NATPE Failed To Revive Sleepy Syndie Biz

Since NATPE, though, there’s been nary a peep about any of them. “No updates on Jakes or Bold,” said one of our sources when asked about the two Tegna shows last week.

Concerning Ben & Kellie, a source said Scripps found “enormous interest,” but with a handful of other syndicated shows still on the fence between cancellation and renewal for next season, no decision has yet been made on whether time periods will open up sufficiently for the show to go forward this fall.

When people involved in station programming and syndication talk about shows “on the fence” right now, they’re usually referring to NBCU’s Harry with Harry Connick Jr.

The show covers most of the country, and was the only real national launch in first-run syndication last fall — supported mainly by clearances on the Fox O&Os.

There’s no word yet on whether it will get a Season Two this fall, although there are plenty of prognosticators — from rival companies, it should be emphasized — who say it will not.

As for Page Six TV and Top 30, they’re both a go for next fall, anchored mainly by the Fox-owned stations. Since NATPE, there’s been no word on further clearances for either of them.

What’s the problem? In part, it’s the same logjam that everyone in the broadcast syndication business has been talking about, and continued to talk about at NATPE: With so many long-running, first-run shows not budging from their timeslots (with some renewed now through 2019-20), and station groups filling their own airtime with an increasing number of shows they’re producing themselves, premium real estate — i.e., time periods of the quality needed to launch new first-run shows — ranges from scarce to non-existent.

The result is a syndication business in the doldrums. In private conversations at NATPE, the national syndicators tended to deride the station groups’ efforts to produce their own shows. The traditional syndicators seem to regard the station group output as occupying a category of TV show that’s somewhere beneath the first-run product the national syndicators sell — like B-movies compared to A-level feature films.

And maybe they have a point. All of those “pop culture” shows cobbled together with video clips aggregated from all corners of the Internet — this isn’t show business, is it? Where’s the sizzle?

Well, maybe in the context of today’s local broadcasting metrics, these kinds of shows are what passes for show biz. In private conversations of their own in Miami, the station group people said the syndicated product that’s clogging up the pipeline is losing its cost-effectiveness for them. The license fees are high and ratings are in decline.

Making their own shows is more economical, they said. They have the facilities and the equipment, and the stations to air them. The economic model seems to be: produce shows frugally enough and you can make a go of it even if the show is airing in less than 50% of the country. When asked about national advertising, they say it will come in time.

The station groups seem to enjoy producing their own shows and taking a stab at distributing them themselves to stations other than their own, although their success as self-syndicators has been mixed, to say the least.

“It’s like the difference between owning a car and leasing a car,” said Tribune’s top programmer, Sean Compton, in a NATPE panel discussion. “When you own a piece of the show, you’re more invested in it [and] there’s more passion for it.”

The national syndicators are feeling the economic pinch. In the same NATPE panel, one syndication executive — Greg Meidel of Twentieth Television — outlined the costs of launching new shows into first-run syndication and admitted that even his company has become more “disciplined.”

Among the costs a company such as Twentieth has to consider, he said: As much as $5 million to promote a new show in its first season, and $600,000 just to pay Nielsen to provide national ratings numbers.

“As an industry, I think everybody is more disciplined than we used to be,” Meidel said. “We don’t spend that $45 million on a show like we used to. We’re very cost-efficient. You look for tax credits, a lot of things you can do ….”

 It bears mentioning that a week of no sales news in the wake of NATPE does not necessarily mean that the sales efforts mounted at the conference were in vain or otherwise ineffective. Clearance announcements could still come at any time this week — maybe even today.

Adam Buckman is a contributing editor for TVNewsCheck covering mostly the syndication business.