CBS: Viewers' Age and Sex Shouldn't Matter to Marketers (Ad Age)

...The data confirmed what other smaller studies have shown in the past, according to Mr. Poltrack: "There is no link, none, between the age of the specified demographic delivery of the campaign and the sales generated by that campaign." ...

Looking at snack foods, only three among the dozens of TV shows most watched by "heavy snacking households" also appear on the list of top shows among viewers aged 18-49, Mr. Poltrack said during his talk, "yet many of the advertisers in this category buy based on age demographics." ...

Mr. Poltrack added that reliance on the 18 to 49 demographic is hazardous to all media and marketers, partly because it doesn't strongly correlate with purchases and partly because it's declining fast. That group's share of U.S. population declined from 62% to 57% between 2002 and last year, he said, and will drop another two points to 55% by 2016.

It will be interesting to see how this information changes the way television sells advertising and how corporations decide where to buy. And will any of that filter over to the film industry or will it be forever obsessed with young teenage boys. Um, wait - that didn't come out right....

Read the full article here.

Insulting Chuck Lorre, Not Abuse, Gets Charlie Sheen Sidelined (New York Times)

In 2007, Chris Albrecht, then chairman of HBO, which is owned by Time Warner — yes, that Time Warner — was asked to resign after he was arrested and charged with assaulting a woman in a Las Vegas parking lot. Even though Mr. Albrecht had played a large role in developing the paid cable network and hits like “Sex and the City” and “The Sopranos,” his behavior, coupled with past incidents of domestic abuse, was deemed unacceptable.

Is Mr. Sheen excused because he manufactures laughs, not widgets, for a living? For years on the show, Mr. Sheen has been playing to type as a naughty boy in a man’s body: the result was often scabrous and funny and a hit in the ratings. It also fits another depressing pattern. From “Animal House” to Howard Stern, from “Pretty Woman” to “The Hangover,” Hollywood has long had a soft spot for male misbehavior and, in claiming to parody childish misogyny, it seems to provide an excuse to indulge in it further.

Hollywood likes to pretend it has grown up and taken its seat in corporate America. But it hasn’t when it comes to violence toward women. Mr. Sheen may have gone off-script last week. But in his attitudes toward women both on and off screen, he’s right on message.

David Carr makes interesting points about many things - the fact that Sheen has literally threatened to kill at least two of the women in his life, that actors get away with so much more than mere executives and that has everything to do with the bottom line, and that it seems like that only ends when they "attack the golden goose" and rail (often with anti-Semitic rants) against their bosses or the power structure in Hollywood. Bottom line, what's up with that?
Read the full article here.

Fall 2011-12 development: Will remakes of 'Wonder Woman' or 'Prime Suspect' become great hits? Are you ready for a fresh take on Edgar Allan Poe? (Entertainment Weekly)

But fascinating projects continue to pass the first smell test at the broadcast networks. The key is whether the suits take them to the next step and order them to pilot, which the networks then use in late April and early May to decide what should go the distance come fall of 2011. Here’s what they’ve ordered so far.

You can always count on EW to give a simple, concise rundown of all the latest projects when each season (pilot, fall films, award, you name it) comes around. Here's a nice roundup of the networks' Fall 2011 slates. Enjoy!

Read the full article here.

Time Warner and the War Against Free (Bloomberg BusinessWeek)

At a trade show that celebrates the wonders of low-cost digital distribution, [Jeff Bewkes is] an emissary from the land of paid content. His message is simple and sharp: The devices may be cool, but anything that costs money to produce must be paid for, and any service or channel that doesn't carry its weight is destined to die.

For Bewkes, 58, the solution is a Time Warner initiative called TV Everywhere, which essentially forces customers to keep paying their $75-plus monthly cable bill to access television and movie content on any Web-enabled device they choose.

