Television advertising, at more than $65 billion annually, may seem impervious to erosion by interactive digital forces, but it’s just a matter of time before widespread consumer adoption translates into sizable shifts in marketer spending. That time is near at hand, according to the experts and the major catalysts are Google and Facebook.
The Primetime Emmy Awards will continue to air on the four major broadcast networks with a new deal between the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox . The new pact, expected to close in about two weeks, is said to mirror tne TV Academy’s most recent agreement with the four networks.
What Lies Ahead For The Big 4 Networks
As broadcast network executives were leaving for their holiday destinations last week, most of them were certainly glad to get away, and not only because of the dreary wet Los Angeles weather. The broadcast networks had little to cheer about this fall, which failed to produce breakout hits of the size of Modern Family or Glee a year ago. Here are some notes on the fall season, evaluation of the performance of the individual networks and a look ahead at midseason.
Broadcast Nets Tap Genre, Period Dramas
Genre series are all the rage in cable with the success of AMC’s The Walking Dead and HBO’s True Blood, which have been breaking series records to rank as their network’s top-rated series and become pop culture staples. But, with the exception of ABC’s Lost, sci-fi, vampire, zombie and comic book-based series have struggled to attract sizable audiences on the major broadcast networks. That has not deterred the nets to heavily pursue such projects this development season.
Give us the Big Four before we cut the cord, 300 people told a Needham & Co. survey. “We found that if folks listed one broadcaster, they generally listed them all,” said Needham’s Laura Martin. “They think of the four broadcasters as a monolith.
