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TV Nets May Be Forced to Make Drastic Changes

As television viewership continues to fall and advertising is predicted to slump, TV may need to make some drastic changes in coming months, according to Variety.

One such change could be that one of the major networks decides to drop an hour of prime time, programming only from 8pm to 10pm and giving the extra hour to the affiliates, a move that has been mulled for years. The move could be risky, as once they give up that hour it would be nearly impossible to get it back. On the other hand, cutting seven hours would save in program costs and cut out underperforming shows.

Networks may also begin to look to cable programming for guidance, cutting out some original programming and running more of those originals. Another move could be to farm out low-rated programming blocks as the CW did to Media Rights Capital - though that particular move was not successful and the deal was axed last week.

Television has been struggling with falling ratings for years. Though industry watchers predicted ages ago that advertising would bottom out as ratings continued to fall, the opposite had happened: advertisers were forced to buy more ads in order to reach the same number of eyeballs. But now the TV nets are still reeling from the effects of last winter’s writers strike, and the soft economy has all but crippled the auto industry, one of television’s top advertising categories. It may be time to pull out the big guns, Variety predicts.