...The man who built his career over 23 years at HBO will not make his hit movies or shows available for cut-rate streaming at Amazon. Nor will he offer them for instant viewing at Netflix, where CEO Reed Hastings recently rolled out a $7.99-a-month deal for unlimited streaming of TV shows and movies. And Bewkes certainly won't let his product be given away on Hulu, which distributes most of its advertising-supported programming for free. Netflix has wooed more than 16 million subscribers, usually paying a fraction of what cable and satellite owners pay TV channels to run content. And while about 70 percent of the ad dollars Hulu takes in gets back to the content owner, those online ads don't draw anywhere near the audience or revenues of TV. That's why Amazon, Netflix, Hulu, and iTunes are potential enemies to Bewkes. He holds the view that companies such as Time Warner can only continue to make high-quality content if they preserve a business model that requires consumers to pay for the whole buffet. Any Web distributor can stream his content, says Bewkes, "if they pay us a billion dollars for a marquee show."

I tend to think the cat's out of the bag on this one. The ability to watch shows and channels on demand (either on the Internet, via iTunes, or from the "On Demand" button on the cable menu) is pretty ingrained in people now, and I'd venture a guess that most of us see that as the future of television.

Then again, I don't have cable, so I don't have a choice but to use alternate viewing options. Perhaps I have no idea what I'm talking about. What do you think?

Read the full article here.

NBC, You've Blown It Again! (The Daily Beast)

NBC needs to start thinking like a first-place network again and, instead of following the pack, look to lead it. The first step is to formalize something resembling a brand. CBS has crime procedurals (CSI, NCIS, Criminal Minds); Fox is bombastic (House, Bones, Glee); ABC has soapy dramas (Grey's Anatomy) and family entertainment (Dancing With the Stars, Modern Family). NBC is the odd one out, looking like a patchwork quilt.

I have to agree. My TV is for DVDs only, so all of my television watching is done online, which means I have to make a conscious choice to watch any given episode - and NONE of the shows I'm making time for are on NBC.

But this article is also worth reading because of how the author breaks down ways the network could improve - and could actually be good advice for every channel.

Read the full article here.

‘Modern Family’ creator: Why I took on Hulu (THR)

The iPhone and iPad are very successful, but, with all due respect to the prophetic Steve Jobs, I don't see Apple giving them away. It's very simple. Shows like "30 Rock" and "Lost" and "The Office" are expensive to produce. Plus these "hits" cover the costs of all the misses. If viewers want to continue to see quality content like that, then we have to find a way to keep it profitable. Otherwise, we'll all be watching clips of a sneezing panda -- which, by the way, were adorable.

Levitan opinions make perfect sense on all points. As someone who "cut the cord" and gets all of my television from the Internet, I'm in favor of keeping Hulu and similar sites free. As someone who may have content on these types of sites someday, I'm also in favor of making sure creators are paid and audiences are counted. What's the middle ground?
Read the full article here.

The Big Cable Channels Keep Getting Bigger (NY Times)

Chalk it up to an incredibly competitive environment among programmers and an appetite for new shows year-round among viewers. Speaking to TV critics in Los Angeles this month, John Landgraf, the president of FX, said cable had become a “much more crowded marketplace” in the last 10 years. When FX’s groundbreaking series “The Shield” started in 2002, “there were about 40 scripted original series in all of cable,” he said. “And now there are 140.”

Personally, I'm definitely a bigger fan of cable channels vs. the networks. I think it's safe to say that many of the shows that have been hits on cable (The Shield, Army Wives) would have been yanked from a network schedule within a handful of episodes - too edgy or too narrow a focus. Since when were those bad things?

Read the full article here.

Are Women Getting Short Shrift in Late Night? (Time)

More and more, such disparity is at odds with the real world that these shows spoof, in which women were the past two Supreme Court nominees and anchor two of three network news programs. Saturday Night Live's biggest stars lately have been women: Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, Kristen Wiig. Ellen DeGeneres is hugely successful in daytime. Are women funny only on weekends and before local news?

In the interest of full disclosure, the only late night shows I watch are The Daily Show and The Colbert Report. I think Craig Ferguson's "Murder She Wrote" skits are brilliant ("Has there been a muuuurder?), but I don't tune in regularly. With that said, is the lack of women hosts in the land of late night something anyone in the audience is actually thinking about, or is it just writers and researchers? "Well over half of Jay and Dave's viewers are women, says Nielsen," but I'm not hearing a clamoring for a woman behind one of the talk show desks. What are your thoughts?
Read the full article here.

