Word: networking
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...fall of 1988 and, in network television, nothing adds up. The three networks are still scrapping with one another for ratings supremacy, but the days when they dominated the airwaves so thoroughly are just a Wonder Years memory. Only a few theatrical movies comparable to One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest show up on network TV anymore; when they do, most people have already seen them on pay cable or videocassette. Gone With the Wind is no longer available to the networks at all; rights to it are owned by Atlanta TV mogul Ted Turner, who used...
...have virtually defined American television since the days of Uncle Miltie, Maverick and Playhouse 90 -- may not be dying, but they are sick and fighting for survival. Eating away at their audience is a panoply of new video choices: cable channels, independent stations, videocassette recorders, even an upstart "fourth network." The three networks' combined share of the audience shrank to a low of 70% last season, and the decline shows no signs of leveling off. New technologies like home satellite dishes and fiber-optic cable could eventually pose even greater threats. "We've been outplayed, outsold, outmarketed, outhustled by younger...
Even before this fall, however, the excitement had largely drained out of , these annual new-season blitzes. For one thing, there is too much happening elsewhere on the dial, from PBS to pay cable. For another, authentic new network hits seem harder and harder to come by. When the audience for network TV was huge and habitual, nearly anything that programmers threw out at least got sampled. Today most new shows seem doomed to demise unless they get a time slot next to an established hit. Of the 22 network series introduced last fall, only two wound...
...networks get themselves into such a mess? To a great extent, they are victims of a changing TV universe. "The networks are not doing anything wrong," says Ted Turner, the veteran network basher who tried to take over CBS three years ago. "It's like AM radio. They weren't doing anything wrong either, but FM radio was better." Years of colossal audiences and soaring ad revenues, however, bred complacency. "The networks closed their eyes to reality," says Ralph Baruch, former president of Viacom International and now a senior fellow at the Gannett Center for Media Studies. "They didn...
...viewers are not zapping the networks simply because of bad shows. Programming is no worse than it was during the 1960s and '70s, when viewing levels were lofty; indeed, with such ground-breaking fare as Miami Vice, Moonlighting and Late Night with David Letterman, it is probably better. The real reason is that network TV is no longer the only game in town. Among the new players...