TV Heats Up the Leftovers : Unaired Episodes on Summer Lineup

On Thursday nights, viewers can still catch original episodes of ABC’s Western drama “The Young Riders.” On the last two Saturdays of this month, NBC has scheduled first-run episodes of the sitcom “Dear John.” And early in July, NBC is planning to show two fresh episodes of “The Adventures of Mark & Brian,” the comedy series starring KLOS-FM morning radio jocks Mark Thompson and Brian Phelps.

Aside from breaking up the summer cycle of reruns, these previously unseen episodes all share one significant feature: They’re from TV series that have been canceled.

What’s more, they’re among nearly 60 hours of programming that were produced for the three major networks last season but were never broadcast. Together, they represent an estimated $48-million investment by CBS, NBC and ABC.

The networks will play off some of these leftovers throughout the summer to recoup a portion of their costs. But many of the episodes will never be seen by the public at all.

“In general, it’s a necessary evil of the business that you’re just going to end up with a certain amount of waste, the same way you will in any industry,” said one network programming executive who requested anonymity. “It’s like extended research and development. You develop a lot of series that never even make it to air, and you write them off. Then some series make it to air but aren’t successful--so you write them off.”

Since about 75% of all new TV series don’t last beyond their first year, most of last season’s remaining episodes are from low-rated fall and midseason replacement series that were yanked off the air before all of their installments had been broadcast.

ABC, for example, has 13 unseen episodes of “Sibs,” a sitcom from producer James L. Brooks (“The Simpsons”) that stars Marsha Mason, which premiered with lots of fanfare last fall but was shortly pulled because of bad ratings. CBS, meanwhile, has nine unaired episodes of “Teech,” last season’s brief sitcom about a black music teacher who accepts a post at a private, all-white boarding school for boys.

Other canceled series that have at least three remaining episodes unaired are “Palace Guard,” “The Royal Family,” “Scorch,” “Fish Police” and “Princesses” on CBS; “Pacific Station,” “Man of the People,” “Flesh ‘n’ Blood” and “The Fifth Corner” on NBC, and “Capitol Critters” and “Good & Evil” on ABC. (The smaller Fox network, which introduced fewer new series last fall and fewer replacements during the season, did not have any unaired episodes at the end of the season.)

CBS, NBC and ABC reported that some of these series will be played out during the summer, although no scheduling plans have been announced. They declined further comment, but other industry observers noted that deciding what to do with these programs poses a dilemma for the networks.

On one hand, putting these episodes on the air generates advertising revenue that helps offset the money they paid to make the shows. “If the audience potential is there, then there’s at least some amount of investment that can be recaptured if the networks schedule these (extra episodes) during the summer,” said Lisbeth Baron, a media analyst for S.G. Warburg in New York.

On the other, they would be taking up valuable air time with series that have no future on the network. “Obviously you would never take an important time slot just to play a series out, because you’re damaging yourself in a significant way,” Baron said. “It’s like a studio owning a theater chain: Are you going to put a bad movie in there just because you made it? You wouldn’t, because you’d only be hurting your theater chain.”

And while some viewers might argue that first-run programming is better than reruns, the fact is that the networks can’t afford to eliminate summer reruns completely because of the economics of the business. Networks contractually pay program producers for two broadcasts per episode of a TV series, and they need the advertising revenue from both airings in order to make a profit.

So having leftover episodes is simply part of the networks’ operating procedure. In their never-ending search for the elusive hit TV show, network executives order more hours of programming than they have room for on their schedules. The reason: One hit pays for dozens of failures. “The Cosby Show,” for instance, helped NBC become the top-rated network throughout most of the 1980s, not only generating huge ratings itself but also boosting the ratings of the shows that followed it on Thursday nights and launching a successful spinoff, “A Different World.”

Even at a price of $48 million, the excess programming constitutes a “relatively small amount of money considering that each of the networks probably spends close to a billion dollars a year on prime-time programming,” said Larry Gerbrandt, vice president of Paul Kagan Associates, a media research firm in Carmel.

“Since nobody knows anything--this business is really a crapshoot--what we’re all betting on, the networks and the studios, is the golden hit,” said Stuart Sheslow, a former network and studio executive who is now producing TV projects for Twentieth Television. “One hit TV series generates millions and millions of dollars.”

Hit TV shows, however, are becoming harder to find, and the networks are growing increasingly impatient waiting for them.

“The problem with the current atmosphere is that you don’t have time to develop a hit,” Sheslow said. “A series has to go on the air and become an instant hit, or the plug’s going to be pulled. In today’s atmosphere, if a series doesn’t work in the first three weeks, the network figures, ‘Let’s cut our losses and go on to something else.’ ”

To cut down on the problem of leftover episodes, the networks have been paring back on how many they order when commissioning a new series. Some fall entries reportedly have been given initial commitments of only six episodes, instead of the more traditional 13.

“Networks in the old days used to make money even on poorly rated shows,” Gerbrandt said. “Today, networks lose money on probably the bottom third, or maybe the bottom half, of their schedules. They can’t afford to wait for a show to become a hit like they used to. That’s why they focus strictly on the top half of their schedules and keep turning over the bottom half. All they can do is hope to lose as little money as possible.”