Written By August/September 2009

A software company named Boxee en- ables Hulu.com content to be viewed on a television set. Hulu.com frustrates Boxee’s efforts, however, seeking to keep Hulu on the computer and not on the TV set. There is a consensus that viewing online content on a computer screen adds viewers and does not draw them from the television broadcast. Viewing Internet-delivered content on the TV set, however, is competitive to broadcasts. With the content available on the Internet carrying a quarter the ads of the broadcasts, this is not a mi- gration the networks want to encour- age. In-Stat analyst Keith Nissen has his sights set on this dynamic game-chang- ing sector of Internet delivery of con- tent to the TV. He writes: “Web-to-TV will ultimately force a complete restruc- turing of today’s video services.” Nissen estimates that 20 percent of households will have video content delivered to the TV set by 2013. If that seems slow by the measure of the tech enthusiasts, it’s much faster than television strategists would prefer. The emergence of cable television devalued the rerun on broadcast televi- sion. This occurred, however, with the rise of increased production of original programming on broadcast—with the industry expanding from what had historically been considered two-and- a-half networks (the pre-Happy Days ABC being the half) to six networks. In the world predicted by Nissen, re- runs are available on demand via Inter- net on your TV set. This is a dramatic game-changer. A quarter of primetime is occupied by reruns; cable television is three-quarters reruns. If reruns are con- veniently available on demand, what fills all those hours? nBC Devolves If the price of alternatives so far has been MyNetwork and a few hours on CW, Our industry marries creative alchemy to dreamy technological possibilities. Both are inflated by freelance salesmanship, exaggerated by the lure of jackpot payoffs, and fueled by the passion for a story worth telling. Hype is the inevitable progeny of such a lineage. NBC is reacting with further retrench- ment. By putting Leno at 10, NBC has volunteered to be the leading indica- tor of what might come. Zucker, who became the network chief after a long stint at the Today Show, had already expanded that show to four hours per day. With local news in the late morn- ing and late afternoon, the syndicated talks shows from Bonnie Hunt and El- len Degeneres, the Deal or No Deal game show, and newsmagazine shows in the early evening, NBC has only one hour of a dramatic serial during the day and two hours of dramas and comedies in prime time. Overnight, NBC will fol- low Leno at 10 with late local news, and talk shows after that with Conan O’Brien, Jimmy Fallon, and Carson Daly. A poker show and a talk show repeat lead into overnight national and local news, which lead into the Today Show. In 24 hours, NBC has just three hours of dramas and comedies. And, on some nights those make way for Dateline and Deal or No Deal. This devolution to the lowest-cost programming is the same strategy radio found after television took its dramas and comedies. Will this spread? In contrast, CBS’ Les Moonves has led CBS to the top network rank with success in drama and comedy pro- gramming. He defends these genres on broadcast television. But with all that bravado, CBS has filled some previ- ously programmed hours with out-of- time-period repeats; some CSI episodes have had four or five network repeats. More recently, CBS has started im- porting dramas from Canada. These programs can be acquired for just twice the cost of a rerun of a U.S. show and for less than one-fourth the cost of a new program (even when amortized over two runs). Also bucking the trend are the cable networks. Dramas and comedies rose to 55 on these channels in the 2008 season and it continues to be a strategic priority for them. Cable Systems try to trap the internet The cable television system operators such as Comcast and Time Warner Ca- ble have resisted efforts to move Inter- net-delivery to the TV set. They have relied on consumers’ disinclination to buy their own set-top boxes by renting boxes that do not lead to the Internet. Their resolve might be cracking, how- ever. In the face of the trend identified by Nissen toward Internet-connected TV sets, plans are being made for the cable companies to integrate Internet- delivered on-demand content into their on-demand offerings. Such a move is intended to prevent consumers from buying set top boxes that deliver Inter- net content to the TV set without the continued on page 54 august/september 2009 WGAW Written By • 19

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