Word: fox
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...fare. Duet, a half-hour romantic comedy, uses familiar sitcom contrivances to chronicle the relationship between a detective-story writer and a caterer. And Cannell's 21 Jump Street will spend an hour each week following the exploits of a group of undercover cops on the high school beat. Fox officials admit that much of this is hardly breakthrough material. "Have we reconceived the mousetrap? Do we feel any necessity to do so? No," says Diller. "But we will by definition take more risks...
...biggest risk may be Fox's uphill battle to stay in business. Many industry observers question the new venture's timing. The three networks' share of the over-all TV audience has dropped sharply, and advertising revenues are stagnant. Cutbacks, not expansion, seem the order of the day. "I don't see the logic of what Fox is doing," says CBS Entertainment President Bud Grant. "There may not be enough of an audience or sufficient advertising revenue to support three networks, let alone four...
...view, the industry's state of flux is an argument for going ahead. "Viewers have less and less loyalty to existing stations and networks," he says. "We have an opportunity to establish ourselves and win an audience." The key question, of course, is how big an audience. Though Fox owns powerful stations in such major cities as New York and Los Angeles, many of its affiliates are weaker UHF outlets. Fox is projecting an average rating of 6 for its prime-time shows, far less than the 16 or so that is usually a passing grade on the networks...
...Fox network can break even with such ratings, Murdoch says, partly because its operation is much leaner and more efficient. "The networks have overheads of the better part of a billion dollars. We have an overhead of 70 salaries," says network TV's newest mogul. Fox has devised other ways of helping the bottom line. Its shows, for instance, will include eight minutes of commercial time an hour, a minute more than on typical network counterparts. Ad time is selling briskly so far: 30-second spots originally priced at just over $30,000 are now going for about...
...admitted underdog, Fox is trying hard to attract attention. The two shows being introduced on Sunday, for example, will each be repeated twice during the evening, to encourage as many viewers as possible to sample them. And Fox is shrewdly starting up near the end of the networks' season; thus it will have new episodes for much of the summer while the competition is offering mostly reruns...