TV’s New Summer Dramas Are Struggling, But They Still May Be the Networks’ Best Option (New York Magazine)

However, as awful as these [network] numbers might seem, they're in line with the ratings of most mid-level scripted cable summer shows, like Lifetime's Drop Dead Diva and TNT's Leverage. More important, most are actually doing better than the ratings Fox and ABC generated last summer with repeats. "Even at a 1.1 [in the key demo of 18-49], The Gates is doing better than the 0.6 we did last year in the time slot with a repeat," notes ABC scheduling chief Jeff Bader.

The summer TV season includes many of my favorite shows, but what networks don't seem to understand is that the reason they're successful on the cable networks is because they're actually good shows, not just cast-offs made on the cheap. Will anyone in this town ever get that it's about quality content?!
Read the full article here.

Conan O'Brien's Kamikaze Comedy Debacle (Wired)

The lessons of the past year have been well taken: No one should be too big to fail. Not banks, not automakers, not insurance companies, and most of all, not comedians. And, thanks to one high-profile, strangely fortuitous career nosedive, no jester will ever bomb that big again. I speak, obviously, of Conan O’Brien, whose rise and fall as host of The Tonight Show probably launched the future of comedy. Conan died for Big Media’s sins and then, Obi-Wan-like, rose up more powerful than NBC or anyone else could possibly have imagined.

I'm still with team Coco. :)
Read the full article here.

Disney, Celador Rest; 'Millionaire' Case Goes to Jury (The Wrap)

Celador, which first filed suit in 2004, alleges that Disney, ABC, Buena Vista Television and Valleycrest Production conducted a series of slippery deals and secret arrangements that saw the “Millionaire” creators left short hundreds of millions in expected revenues and profits from the hugely successful American version of the game show...
Judge Virginia Phillips called the case a “dispute about a contract” when the trial started almost a month ago In the process, however, the trial has become an investigation into the often shadowy world of Hollywood accounting.

Ah, the shady accounting of Hollywood - I just love it! Almost as much as I love Ben Silverman, who was the WMA agent in the middle of this deal. (That is, not at all.)
Read the full article here.

WGAW, Consumer Groups Warn of Comcast-NBCU 'Behemoth' (The Wrap)

Warning that the Comcast-NBCU combination creates a “behemoth,” [the WGA's letter] claimed, “The merged entity will exert a degree of market power unrivaled in our nation’s media history.” ...
The union pointed to Comcast’s previous citing as a benefit of the deal an ability “to ameliorate the negotiation friction” that has made it difficult to obtain content.

“The ‘negotiation friction’ between independent parties is what determines the fair market value of the content,” the union said. “Eliminating this friction will allow only one party to decide the value of content.” ...

Comments came in bulk on both sides of the issue. Indeed, while the WGAW expressed concern about the deal, the Directors Guild of America suggested the deal would produce jobs.

I might be wrong, but I think this is a disaster waiting to happen. AOL-Time Warner, anyone?

Read the full article here.

Network spending shows why free TV isn't dead yet (AP / LA Daily News)

So why are the TV networks spending tens of millions of dollars more on prime-time dramas and comedies for next season than they did in the last season? What's in it for the companies, when even Fox, No. 1 among viewers in the key demographic of 18- to 49-year-olds, eked out just 3 percent of the total operating profit reported by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. in the last quarter? ...

* Even though the profits may be slim on the broadcast segment alone, other areas of media companies enjoy the benefits.

* The most expensive shows that generate the largest audiences are usually developed on broadcast TV before migrating to cable channels.

* The benefit of hitting a home run outweighs the cost of a few strikeouts.

* Broadcast television is developing sources of revenue that were once exclusively the domain of cable networks. That also helps justify new spending.

* Broadcast TV, not cable, remains the easiest way for advertisers to get their message out quickly. And now advertisers have more money to spend.

No surprises here, but it's definitely yet another example of the bottom line taking precedence over quality, where I think we all know cable has been kicking network ass for quite some time.

Read the full article here.