Creating Your Own Shows Won’t Be Easy

This is turning into a bona fide trend. First, the ABC O&Os began producing original shows for their Live Well diginet. Then, Raycom got the idea for America Now, an hour show comprising segments from various stations. It’s a weekly now, but Raycom hopes to make it a daily and syndicate it nationally.

And the latest, announced two week ago, is that Raycom along with Cox and Scripps are developing a multimedia news program, RightThisMinute, with thoughts of syndicating it. The show will be layered with new media — social media, websites, citizen journalism. The groups are working with Magic Dust Television, a Phoenix-based TV production company run by a bunch of former broadcasters, including Bill Miller, the one-time GM at Belo’s KTVK and KASW in Phoenix.

The trend, if that’s truly what it is, is encouraging. TV stations should be producing their own programming. It allows them to leverage their own production facilities and talent and control costs.

One of the problems of relying on the syndicators to fill non-network time is that when they finally do deliver the hit, the fees would go up and up with each renewal until finally the stations aren’t making any money anymore. Those shows fall into the dreaded loss-leader category.

Stations need to go beyond news. In our interview with Bob Siegel of Advanced Broadcast Solutions this week, he said that local news really doesn’t cut it on the new mobile platforms. I think he’s wrong. Local news, if properly packaged, is perfect for people on the run looking to catch up with what’s going on around town. However, I would agree with Siegel larger point. Stations have to start producing content other than news if they want to fully exploit the many opportunities that new media are bringing.

But allow me a few notes of caution. The game is still about ratings. Station groups cannot become so infatuated with their own shows that they keep them around too long, even if the shows are somewhat profitable.

Networks and first-run syndicators are merciless. If something’s not working, they kill it and move on to the next project without looking back. Stations groups need to be just as cold-hearted.

And the groups cannot become discouraged if their first efforts flop as the odds say they will. In fact, right now, six months before the first RightThisMinute airs, Raycom, Cox and Scripps should be working  on what replaces it — just in case.

Raycom has hired Debmar-Mercury to shop America Now to other stations and I presume that Raycom and its partners in RightThisMinute also have ambitions for circulating that show beyond their footprints.

That’s nice, but they need to stay focused on building a strong, sustainable show for their own markets before turning outward. And I hope their business plans don’t count on cracking the major markets. The competition for shelf space there is fierce. ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox and Tribune generally aren’t looking for programming from the provinces.

If these shows make it into New York, L.A. and Chicago at all, it will likely be on stations that the FCC has already tagged for its next spectrum auction.

It would also be a mistake to count solely on repurposing talent from the newsroom or whomever the agents are shopping around. Scripps involvement in RightThisMinute is interesting because it used to own cable networks like HGTV and the Food Network and so should understand the value of seeking out fresh personalities with real expertise.

In my column on ABC’s Live Well network in February, I said that history provides some hope for home-grown programming and cited the long run of Evening and PM Magazine during that 1980s. In thinking about this column, however, it occurred to me that more recent history provides far less encouragement.

Nine years ago, Acme Communications boldly decided that it would create its own morning show for its small string of CW affiliates and other stations not affiliated with the Big Four. Well, the buzz on The Daily Buzz is not good.

Without outlets in the major markets and relegated to CWs in most places, the three-hour show ranks 182^nd out of 182 nationally syndicated shows with a 0.1 rating, right down there with Byron Allen’s Career Day.

(Buzz is hardly a raging financial success for Acme either. According to Acme’s just-in 2010 annual report, the show generated net revenue of $3.4 million, $500,000 less than what Acme spent on production.}

Another example is Meredith’s Better, an hour-long women’s lifestyle show currently airing in more than 90 markets and in 70% of U.S. households. The show is not nationally rated, but last week in nine metered markets it averaged only a 1.0 share.

As I mentioned above, counting on syndicators has its drawbacks. But what the studios can deliver are the marquee names and heavy promotion that can give a show at least a fighting chance of breaking through and finding an audience.

Dr. Phil may not have been widely known when he got his own syndicated show in 2002, but he was to the viewers of Oprah and that was good enough. Rachel Ray had made a name for herself in the backwaters of cable before she made her move to broadcast syndication five years ago.

A couple of high-profile syndicated shows can prop up an entire daytime schedule and give a big boost to the evening news. In other words, there’s something to be said for Anderson Cooper and Katie Couric.

I wish there were easy solutions for broadcasters dealing with the new economic realities and trying desperately to stop the audience erosion. But, of course, there aren’t. Saving money and gaining viewers are goals often at odds.

All the broadcasters can do is try. So I applaud Raycom, Scripps and Cox and wish them well. A little do-to-yourself TV folded in with the best of Hollywood may be just the thing.

Harry A. Jessell is editor of TVNewsCheck. He can be reached at 973-701-1067 or mailto:[email protected]. You can read his other columns here.