It’s Amazing What New Wrapping Can Do

If life gives you lemons, the saying goes, make lemonade. And if you have limited resources and a library full of old movies and TV series, dress them up into something that looks fresh and hip.

That’s the approach used by several cable networks, which have managed to turn properties that once languished on studios’ shelves into attention- and ratings-grabbing programming blocks by repackaging them through elaborate promotions, theme nights, hosts and contests.

The practice represents a combination of necessity and invention. Airing library material offers a relatively low-cost way to compete because reruns are considerably less expensive than producing original programs, and most cable networks don’t generate big enough ratings to justify extensive production.

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Nickelodeon has built Nick at Nite and its spinoff network, TV Land, around classic comedies with marathons and clever promotions. The network ran a call-in contest, for example, to gauge who was more powerful, Samantha of “Bewitched” or Jeannie of “I Dream of Jeannie,” and near Halloween, generated more than 12 million calls allowing Americans to vote for their “First Family of Fright,” “The Addams Family” or “The Munsters.”

In similar fashion, Turner networks TNT and TBS established a “Lunch Box TV” block using series on which baby boomers grew up, such as “Kung Fu,” “Starsky and Hutch” and “CHiPs.” Ongoing movie franchises include “MonsterVision,” hosted by drive-in aficionado Joe Bob Briggs; “Dinner and a Movie,” in which hosts offer recipes as well as commentary; and “Movies for Guys Who Like Movies,” showcasing “B” action movies.

This month TBS runs its latest “Seven Days of 007,” airing back-to-back James Bond movies while offering the chance to win a Bond-like trip featuring ski lessons from a stunt double and, of course, a martini party.

Executives acknowledge that such stunts have shifted to cable from independent TV stations. While broadcasters once relied on time-filling franchises like “The Million Dollar Movie” (repeating the same film nine times a week) they emphasize original series now that KTTV-TV Channel 11, KTLA-TV Channel 5 and KCOP-TV Channel 13 are affiliated with the Fox, WB and UPN networks.

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Meanwhile, old shows that played themselves out after years in syndication on local stations have taken on a new fascination and life through these packaging efforts.

“The beauty of what Nickelodeon has done is that they have elevated the value of those [shows] from ‘old rerun’ status to classic TV,” said Brad Siegel, president of both TNT and Turner Movie Classics. Similarly, he said, “We have been able to take a genre [of movies], put them into a category and infuse a new level of value in them that may not have been there before.”

Movie channels get into the act as well. American Movie Classics will ring in the New Year with a John Wayne marathon, introduced by his son and grandson. In January, the channel will air more than 40 movies tied in with the documentary “20th Century Fox: The First 50 Years.”

Turner Movie Classics also presents lengthy marathons, including a round-the-clock week of Humphrey Bogart films beginning Jan. 6, simultaneously showcasing the new documentary “Bogart: The Untold Story.”

Cable outlets frequently tailor original programming to their libraries, airing a documentary about a star combined with a selection of movies. Celebrities are also enlisted to host telecasts, such as TNT having Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro discuss their movies together, or an upcoming “Grease” airing that incorporates an interview with John Travolta (who, not coincidentally, stars in the new Turner movie “Michael”).

Bill Cox, senior vice president of programming for TBS, said “the jury’s still out” on whether the movies drive original programs or vice versa. “Most of this stuff is predicated on what you have--trying to find a way for the public to see it differently, dressing it up in a new suit,” he said.

With a franchise like “Dinner and a Movie,” he added, “If you like the movie, you watch it for that. If not, you may watch it for the personalities” of the hosts.

AMC specifically tries to use original programs to attract people to movies with which they might be familiar already. “When we schedule, we try to get people to watch the original programming and then hang around for the movies,” said vice president of scheduling Pat Davis.

AMC frequently airs tributes to a director or star and has responded to the deaths of actors such as Claudette Colbert and Dean Martin with quickly assembled marathons.

In fact, as much as they like to tout their original programs, cable networks frequently do best with reruns. The Nashville Network, for example, recently improved its ratings considerably with “The Dukes of Hazzard” repeats, long after the show had burned itself out in syndication.

The attention cable networks generate with such fare is nettlesome to broadcasters, who compete for advertising dollars and often find that sponsors seem more willing to support the same programs they once aired on Nick at Nite.

“Nick at Nite has advertisers buying [ads in] 30-year-old black-and-white sitcoms that they wouldn’t buy [when we ran them], so yes, there’s definitely a double standard,” said Rick Feldman, general manager of UPN’s Channel 13 here, who called the cable format “basically a way of taking cheap programming and regurgitating it.”

However, Rich Cronin, president of Nick at Nite and TV Land, said those networks targeted an opportunity to create “an oldies channel, like an oldies radio station,” presenting pristine and sometimes uncut prints of shows as opposed to “using them as filler,” as independent stations often did.

Cable also has a luxury of time that independents seldom do anymore, with UPN and WB airing three nights of programming a week. In addition, cable networks have a dual revenue stream, receiving subscription fees on a monthly basis in addition to what they make in advertising, making them somewhat less reliant on ratings. Few of the major cable channels average more than a 1 rating in Los Angeles, considerably less than any of the top broadcasters.

TNT’s Siegel said cable channels can nevertheless see a spike in their audience with clever promotions, also garnering press attention for what amounts to airing reruns. “The stunting we do is to drive ratings,” he said, and theme packaging “gives us a block that’s able to be promoted.”

Cable’s appetite for classic movies and TV shows is a boon to studios, who occasionally find themselves the beneficiary of bidding wars on 20- and 30-year-old shows.

As a movie buff, AMC’s Davis cited a joy in such fare finding new life unrelated to commerce. “The fact that people are enjoying these movies again is wonderful,” she said.