TV Execs Wager on Fall Slots

Fox Broadcasting’s Preston Beckman looked at the network’s limping lineup last fall and decided that he, like tuned-out viewers everywhere, had seen enough.

With seemingly nothing to lose, Fox’s top program scheduler decided to start from scratch, rebuilding the network’s Monday night slate around a then-unknown “reality” show. Using Fox’s football coverage to endlessly hype the program, Beckman launched a surprise attack on his competitors, who were still months away from debuting their unscripted shows.

The move worked brilliantly. The new show, “Joe Millionaire,” tapped a rich vein among viewers and advertisers. More than 42 million people watched the show’s finale. The network charged as much as $500,000 for a 30-second ad spot. And for the first time in Fox’s modest 16-year history, it seized a first-place finish in the February sweeps among viewers 18 to 49, the demographic group most prized by advertisers.

Sometimes, Beckman said, “the best scheduling moves are the ones you make out of desperation.”

Although largely unknown outside TV’s insular executive ranks, Beckman and his cagey counterparts at the other five broadcast networks are on the industry’s front edge, making multimillion-dollar decisions that can make or break a show, a star, or even a boss.

Beginning today, their handiwork will be under the microscope but not by the usual living-room crowd. Instead, legions of sharply dressed ad buyers will descend on midtown Manhattan for the unveiling of the networks’ fall season offerings. The buyers are expected to spend a record $8.5 billion on prime-time commercials.

Half art, half science, the scheduler’s job requires someone who can blend research, espionage and gut instincts. Always pressure-packed, the job is tougher than ever because of the wildly shifting economic realities of network television.

The bruising competition now includes scores of niche cable channels that never rest, multiplying the headaches for programmers who must be hyper-alert to threats from new rivals. At the same time, summer is no vacation for schedulers anymore. Reruns have given way to unscripted shows, each a possible blockbuster in waiting.

On top of all this, networks can’t survive in prime time by playing to different audiences as they once did, selecting shows that appeal to various age groups. Today, if a program draws mostly viewers in their 50s or above, advertisers lose interest. As a result, schedulers are slugging it out with fewer programming options as they vie for the same young crowd.

“Scheduling is so much more complicated today than it was a decade ago,” said former top NBC executive Don Ohlmeyer. “When we were doing it in the mid-90s we were competing against ABC and CBS and, to a lesser degree, Fox. Now there’s this conglomeration of cable channels and HBO. It’s become a 12-month-a-year operation.”

These days, almost anything goes, including “leaking” bogus schedules to mislead competitors. Each network even has an operative to dig up information about upcoming program moves by rivals.

“We will do anything we can, basically, to win,” said NBC’s scheduling head, Mitch Metcalf.

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Like Sharks Circling

Kelly Kahl, CBS’ top scheduler, wakes about 6:15 a.m. to the sound of a fax machine next to his bed spitting out overnight ratings from Nielsen Media Research.

“You know right away whether you’re going to have a good day or not,” he said.

The ratings seem like a jumble of numbers and shares, but Kahl and his counterparts parse it a million different ways. They are like sharks cruising just below the surface, trying to detect blood in the water.

Last fall, ABC’s Jeff Bader followed a trace of vulnerability to “West Wing,” NBC’s critically acclaimed series that had started slipping in the ratings. In his own network’s wings was the unscripted “The Bachelor,” which Bader pitted against President Bartlet and his fast-talking aides. When the votes were counted, “West Wing” lost.

“ ‘West Wing’ was the hottest thing on the planet,” Bader said. “No one thought it would be placing third in its time period this year.”

Not every move, of course, leads to victory.

ABC executives, for example, decided earlier this year to clear the Sunday night decks for a remake of “Dragnet.” So they switched Sunday stalwart “The Practice” to Monday, where the network was suffering. Then came the real pain. “The Practice” was hammered by “Joe Millionaire” while “Dragnet” has yet to catch hold and may not see another season.

“Shows are very fragile,” Bader said. “But if the shows can’t support themselves then they can’t stay on the air. This is a business.”

It wasn’t long ago that the Big Three networks -- NBC, CBS and ABC -- were the lords of television and the competition between them was more genteel.

Those were more leisurely days, when families gathered around one set and the networks offered three distinct lineups, a little something for everyone. On Wednesdays in 1963, ABC aired the hourlong doctor drama “Ben Casey,” CBS offered back-to-back sitcoms, “Beverly Hillbillies” and “The Dick Van Dyke Show,” and NBC showcased Cold War spy stories with “Espionage.” Back then, the show that attracted the most viewers was deemed the winner.

Network executives all but turned out the lights in the summer, offering mostly reruns.

That began to change in the 1980s, a shift fueled by technology and government deregulation. Cable television -- once a means for remote and hilly locations to get better reception -- had spread to 60% of all homes. The VCR, meanwhile, was coming of age.

One of the most influential changes was Nielsen’s ability to provide overnight national ratings, complete with demographic breakdowns.

Soon, shows that drew the youngest, most impressionable viewers -- those in the 18-to-49-year-old category -- commanded the highest ad rates. The strategy for the networks was not to capture the biggest audience but to conquer viewers with the most disposable income. The result: TV executives had no incentive to create shows for folks outside that key demographic.

