TV in the US on the brink of extinction?
News could not be better... Heck yes economy down the drain and all but as long as TV is wiped out in the process I am all for the deepest recession of all time. The time waster that makes couch potatoes and controls mind to the right like no other is having some serious serious troubles in the USofA. Why? The biggest advertisers of TV is the - wait for it - car industry. And what did we learn last week? The car industry all over the world is in deep shit - the US one in the deepest brown sauce. Now the easiest possible way to save money in a car company without stopping to produce cars is advertisement and thats what they do - cut almost all advertisement as soon as the contracts run out. Now spiral back that means the already not so very profitable TV industry is loosing its biggest money giver (isnīt it interesting that cars, oil and tv with a bit of banking sprinkled in form such a homogenous group?). Readers of this blog know that that the TV industry had prior to all the economic troubles already some heavy rough years where they had to outsource some less profitable time slots to cheapos resulting in worse programming and lower ratings - you know death spiral.
Now, get ready for an even more radical change on Saturday mornings: As Fox parts ways with 4Kids (the deal expires at the end of the year), the network is adopting an unprecedented model for the daypart: Infomercials.
In a network first, Fox has given two of its four Saturday morning hours back to affiliates. But the other two, cleared on 95% of its stations, will now be sold to advertisers -- who will use the time to sell products.
Thats right to stop bleeding they are giving their precious programming hours away to air more infomercials - you know to sell useless shit to stay at home moms that have no money need to get credit for buying the stuff canīt pay it back get insolvent and take the banks with them - oh the irony is breathtaking.
It gets better:
Meanwhile, should one of the nets decide their hefty broadcast infrastructure no longer makes sense, they could go for the most drastic idea of all, one that then-NBC honcho Bob Wright first dangled more than 10 years ago: Dump the network model entirely and turn your broadcast network into a cable one.
Dump TV and put it into the bin - thats my solution - would cost everyone the least stress and would open the world up to some undetered free information flow to everyone and would wake the sleep at home people up and see things more clearly. Its bound to happen anyway. If you have a cable solution only then the result will be that cable is too expensive in times of peril and people rather choose internet then cable TV in the end - so subscription will be soo low that there still wouldnīt be quality programming so people have no reason to subscribe - TV is so far down the death spiral its over before you know it - count my words.
The info comes from the (for me) highly entertaining article called "Needed: Network bailout?" on Variety.com.
Yes they actually think you can save the Titanic.