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Sneak preview: Canadian TV networks unveil fall schedules, starting Tuesday
Tuesday June 03rd 2014You wouldn’t know it from watching TV this week, but what happens in Toronto starting Tuesday will go a long way toward deciding what you see on TV this fall.
All week private broadcasters Rogers Media, Shaw Media and Bell Media — owners of City, Global and CTV, respectively — will unveil their fall lineups before advertisers and invited media.
It’s all part of an annual ritual in which Canadian broadcasters spend an estimated $800 million — no one knows the exact figure — on programs produced by the major U.S. production studios.
It’s a smaller, homegrown version of the U.S. networks’ May presentations in New York, in which advertisers commit to about $10 billion in fall spending on conventional, broadcast TV programs.
It takes years for a Grey’s Anatomy or a Big Bang Theory to emerge as a bona fide hit, but if this past season is anything to go by, what broadcasters are realistically hoping for is the next Sleepy Hollow or The Blacklist, a program that will attract enough viewers to warrant at least a second season, and not another Betrayal or Lucky 7 — programs that make little impression and quickly disappear.
Millions of dollars are at stake, even in Canada with its smaller pool of viewers and small advertising market.
Patricia Arquette (centre) will star in the latest CSI spinoff, CSI: Cyber. (Monty Brinton/CBS)
Where premium cable channels like HBO, Super Channel and The Movie Network make their money from subscriptions, the broadcast networks earn their revenue from commercial advertising.
That’s why Rogers Media launched a pre-emptive $5 billion, 12-year bid to wrest NHL hockey from CBC and TSN. Live sports is one of the few types of programming immune from channel surfing, downloading and even PVR viewing. Viewers come for the hockey and are forced to stay for the ads.
Rogers’ power play for hockey is not the only wrinkle this season.
A move by the U.S. production studios to more series and shorter seasons means the practice of “simulcasting” — in which a Canadian network broadcasts a program simultaneously with its U.S. network counterpart, so as not to split the audience and cut into ad revenue — has become more complicated.
Instead of 22 to 24 episodes a season, serialized dramas such as Hannibal and The Following are limiting themselves to 13, or even eight, as in the case of midseason success Resurrection. All three will return.
Ben McKenzie, left, and Donal Logue in Gotham. (Jessica Miglio/Fox Broadcasting)
So while much of the hype and publicity this week will surround new series like the Dark Knight prequel Gotham and the CSI and NCIS spinoffs CSI: Cyber, due in midseason, and NCIS: New Orleans, due this fall, the real focus will be on each network’s schedule.
NCIS: New Orleans — another franchise, another spinoff. (Skip Bolen/CBS)
While many media analysts believe program scheduling isn’t as important as it used to be — viewers can watch programs when they want, thanks to PVRs — the “live view,” in which viewers watch a program live, as it’s being broadcast, ads and all, is critically important to the networks’ future survival.
That’s as true of homegrown, Canadian-made dramas like Rookie Blue and The Listener as it is expensive imports like CSI and NCIS.
The U.S. networks have already made significant changes to their fall schedules that will cause headaches for their Canadian counterparts.
CBS has moved The Amazing Race, one of CTV’s most-watched programs and much more popular here than in the U.S., to lightly viewed Fridays from Sundays, the most competitive, heavily viewed night of the week.
CTV will have to move Amazing Race to Fridays as well, or else risk splitting the audience and losing potential ad revenue.
Similarly, CBS has moved The Big Bang Theory — the most-watched comedy in both countries, by far — to Mondays from its familiar home on Thursdays. Complicating matters further, CBS will move Big Bang Theory back to Thursdays once the NFL season is over and CBS is no longer showing football on Thursday nights.
All this adds up to scheduling headaches for every network on Canadian TV — except possibly Rogers-owned City, thanks to its hockey deal.
The fall announcements, with complete fall schedules, begin Tuesday with City. Shaw/Global follows on June 4, and Bell Media wraps up the week on June 5, with both CTV and CTV Two.
