Cash Cow or 800-Pound Gorilla?

Steve Rodgers knows he’s swimming upstream. As a distributor of movies and TV shows, he must compete with the likes of Time Warner, Disney and Viacom for precious shelf space on television stations.

It’s the life of a small fish in a pond in which the big fish have been swallowing one another. Companies that distribute programs have expanded, with mergers bringing Paramount, CBS and King World under one corporate umbrella. Television stations have done the same, forming vast groups that negotiate for programs jointly (and favor sister companies) instead of choosing what will appeal to local communities.

“The only way to survive as an independent is to be independently wealthy,” Rodgers quipped somewhat ruefully.

Yet that’s not what most irritates Rodgers, who has headed the Hollywood-based enterprise that bears his father’s name, the Peter Rodgers Organization, since 1988.

No, what really gets his blood boiling are the time periods his shows don’t have any chance to land because TV stations have sold the time to “direct-response marketers.”

For infomercials.

To television stations, infomercials represent the ultimate bottom-line solution--a way to flesh out schedules and revenues that doesn’t require selling ads, promoting new series or any foresight identifying the next programming trend.

Direct-response firms spent more than $15 billion on media expenditures in 1999, including individual commercial spots (such as those for music or video collections) and infomercials, according to Elissa Myers, president of the Electronic Retailing Assn. The proliferation is such that Myers’ trade organization is charged in part with helping the industry regulate itself, policing “egregiously deceptive claims . . . out of enlightened self-interest,” as she put it.

Translation: If that weight-loss powder doesn’t really help you shed 60 pounds in six days, you might not be as apt to trust the next infomercial you see.

Should the U.S. economy soften in 2001, ad rates will probably wilt with it, making infomercials even more attractive to station executives with profit goals to meet and bosses to satisfy. Network affiliated outlets have already grown more receptive to such deals, in part to offset the reduction or elimination of payments they once received for carrying network shows.

“Over the years, the compensation provided by the networks has been taken away. That means a [financial] void a lot of these stations have to fill, and unfortunately a lot of them have turned to paid programming,” Rodgers said.

“It’s all about the money. It’s really not about good programming anymore. . . . I’ve seen a lot of good shows that never see the light of day because of these paid programming commitments the stations have.”

In just the last few years, paid programming gradually began dribbling beyond late-night TV into hours previously reserved for children’s shows, local series or syndicated fare. The practice has made life particularly difficult for small companies hoping to get in the door with a weekly fishing show or travel program--the sort that once would have played weekend mornings.

Although it’s been tough on his business, Rodgers contends that another constituency should be no less outraged. “The real person who loses out is the viewer,” he said. “The viewer is the one who’s getting robbed.”

If so, the theft has gone unreported--virtually ignored, for example, in the agenda for the upcoming National Assn. of Television Program Executives convention, an annual supermarket of TV programming being held in Las Vegas this month.

The venue is appropriate, since for independent distributors, placing shows on big-city TV stations has become the equivalent of connecting on a five-way parlay. Centralized deal-making by station groups affords many local managers scant authority over programming decisions, as key time periods get parceled out to sister companies or the highest bidder.

In more marginal hours, stations increasingly fall back on program-length commercials to keep the cash flowing--devoting hour upon hour to workout contraptions or the amazing wax that gives your old clunker that new-car look with no scrubbing or buffing.

Despite this environment, Rodgers has persevered. Indeed, the company enters its 25th year pitching a new program for next season, “Scope,” designed to help TV stations fulfill their mandate to provide at least some educational programming. Hosted by Joe Penny and Alexandria Cousteau--granddaughter of the late explorer Jacques Cousteau--the weekly half-hour will focus on discoveries in fields such as science, medicine and space.

Granted, the concept of broadcasters meeting certain obligations in exchange for occupying public airwaves has always sounded good and seldom yielded much in reality. It’s also a somewhat dated concept, given that few viewers draw sharp distinctions anymore between broadcasting and other channels spilling into their homes.

By necessity and habit, television will always strive to entertain more often than enlighten--mostly because the former is easier and more profitable. Moreover, even the best-intentioned TV shows seldom rise to the level of great art, so the choice usually isn’t running an infomercial or some scintillating program of local interest, but rather an infomercial or another “Judge Judy” wannabe.

That said, withered reruns, well-worn movies and uninspired series still feel preferable to a parade of advertisements masquerading as TV shows, designed to convince gullible or impulsive viewers they can develop rock-hard abdominal muscles by squeezing a $79 piece of plastic a few minutes each day.

Smaller companies face a different kind of squeeze, forced to find new avenues of distribution. Rodgers, with a library of roughly 500 movies as well as such series as “I Spy,” has seen a few rays of hope because there are now more places to sell programming--peddling shows to cable, marketing them on DVD, waiting to see what the Internet will be when it grows up.

The prevailing tide, however, is flowing against them and clearly favors the corporate whales that consolidation has bred. And while it might be tempting to toss a few harpoons their way, don’t forget: All those infomercials wouldn’t be streaming by if so many of us weren’t desperate to have rock-hard abs.

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Brian Lowry’s column regularly appears on Wednesdays. He can be reached by e-mail at brian.lowry@latimes.com.