As the economics force TV stations and producers to move away from expensive first-run syndicated shows, station executives are considering other ways to keep viewers tuned in all day long.
LAS VEGAS — As the television audience has become deeply fragmented and ratings decline, TV station programmers are having to find “nickels in the couch cushions” to keep shows on the air. Finding and keeping those nickels is forcing them to get creative, a panel of executives said at TVNewsCheck’s Programming Everywhere conference at the NAB Show here last week.
Daytime television once was the exclusive purview of big talk shows hosted by celebrities with whom audiences were on a first-name basis: Oprah, Ellen, Rosie, Maury and Jerry among them. In recent years, keeping an expensive talk show on the air has become almost impossible, although several, such as NBCUniversal’s Kelly Clarkson, CBS’ Drew Barrymore, Debmar-Mercury’s Sherri, Warner Bros.’ Jennifer Hudson and ABC’s Tamron Hall all remain on the air, and all are renewed for next season. Still, going forward, most in the industry don’t expect those types of shows to continue to be produced.
“Station groups can’t afford to pay fees, so you’ve got to reimagine the way we produce and back into a number,” said Stephen Brown, EVP, programming, Fox Television Stations and Fox First Run.
While stations still want the option of licensing original programming, station groups are considering all sorts of different models that will allow them to keep original, relevant content on their air, whether that comes from their own news departments, those of other station groups or something entirely new.
It starts with local.
Local’s Value
“When you look at the business of daytime television, it is commitment and connection to community that I think is really going to drive your ratings, or, more important, your revenue,” said Bob Ellis, VP-GM of Graham Television’s WDIV Detroit. “We have to be more local than we’ve ever been to be successful.
“When we produce something in our local newscasts, it’s going out to everyone on our other platforms,” Ellis said. “The thing that local broadcasters still do better than anyone else is live, and so we have leaned very heavily into that, both at our station and at our company, and taken advantage of the fact that we can quickly and easily use our streaming channels to bring our audiences content as it happens, and then use the various other platforms to drive people to it. And that’s worked really well.”
Experiments With Live
Live is also becoming increasingly important as it’s innately original and it’s different from everything else on the air. The downside of live is that it has no tail — long, short or otherwise — so it’s just one piece of a larger programming puzzle.
Fox First Run has been testing a model in which it produces live episodes of Divorce Court, starring Star Jones as the judge, and airs them on YouTube. It’s also testing a similar model with its game show, 25 Words or Less, hosted by Meredith Vieira, and running those episodes on streaming service Xumo.
“We’ll see how that shifts the audience,” Brown said. “We’re seeing really huge engagement with Divorce Court, not just on mobile, which you would expect for YouTube, but really 55% of the audience is watching connected TVs. That kind of engagement on a FAST or a digital platform is really important to us for the future.”
That engagement plays out largely in the comments, where people can chime in on live chat and ask Jones questions. Some of those questions end up on screen, so “it’s really kind of hyper-engaging,” Brown said.
Fox plans to take that concept a bit further when 25 Words or Less goes live, offering giveaways to people watching.
In addition, celebrities like Jones have their own social presence, which brings the audiences back to their shows.
“The creator economy is really important because they’re hyper-engaged with their audience,” Brown said. “The old model of a host just walking on to a set and doing the show and then going home and being their own person and not engaging with an audience beyond that is an antiquated notion. We can’t do that anymore.
“You also see that with news people,” he added. “They have to be more engaged with their audience, especially in local news, because they’re part of the community. We all have to start embracing that.”
Regional Models
Station groups are starting to look at how they can take locally produced programming and apply it regionally.
For example, Fox produced a limited-run series prior to the election called Battleground, which focused on how things were panning out in battleground states. That show was carried by “every station in Wisconsin, every station in Michigan and then we had partnerships with news organizations,” Brown said.
Fox also has a long-running show, The Jason Show, hosted by local talents Jason Matheson and Falen Bonsett, that’s produced out of Fox-owned KMSP Minneapolis. Fox is preparing to syndicate that show in 50% of the country, and it already airs in Midwest states such as Iowa, North Dakota and Wisconsin.
“The Jason Show has had time to mature as a show,” Brown said. “It’s a cost-effective way to produce a daily talk show. And we did the same thing with Portia in Atlanta, and then on a cooking show in Minneapolis as well. That’s kind of our new model of developing programming for daytime, which I think is really important.”
Along those lines, big news-producing stations are becoming local and regional content hubs, producing content that can both inform and educate local audiences as well as possibly air on related regional stations. Local news is especially valuable when something major is taking place — such as the devastating wildfires in Los Angeles in January. Stations all over the country cover events like that, and that’s when news-sharing comes into play.
Stations also have begun to think about news more regionally. “A Detroit news station could produce the morning news show for Toledo or Lansing or Grand Rapids, it doesn’t necessarily have to be specifically for Detroit,” Brown said. “You’re going to see more and more of that.”
“We’re in the process of developing a one-stream approach, where we’re looking at local news as something we want to have on throughout large chunks of the day, whether it’s all morning or all afternoon or eventually, 24/7,” Ellis said. “Our Houston station right now is working really hard at this. It’s trying to utilize the resources we have, the expertise we have, and stay local. It’s about remaining authentically local but also finding ways to disperse resources in such a way that you can be on for longer periods of time, leaning into things like live when you can.”
New Partnerships
Beyond their own local news, stations are looking to partner with entities they used to see as competitors, said Adam Harman, SVP of programming at the E.W. Scripps Co.
“You have to look at partnering differently,” Harman said. “You’re seeing networks produce content and potentially letting another platform take it first and then taking a second run at a much lower, discounted price. That’s how they can afford it. We need to be open to who gets that second window, or who you’re willing to share with without cannibalizing each other. When I look at content for my national channels, I’m also looking at whether I can use this locally. Can I use this on Bounce or on one of my other channels like Laff? It’s all about utility.”
Sports is another area where TV stations are dabbling in daytime, including women’s and high school sports.
“I think localized sports and news are more important than ever,” Harman said. “As a company, we’re able to leverage that better than a lot of folks, especially with our national channels. It’s a way for us to engage differently, especially with women’s sports, which we think is a big opportunity to lean into, that has been underrepresented for a long time.”
“When we were in Jacksonville, we created a kickoff classic event where we had four high school football games in one day on one field and we broadcast those all day,” Ellis said. “Our San Antonio station took that idea to the Alamodome and it was an incredible event. They brought these high-school teams into the Alamodome and sold sponsorships. That did very well, both from a community engagement standpoint and a revenue one.”
Stations also have been playing with sports-adjacent content, such as Sony’s off-NFL Network show Good Morning Football, which starting last season was offered to TV stations for two hours each day. They can run it as a block or split it and run it in different time periods each day.
Fox also produces a regional NFL-focused show called First and North using its stations in Detroit, Minneapolis, Milwaukee and Chicago — all of which are big NFL markets.
TV stations still want to air syndicated programs, but they are also realistic about the viability of that business as audiences fragment.
In the meantime, Ellis said, “we’re trying to utilize the resources we have, the expertise we have, and stay local. Who knows what’s going to happen with daytime syndication, although I think a market still needs to exist for that, but one of the things we’re working really hard as a company to determine is how to better collaborate in our markets and amongst our stations.”