Source: Vancouver Sun
Headline, Industry News
Sneak preview: Canadian TV networks unveil fall schedules, starting Tuesday
Tuesday June 03rd 2014You wouldn’t know it from watching TV this week, but what happens in Toronto starting Tuesday will go a long way toward deciding what you see on TV this fall.
All week private broadcasters Rogers Media, Shaw Media and Bell Media — owners of City, Global and CTV, respectively — will unveil their fall lineups before advertisers and invited media.
It’s all part of an annual ritual in which Canadian broadcasters spend an estimated $800 million — no one knows the exact figure — on programs produced by the major U.S. production studios.
It’s a smaller, homegrown version of the U.S. networks’ May presentations in New York, in which advertisers commit to about $10 billion in fall spending on conventional, broadcast TV programs.
It takes years for a Grey’s Anatomy or a Big Bang Theory to emerge as a bona fide hit, but if this past season is anything to go by, what broadcasters are realistically hoping for is the next Sleepy Hollow or The Blacklist, a program that will attract enough viewers to warrant at least a second season, and not another Betrayal or Lucky 7 — programs that make little impression and quickly disappear.
Millions of dollars are at stake, even in Canada with its smaller pool of viewers and small advertising market.
Patricia Arquette (centre) will star in the latest CSI spinoff, CSI: Cyber. (Monty Brinton/CBS)
Where premium cable channels like HBO, Super Channel and The Movie Network make their money from subscriptions, the broadcast networks earn their revenue from commercial advertising.
That’s why Rogers Media launched a pre-emptive $5 billion, 12-year bid to wrest NHL hockey from CBC and TSN. Live sports is one of the few types of programming immune from channel surfing, downloading and even PVR viewing. Viewers come for the hockey and are forced to stay for the ads.
Rogers’ power play for hockey is not the only wrinkle this season.
A move by the U.S. production studios to more series and shorter seasons means the practice of “simulcasting” — in which a Canadian network broadcasts a program simultaneously with its U.S. network counterpart, so as not to split the audience and cut into ad revenue — has become more complicated.
Instead of 22 to 24 episodes a season, serialized dramas such as Hannibal and The Following are limiting themselves to 13, or even eight, as in the case of midseason success Resurrection. All three will return.
Ben McKenzie, left, and Donal Logue in Gotham. (Jessica Miglio/Fox Broadcasting)
So while much of the hype and publicity this week will surround new series like the Dark Knight prequel Gotham and the CSI and NCIS spinoffs CSI: Cyber, due in midseason, and NCIS: New Orleans, due this fall, the real focus will be on each network’s schedule.
NCIS: New Orleans — another franchise, another spinoff. (Skip Bolen/CBS)
While many media analysts believe program scheduling isn’t as important as it used to be — viewers can watch programs when they want, thanks to PVRs — the “live view,” in which viewers watch a program live, as it’s being broadcast, ads and all, is critically important to the networks’ future survival.
That’s as true of homegrown, Canadian-made dramas like Rookie Blue and The Listener as it is expensive imports like CSI and NCIS.
The U.S. networks have already made significant changes to their fall schedules that will cause headaches for their Canadian counterparts.
CBS has moved The Amazing Race, one of CTV’s most-watched programs and much more popular here than in the U.S., to lightly viewed Fridays from Sundays, the most competitive, heavily viewed night of the week.
CTV will have to move Amazing Race to Fridays as well, or else risk splitting the audience and losing potential ad revenue.
Similarly, CBS has moved The Big Bang Theory — the most-watched comedy in both countries, by far — to Mondays from its familiar home on Thursdays. Complicating matters further, CBS will move Big Bang Theory back to Thursdays once the NFL season is over and CBS is no longer showing football on Thursday nights.
All this adds up to scheduling headaches for every network on Canadian TV — except possibly Rogers-owned City, thanks to its hockey deal.
The fall announcements, with complete fall schedules, begin Tuesday with City. Shaw/Global follows on June 4, and Bell Media wraps up the week on June 5, with both CTV and CTV Two.
