The TV upfronts, where shows live or die, are gonna be weird this year
Lockdown viewing habits and ad-supported streaming services are having hefty impacts on TV's biggest deal-making days
Aux News NBCUniversal
In case the reek of dead TV shows wafting over from The CW’s personal abattoir didn’t make it readily apparent, the annual TV upfront presentations are nearly upon us. Although typically obscured to consumers, the upfronts—in which the various networks and/or the giant media conglomerates they serve as a single grasping tentacle of attempt to convince the biggest advertisers on the planet to spend hundreds of millions on ad blocks for the coming year’s schedule—are hugely influential to our media habits. Shows live or die based on how much the networks think they can get for their ad time, and the upfronts are the crucible in which those numbers get, sometimes fatally, crunched.
They’re also set to get pretty weird this year.
There are a few different reasons for that, as noted in a new report by Variety this weekend. For one thing, this year’s upfronts—which kick off in earnest with NBCUniversal’s presentation on Monday morning in New York—are the first in-person versions of the event since 2019, for obvious reasons. (Among other things, networks tend to throw a lot of talent at these things, and nobody wants a marketing presentation to be the reason an entire cast comes down with COVID.) All participants will thus be a little rusty at the pressing flesh parts of the deal-making, especially since TV revenues are currently down across the board.
Meanwhile, the split that’s been growing in viewership habits since streaming first began in earnest in the late 2000s has finally reached the point where the industry is facing threats from, not just rival networks, but whole rival forms of entertainment, exacerbated by lockdown-shaped viewing habits. YouTube, Twitch, TikTok and more are increasingly coming into their own as advertising vectors; YouTube has its own slot among “the big boys” with a presentation next week, while TikTok had its own presentation on May 4.
The networks are also getting hit from a direction that might have seemed absurd a few years back: Streaming services, typically resistant to running ads, but now increasingly moving in the direction of ad-supported subscription tiers. HBO Max launched its cheaper ad-serving version last year, and Disney and Netflix—both hurting, to lesser or greater degrees, from the lack of ways to milk cash out of their still-hefty subscriber bases—are expected to follow suit.
All of which creates an environment in which advertisers know they have way more options for spending their billions, as well as an awareness that linear TV is no longer the end-all, be-all for catching eyeballs. (Also factor in the ongoing difficulties in the TV ratings industry, as Nielsen and its various competitors, still a key part in telling all involved how much a minute of TV time is worth, struggle to get an accurate handle on how, and how often, people are watching shows in a far more fragmented market.)
So, take solace, readers, when considering the fates of your favorite shows: They’re usually not being cruelly judged on their merits by harsh and unforgiving critics just waiting to pull the plug. Instead, they live or die based on partially understood advertising deals engineered by industry executives flailing to keep up with a rapidly shifting media environment where, say, a pandemic-related cut in car production can have a billion-dollar impact on corporate budgets. It’s all just chaos! So, that’s a comfort.
24 Comments
I really wish someone would make a video game around the TV industry. There use to be one called madtv back in the 80s/90s, something like that, that had the player running a broadcast station. It was a lot of fun. An update of that or something more ambitious and simulation oriented would be great.
It’s a boardgame called The Networks
https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/72321/networks
That’s pretty cool, I didn’t know it existed, but I would still rather have it as a computer game, board games aren’t really my jam.
There’s a few modern versions of Mad TV actually.TV Tower is a fan-made remake of Mad TV.https://www.tvtower.org/en/indexEmpire TV Tycoon is a more polished update of it.http://www.empiretvgame.com/
Still the One.
I remember when that originally aired.
The best part is Danny DeVito’s total lack of enthusiasm.
I don’t think he’s even trying to be in character.He’s just like “WTF am I doing in this balloon?”
Is that Fonzie with a beard?I’ve never seen that Fonzie.
Featuring PTA’s dad Ernie Anderson doing the end-tag!
When are we finally going to stop caring about Nielsen data? The least reliable numbers.
I did it for a week about fifteen years ago and tried to be as diligent as possible. They sent me some cash for doing it too.
Yeah. YouTubeTV has a minute by minute record of my viewing, and I’m sure they have my demographics from someplace. Same with most viewers I’d think.
Is Nielson still sending out surveys?
Is Nielson still sending out surveys?Yep. They keep sending them to me, even though I’ve never replied and haven’t even had cable in close to ten years.
If the CW execs had any pride, after cancelling Legends of Tomorrow without giving it a final season, they would all announce their resignation and suicide
By seppuku if they have any honor.
As an homage to that s2 Legends of Tomorrow episode where they go to feudal Japan
A new report recently said it wasn’t actually the CW. They in fact wanted to keep the show running but Warner Bros didn’t want to pay the leases for the studio space. Still dumb though.
I watched an upfront a few years back, and the way the network president talked to the ad-buyers was eye opening. It was the first time I realized the network doesn’t see the viewers as the customers. The ad-buyers are the customers, the viewers are the product being sold, and the shows are… bait, I guess?
Well, seeing as people traditionally watched TV for free (though basic cable admittedly muddied those waters), the sponsors were indeed the actual customers.
Always been that way with the networks. “If something is free, you are the product.”
Never truer than in the age of free apps and social media.
Waiting for the “eff it, let’s just run reruns of A-Team and Magnum P.I.”