In Prime-Time TV, Networks Lost the War for 10 P.M. - The New York Times

For the past several years, many broadcast network executives have looked at the ratings for their 10 p.m. shows and lamented that it has become impossible to build a true, breakout hit at that hour anymore.

No hits at 10 p.m.? How about Thursday at 10 on MTV? For most weeks this winter, about six million viewers 18 to 49 (the prime age group for most advertising sales) have flocked to “Jersey Shore,” a number that would constitute a blaring hit by almost anyone’s measure.

Nothing at 10 on any broadcast network on any night of the week comes anywhere near that six million figure. In fact, fewer than five shows in all of the rest of television (other than sports) have averaged that many young-adult viewers this season.

On another cable network, the History Channel, a growing hit called “Pawn Stars” has drawn as many as four million viewers between 18 and 49 on Monday nights, posting numbers bigger than “Law & Order: SVU” on NBC and “The Mentalist” on CBS. Dramas like those have managed to attract about 3.8 million viewers in that audience group, the most for network shows at 10.

Indeed, the 10 p.m. time period has become an expensive graveyard for many hourlong network dramas — so much so that one network, NBC, tried unsuccessfully to insert Jay Leno in that hour five nights a week.

NBC had conducted research that mainly blamed the diminishing audiences at 10 on the growing playback at that hour of programs from digital video recorders. But playback of recorded shows does not seem to be unduly affecting shows like “Jersey Shore” and “Pawn Stars” — along with other 10 p.m. cable successes like “The Game” on BET, “Teen Mom” on MTV, “Tosh.0” on Comedy Central and “Real Housewives of Beverly Hills” on Bravo, all of which are thriving at 10. In that 18 to 49 age group, of the top 15 shows on cable television last week, eight played in the 10 p.m. hour.

To some longtime observers of the medium, the apparent eradication of the 10 p.m. network hit still feels incongruous because 10 p.m. once housed many of the best — and riskiest — shows the networks had to offer, like “Hill Street Blues,” “NYPD Blue” and “L.A. Law.”

Brad Adgate, Horizon Media’s senior vice president for research, who has tracked the business for three decades, pointed out that “every year from 1979 to 2000, the Emmy Award for best drama went to a network 10 p.m. show.”

Last season it also went to a 10 p.m. show: “Mad Men,” on the cable channel AMC.

“Cable is getting all those cutting-edge shows,” Mr. Adgate said. “The really fresh ideas seem to all be on cable now.”

The shift is not accidental.

“You go where the competition ain’t,” said Van Toffler, the president of MTV Networks. Citing what he called a chronic network problem that MTV has tried to exploit since the late 1990s, when it created what it called “The Ten Spot” for its best programming, Mr. Toffler said, “We noticed back then that what you had on network channels at 10 was local news and aging dramas.”

Nancy Dubuc, the president of the History Channel, said there was an element of simplicity to the cable emphasis on 10. “The Fox network goes off at 10,” she noted, “so does the CW network.” But she added, “Once you get into the minutia of it, it is less about the time period than it is about taking risks” with program ideas.

She argued that “media savvy” younger viewers respond less and less to the standard offerings that populate the 10 p.m. landscape. Even those network shows that work at 10 tend to appeal mainly to viewers older than 50, she noted.

But for one broadcast network, CBS, the laundry list of standard offerings has produced a solid track record at 10 p.m. — and that success is not accidental, either.

Like the other networks, CBS has no real breakout hits at 10, in terms of those advertiser-desirable younger viewers, though it does well in amassing total viewers. Shows like “The Mentalist” pull in about 14 million total viewers, in contrast to about eight million for “Jersey Shore.”

But the audience group for the CBS 10 p.m. shows is tilted heavily toward older viewers. The median ages for the CBS 10 p.m. lineup range from a low of 54.6 years for “Hawaii Five-0” (new this season, though resurrected from the CBS program vault) to a high of 60.6 years for another new drama, “Blue Bloods.”

By contrast, “Pawn Wars” is a more broad-based success with a median age of 45.4, and “Jersey Shore” is almost preposterously young, with a median age of 22.8.

What CBS and the other networks are doing, Ms. Dubuc said, is essentially “giving the viewers the same choices over and over again.” Crime dramas occupy by far the biggest chunk of real estate in the 10 p.m. hour on network television.

CBS is more than content to go down that road, however, because lately it has ended in a pile of money. Kelly Kahl, the chief scheduler for CBS, said, “We’re in a slightly different business from the cable guys.”

He credited those networks with shrewdly identifying where the networks are most vulnerable “first during the summers and now at 10 p.m.” But, he said, “There’s kind of a new job we have at 10. We’re not in the business of us versus the other guys anymore. Now it’s about asset management.”

Simply defined, Mr. Kahl said, those assets are dramas owned by CBS, ones that tell contained stories each week, that can be nurtured and nudged through at least four seasons, and then sold in syndication and to cable outlets.

The shows tend to be well-produced, by-the-numbers crime dramas because those shows can be repeated better than other forms of drama, like serialized soap operas.

ABC has had success with serialized shows like “Grey’s Anatomy,” but those shows are far less valuable as long-term assets. At the same time, ABC has generated a long list of 10 p.m. failures, at a daunting cost.

If a broadcast network cannot produce reliable, long-term dramas like CBS has, the economics of 10 p.m. are punishing, especially when compared with the finances of cable’s programming.

Hourlong dramas on networks cost $2 million to $3 million an episode to produce. Few survive, and many more die unseen by the public after pilots that can cost several times as much.

In contrast, Mr. Toffler said, MTV’s shows come in “well under $1 million” an hour. And the hits on the History Channel, like “Pawn Stars,” are even cheaper. They run $250,000 to $300,000 an hour.

Underscoring exactly how much the 10 p.m. hour has become part of a calculated formula, Mr. Kahl suggested that if one of CBS’s carefully manufactured 10 p.m. crime shows somehow managed to break through as a must-see hit on a scale like that of “E.R.,” it would not last long at 10.

“We would probably move it to 9,” Mr. Kahl said — the better to use it to set up some other dependable, if less stellar, performer at 10 p.m.

via nytimes.com