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NBC chief, after canceling 'Passions,' sees 'beginning of end' for network soaps
Saturday, January 27, 2007
Bloomberg News
NBC network chief Jeff Zucker, who canceled the soap opera "Passions" last week, predicts the daytime dramas are facing "the beginning of the end."
"They went away from radio; they'll go away from television," Zucker, chief executive officer of NBC Universal Television Group, said last week at an event to showcase the network's program line up in Pasadena, California.
Women entering the workforce, an increase in cable channels and the success of syndicated daytime programs such as "The Oprah Winfrey Show" are reducing the audience for network soap operas. The number of daytime dramas on network TV has slumped from 18 in the early 1970s to nine today, including "Passions."
"They're not going to go away tomorrow," said Brad Adgate, director of research for the advertising firm, Horizon Media, in New York. "But it will happen."
The total audience for daytime soap operas on the networks fell to 30.5 million last year from 51.8 million in 1999, a 41 percent drop, according to Nielsen Media Research, while the overall daytime audience fell 36 percent.
"The way people view story-telling in their homes is changing," she said. "The challenge for us is to deliver the stories the best way we can in a successful business model."
She said the networks have recognized that sustaining interest in daytime programming relies, in part, on developing new ways to deliver the shows, like over the Internet, on cell phones and other digital devices.
"There are different issues at hand for each network," she said. "The universal issue is finding a viable business model that works."
`Great Mechanism'
P&G is betting that daytime television is still the best way to reach consumers. Brian Cahill, vice president for operations and strategic initiatives for TeleVest Daytime Programs, which produces the daytime shows for P&G, said the company doesn't plan to abandon its programs on CBS.
"It's a great mechanism through which we can reach our consumers," he said, adding that any demise of soap operas on the networks, "may be true of NBC, but it's certainly not true of where we are."
`Holistic Approach'
ABC, a unit of the Burbank, California-based Walt Disney Co., is also committed to its soap operas, said Brian Frons, president of daytime television at ABC.
He said Disney takes "a more holistic approach" to assessing the popularity of the shows, largely because of Disney's successful cable channel, Soapnet, which first appeared seven years ago and now reaches 57 million homes.
Soapnet has a weekday primetime schedule that now includes episodes of the five leading soap operas that appeared earlier in the day on ABC, NBC and CBS.
In 2006, Soapnet had its largest audiences ever during primetime, an average of 311,000 nightly viewers.
"Soap opera fans have a great passion," said Deborah Blackwell, Soapnet's executive vice president and general manager. "They constantly come up to me and say Soapnet changed their life. We feel we're taking the right steps to ensure the future health of soap operas."
http://www.rep-am.com/story.php?id=18848&p=2
Saturday, January 27, 2007
Bloomberg News
NBC network chief Jeff Zucker, who canceled the soap opera "Passions" last week, predicts the daytime dramas are facing "the beginning of the end."
"They went away from radio; they'll go away from television," Zucker, chief executive officer of NBC Universal Television Group, said last week at an event to showcase the network's program line up in Pasadena, California.
Women entering the workforce, an increase in cable channels and the success of syndicated daytime programs such as "The Oprah Winfrey Show" are reducing the audience for network soap operas. The number of daytime dramas on network TV has slumped from 18 in the early 1970s to nine today, including "Passions."
"They're not going to go away tomorrow," said Brad Adgate, director of research for the advertising firm, Horizon Media, in New York. "But it will happen."
The total audience for daytime soap operas on the networks fell to 30.5 million last year from 51.8 million in 1999, a 41 percent drop, according to Nielsen Media Research, while the overall daytime audience fell 36 percent.
"The way people view story-telling in their homes is changing," she said. "The challenge for us is to deliver the stories the best way we can in a successful business model."
She said the networks have recognized that sustaining interest in daytime programming relies, in part, on developing new ways to deliver the shows, like over the Internet, on cell phones and other digital devices.
"There are different issues at hand for each network," she said. "The universal issue is finding a viable business model that works."
`Great Mechanism'
P&G is betting that daytime television is still the best way to reach consumers. Brian Cahill, vice president for operations and strategic initiatives for TeleVest Daytime Programs, which produces the daytime shows for P&G, said the company doesn't plan to abandon its programs on CBS.
"It's a great mechanism through which we can reach our consumers," he said, adding that any demise of soap operas on the networks, "may be true of NBC, but it's certainly not true of where we are."
`Holistic Approach'
ABC, a unit of the Burbank, California-based Walt Disney Co., is also committed to its soap operas, said Brian Frons, president of daytime television at ABC.
He said Disney takes "a more holistic approach" to assessing the popularity of the shows, largely because of Disney's successful cable channel, Soapnet, which first appeared seven years ago and now reaches 57 million homes.
Soapnet has a weekday primetime schedule that now includes episodes of the five leading soap operas that appeared earlier in the day on ABC, NBC and CBS.
In 2006, Soapnet had its largest audiences ever during primetime, an average of 311,000 nightly viewers.
"Soap opera fans have a great passion," said Deborah Blackwell, Soapnet's executive vice president and general manager. "They constantly come up to me and say Soapnet changed their life. We feel we're taking the right steps to ensure the future health of soap operas."
http://www.rep-am.com/story.php?id=18848&p=2
