distribution arm of strong NBC affiliates in flyover markets like Cincinnati and St. Louis. Just like Oprah (and, before that, DONAHUE). But they also had an unholy alliance with Warner Brothers’ first-run division who were supplying them with their afternoon news lead-in talk show franchise, first ROSIE O’DONNELL and later ELLEN DE GENERES. The stations were loath to take any risk with relocating or even eschewing those programs as we at FOX were ordered to do, and no one at NBCU emerged as either interested and/or inflentual enough to force their hand–or demand that the NBCU first-run efforts take full advantage of the same built-in efficiencies that FOX and Disney employed.
NBCU didn’t take the initiative when they had a more opportunistic and forgiving marketplace and they continued to miss the boat as the years went by and the business truncated. ACCESS was actually a hand-me-down from a distracted WARNER BROTHERS, who inherited it from a disinterested 20th CENTURY FOX who itself absorbed those rights when it acquired NEW WORLD/GENESIS after that alliance–forged out of the remnants of the station deal that propelled FOX to a competitive level that earned them NFL broadcast rights–became fully assimilated. WILKOS was the surviving remnant of the aforementioned SPRINGER juggernaut that also rose up from the roots of a defunct first-run player. With the fleeting exception of STEVE HARVEY’s afternoon talk show that was produced out of the state-of-the-art Merchandize Mart studios in Chicago where NBC O and O WMAQ relocated to, virtually no efforts that the first-run division attempted over its lifespan leveraged those kinds of cost-efficiencies and controls. Ultimately a noisy dispute with Harvey over rights and ownerships poisoned and eventually brought down even that modest success.
There’s further irony in the fact that at one time the NBC-owned stations were leaders in creating local and station group-specific shows that made money and found their way into national success. Modest efforts to be sure, weekly players like FIGHT BACK! WITH DAVID HOROWITZ, THE McLAUGHLIN GROUP, THE GEORGE MICHAEL SPORTS MACHINE, ROGGIN’S HEROES and a little show I had a small part in, MEMORIES…THEN AND NOW. These time slot opportunities, primarily adjacencies to weekend local news, still exist today. And yes, they also exist for the lazy and bottom line-focused monoliths like Nexstar and Sinclair. I find it either unfortunate or unconscionable that someone should have at least been aware enough of those histories to at least try and build a viable beachhead to at least justify the existence of a first-run division. Those kinds of successes mitigate the kind of damage that the collapse of a KELLY CLARKSON–and the kind of money that she personally commanded–caused.
And the fact that an executive like Berwick, a snooty Brit who looked down her nose at local television and would never have risen through the Comcast ranks had she not had the far more fertile brain of Andy Cohen to attach herself to like a barnacle on a freighter never having a creative thought of her own at any point, to be the one that put the final dagger in this company is perhaps the most galling example of how far removed we now are from the days where people actually desired to grow a business.
Then again, her superiors that likely steered this decision might have taken note of her stellar track record in developing successful Peacock originals (not) and already been aware of how reruns of first-run shows have performed relative to originals. The fact that MAURY, which hasn’t produced originals in more than three years, is mentioned as a portfolio option along with DATELINE and LAW AND ORDER is testimony to the level of dispassion and learned helplessness that has produced the very landscape that has made YouTube the number one video destination for daytime audiences, and not merely device-centric millennials, either.
MAURY is currently doing a video podcast. So is Jenny McCarthy, who Warner Brothers is developing an alliance with to offer in some form to those stations who actually know flooding an already overwhelmed marketplace with still more local news is not exactly proactive. NBCU owns stations in 11 major markets where plenty of emerging personalities far less expensive that either of them could easily sit in front of a laptop and ring light and be test-driven in any combination of them and/or a digital platform. Local markets can now measure and monetize non-linear consumption. I’d like to believe at least someone in Berwick’s orbit might have articulated this and other ways to produce syndicatable original product besides signing a difficult talent to an eight-figure deal. I’ve yet to see anyone even hint at this having been a possibility, including the people I personally know that now are scrambling to salvage what remains of their careers.
And perhaps that’s to me what’s so frustrating about this sort of news and why I have to grudgingly concede that Andreeva isn’t wrong about her outlook. It seems more and more that folks like Berwick are being given the opportunities to make these calls, devoid of anyone above them like a Diller or Murdoch who at least gave enough f–ks to force their hands. CBS did indeed renew DREW BARRYMORE but with Wendy McMahon gone there’s no longer any internal champion for the stations or other divisions to even make attempts like the “plusses” that their morning and evening news shows tried. FOX FIRST RUN is nowhere near as robust a laboratory as they were even a few years ago, but they’re at least out there with the likes of the political newsmagazine BATTLEGROUND and the now-veteran board game derivtative 25 WORDS OR LESS. And as long as Kelly Ripa wants to work it appears Disney will at least have a presence that will allow less successful ventures like TAMRON HALL to exist. But none of them are even trying to launch anything for this fall to fill the void that NBCU’s demise is leaving, and the fact that virtually no current station executives seem to care suggests that even these efforts appear to now be on borrowed time.
It didn’t have to wind up this way. The past can be prologue if it’s placed in the proper hands of people who have the perspective to learn from it, not repeat it. But most of us who have and can are now just wailing and lamenting on blogs, aren’t we?
Until next time…