“The viewers aren’t our clients, the advertisers are,” ABC’s Bader said. “Viewers are what we sell, and people forget that.”

That’s why the biggest nightmare for schedulers this year has been Fox’s “American Idol,” worshiped by advertisers because of its overwhelmingly young audience.

“ ‘American Idol’ was like this steamroller on the horizon,” said Rusty Mintz, the scheduling chief at the underdog WB Network.

He feared the show would crush his network’s modest hit “The Gilmore Girls,” which also drew a younger audience with its mother-daughter story line. So Mintz quickly went to work lining up new episodes to compete against the Fox talent show. At the same time, WB launched an advertising offensive that included a blitz of “Gilmore Girls” billboards.

When “Idol” returned in January, the WB managed to keep a grip on its loyal audience. The other networks did not fare as well. Their programmers were unable to come up with a way to push “Idol” off its throne.

Of all the scheduling battles, one of the most brutal came in 1994, when NBC decided to split up its powerful Thursday night lineup to open a new front on Tuesdays. Scheduler Beckman, then at NBC, moved the network’s show about a radio psychiatrist, “Frasier,” to the new night, along with “Wings,” a popular comedy about life at a Cape Cod airport. This left ratings giant “Seinfeld” on Thursday as the hook for a new show called “Friends.”

With the revamping, NBC took dead aim at ABC’s well-entrenched Tuesday night lineup, which included longtime hit “Roseanne.”

“That show was losing some steam,” Beckman said. “We saw an opportunity.”

Ted Harbert, then president of ABC entertainment, called NBC’s West Coast chief and said: “This is not a threat, but we’re not going to take that move lying down.... You send your missiles and I’ll send mine.”

“I thought I could get them to back off, but they’re tough guys,” recalled Harbert, now president of NBC Studios. “So we had to unload the silos.”

Unloading the silos meant switching ABC’s “Home Improvement” to face “Frasier” while moving “Roseanne” to a safer spot on Wednesday. Although “Home Improvement” opened strong, “Frasier” eventually won the war.

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Getting Even

In the heat of competition, some scheduling ploys stray beyond where best to place a show. The moves, instead, amount to retaliation.

Here’s how one unfolded:

During a February sweeps period, NBC scheduled a TV movie starring Tiffani-Amber Thiessen. Fox countered by moving to the same night a special episode of “Beverly Hills 90210” that starred the same sultry actress.

NBC asked Fox to back off but the upstart network refused. Six months later, NBC’s Beckman saw a chance to get even.

Fox had high hopes for a new series called “L.A. Firefighters.” Beckman patiently waited until Fox locked in a date, a time slot and full-page ads in TV Guide. He then pounced, sliding director Ron Howard’s firefighting movie “Backdraft” into the same time slot.

“We destroyed the show, just demolished it,” Beckman said of his competitor’s offering. “Fox took their lumps and canceled the show.” Thinking about his move, Beckman paused and added: “I’m not proud of it.”

NBC’s Metcalf was born to schedule.

As a 9-year-old living in Pasadena, Metcalf was already so engrossed in TV ratings that he used pen and notebook paper to conjure up a drawing titled “The Battle of the Network Presidents.” Three men, wielding bats and machetes, duke it out as TV cameras look on.

Today, that keepsake sketch hangs in his office at NBC headquarters in Burbank, and Metcalf feigns a wince at the outcome of the battle he envisioned as a boy: CBS won.

As Metcalf knows, sometimes a programmer’s biggest challenge is not with a show’s placement but with its marquee talent.

Not long ago, Metcalf was forced to face down Dick Wolf, a 6-foot-4 bear of a man, and one of television’s most successful producers. His “Law & Order” franchise has been NBC’s ratings Rock of Gibraltar.

Wolf was upset because NBC insisted on scheduling “Law & Order: Criminal Intent” at 9 p.m. Sundays, television’s biggest draw of the week. Wolf wanted 10 p.m. on Mondays.

“I always want 10 o’clock,” Wolf said last week. “It’s the ultimate prestige spot for a drama, and you have much more freedom because 10 o’clock is considered an adult hour of television.”

Wolf believed there was “synchronicity and promotional flow” in running each of his three “Law & Order” shows at the same hour: 10 p.m. Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. But Metcalf held fast.

“We needed it at 9 p.m. on Sunday to kick-start our night,” Metcalf said.

The dispute came to a head at Pinot Bistro in Studio City, where Metcalf had been dispatched alone to meet Wolf and his entourage, which included an agent, lawyer and several other executive producers. The scheduler restated the network’s position and assured Wolf his shows would be well promoted -- including a new unscripted crime program produced by Wolf, also airing Sunday. Grudgingly, Wolf acquiesced.

“Dick is a legend, and he’s rather intimidating,” Metcalf recalled. “All I did was explain the rationale.”

Told of Metcalf’s take on him, Wolf laughed.

“He thought I was intimidating?” Wolf asked. “It should be the other way around. For us producers, these are the people who hold our fate in their hands.”