Source: Vancouver Sun
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Headline, Industry News
Sneak preview: Canadian TV networks unveil fall schedules, starting Tuesday
Tuesday June 03rd 2014You wouldn’t know it from watching TV this week, but what happens in Toronto starting Tuesday will go a long way toward deciding what you see on TV this fall.
All week private broadcasters Rogers Media, Shaw Media and Bell Media — owners of City, Global and CTV, respectively — will unveil their fall lineups before advertisers and invited media.
It’s all part of an annual ritual in which Canadian broadcasters spend an estimated $800 million — no one knows the exact figure — on programs produced by the major U.S. production studios.
It’s a smaller, homegrown version of the U.S. networks’ May presentations in New York, in which advertisers commit to about $10 billion in fall spending on conventional, broadcast TV programs.
It takes years for a Grey’s Anatomy or a Big Bang Theory to emerge as a bona fide hit, but if this past season is anything to go by, what broadcasters are realistically hoping for is the next Sleepy Hollow or The Blacklist, a program that will attract enough viewers to warrant at least a second season, and not another Betrayal or Lucky 7 — programs that make little impression and quickly disappear.
Millions of dollars are at stake, even in Canada with its smaller pool of viewers and small advertising market.
Patricia Arquette (centre) will star in the latest CSI spinoff, CSI: Cyber. (Monty Brinton/CBS)
Where premium cable channels like HBO, Super Channel and The Movie Network make their money from subscriptions, the broadcast networks earn their revenue from commercial advertising.
That’s why Rogers Media launched a pre-emptive $5 billion, 12-year bid to wrest NHL hockey from CBC and TSN. Live sports is one of the few types of programming immune from channel surfing, downloading and even PVR viewing. Viewers come for the hockey and are forced to stay for the ads.
Rogers’ power play for hockey is not the only wrinkle this season.
A move by the U.S. production studios to more series and shorter seasons means the practice of “simulcasting” — in which a Canadian network broadcasts a program simultaneously with its U.S. network counterpart, so as not to split the audience and cut into ad revenue — has become more complicated.
Instead of 22 to 24 episodes a season, serialized dramas such as Hannibal and The Following are limiting themselves to 13, or even eight, as in the case of midseason success Resurrection. All three will return.
Ben McKenzie, left, and Donal Logue in Gotham. (Jessica Miglio/Fox Broadcasting)
So while much of the hype and publicity this week will surround new series like the Dark Knight prequel Gotham and the CSI and NCIS spinoffs CSI: Cyber, due in midseason, and NCIS: New Orleans, due this fall, the real focus will be on each network’s schedule.
NCIS: New Orleans — another franchise, another spinoff. (Skip Bolen/CBS)
While many media analysts believe program scheduling isn’t as important as it used to be — viewers can watch programs when they want, thanks to PVRs — the “live view,” in which viewers watch a program live, as it’s being broadcast, ads and all, is critically important to the networks’ future survival.
That’s as true of homegrown, Canadian-made dramas like Rookie Blue and The Listener as it is expensive imports like CSI and NCIS.
The U.S. networks have already made significant changes to their fall schedules that will cause headaches for their Canadian counterparts.
CBS has moved The Amazing Race, one of CTV’s most-watched programs and much more popular here than in the U.S., to lightly viewed Fridays from Sundays, the most competitive, heavily viewed night of the week.
CTV will have to move Amazing Race to Fridays as well, or else risk splitting the audience and losing potential ad revenue.
Similarly, CBS has moved The Big Bang Theory — the most-watched comedy in both countries, by far — to Mondays from its familiar home on Thursdays. Complicating matters further, CBS will move Big Bang Theory back to Thursdays once the NFL season is over and CBS is no longer showing football on Thursday nights.
All this adds up to scheduling headaches for every network on Canadian TV — except possibly Rogers-owned City, thanks to its hockey deal.
The fall announcements, with complete fall schedules, begin Tuesday with City. Shaw/Global follows on June 4, and Bell Media wraps up the week on June 5, with both CTV and CTV Two.
Source: Vancouver Sun
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