NBC to Drop 10 PM Hour???

[Henry]

This is completely out of left field, but beginning in fall 2023, NBC (the same network that once prided itself on Must-See TV) may stop programming its 10 PM shows and give that hour back to its local affiliates (including WMAQ in Chicago and KING in Seattle). Obviously Sunday Night Football and other sports-related programming (like the Olympics) will be unaffected by the change, but what about Fallon and Myers? And might the other two networks (CBS and ABC) follow suit? Hopefully not, as they've been the strongest-performing ones over the last several years.

The full story is below:

https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/nbc-considers-dropping-10-pm-175645713.html?fr=sycsrp_catchall

[abefroman329]

Obviously Sunday Night Football and other sports-related programming (like the Olympics) will be unaffected by the change, but what about Fallon and Myers?

The move would also impact late-night, with "The Tonight Show With Jimmy Fallon"  likely moving up from its current 11:30 p.m. slot, where he currently competes against Stephen Colbert and Jimmy Kimmel for nighttime viewing.

Although, considering their fanbases seem to skew pretty heavily towards people under 40, they could probably shift both shows to Peacock and not lose any viewers.

[bing101]

Not really shocking that NBC is talking about that. But this is in relation to NBC's campaign to get more viewers to the Peacock app on their TV's.
https://omaha.com/sports/huskers/big-ten/what-is-peacock-another-new-home-for-big-ten-games/article_3c9b00da-23fe-11ed-819f-5313197ad507.html

This is where the Peacock app comes into play in making NBC consider cutting hours to the 10pm timeslots.

https://news.yahoo.com/peacock-become-next-day-streaming-164712930.html

[Life in Paradise]

The biggest moneymaker for most affiliates for the past years has been news.  News, like most sporting events is something that is normally watched live (although a lot of stations have packaged their previous news reports for online and streaming with ads)  Fox has shown that it is profitable to just have two hours of primetime a night, and their affiliates have enjoyed the early hour long news rather than 30/35 minutes at 10 (or 11 on east/west coasts).  "Hit" television show ratings of today would be an utter embarrassment to a network programmer of even 10 years ago.  It is totally unreal how fast this has all occurred, even faster than you can say "Beta, VHS, Floppy disk".

[NWI_Irish96]

This is completely out of left field, but beginning in fall 2023, NBC (the same network that once prided itself on Must-See TV) may stop programming its 10 PM shows and give that hour back to its local affiliates (including WMAQ in Chicago and KING in Seattle). Obviously Sunday Night Football and other sports-related programming (like the Olympics) will be unaffected by the change, but what about Fallon and Myers? And might the other two networks (CBS and ABC) follow suit? Hopefully not, as they've been the strongest-performing ones over the last several years.

The full story is below:

https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/nbc-considers-dropping-10-pm-175645713.html?fr=sycsrp_catchall

So FOX has never had a 10pm (9pm CT) hour, and in any city where the FOX station or an independent station (like WGN in Chicago) have a strong local 10pm/9pm newscast, the era of streaming has provided TV viewers the convenience of watching their news an hour earlier and just streaming the NBC/ABC/CBS show later. So from that standpoint this makes total sense in allowing those networks to have more competitive local newscasts.

[SP Cook]

NBC tried a version of this about 10 years ago with the Leno show.  Leno was moved to 10 PM with the hope he would get a "respectable third"  every night.  This made money for NBC, as the cost of the show was tiny compared to a filmed drama.  The issue was the affiliates.  Leno's show did so poorly it became a bad lead in for the late local news, which is highly profitable.  The affiliates revolted and Leno went back to the Tonight Show. 

The affiliates are again put in a bad spot with this move.  They can either do local news at 10, which puts them in competition with established such shows on Fox and CW and out of sync with their real competitors at ABC and CBS.  Compounded that in most mid sized and small markets the 10 PM news is produced by one of the big three affiliates (in my area NBC produces the CW news and ABC the Fox News at 10).  And then show the (very unfunny IMHO) Tonight Show at 10:35 or toss up something filmed at 10 and keep everything on pattern at 11 and 11:35.  But there is nothing out there available to show. 

The secret is that, like every streamer except Netflix and Hulu, both of which are headed for a decline, all streamers are bleeding money by the bucket full.  NBC wants to drive more people to its very mediocre Peacock service.

[kphoger]

20th century technology was all about solving problems.

21st century technology is about creating new problems so they can sell you solutions you didn't need before they started changing things that were perfectly fine how they were.

NBC (the same network that once prided itself on Must-See TV) may stop programming its 10 PM shows and give that hour back to its local affiliates (including WMAQ in Chicago and KING in Seattle).

This is where the Peacock app comes into play in making NBC consider cutting hours to the 10pm timeslots.

   Did anyone else make this connection?

[thspfc]

20th century technology was all about solving problems.

21st century technology is about creating new problems so they can sell you solutions you didn't need before they started changing things that were perfectly fine how they were.

NBC (the same network that once prided itself on Must-See TV) may stop programming its 10 PM shows and give that hour back to its local affiliates (including WMAQ in Chicago and KING in Seattle).

This is where the Peacock app comes into play in making NBC consider cutting hours to the 10pm timeslots.

   Did anyone else make this connection?

Nope. There's a difference between bad unnecessary technology, and good helpful technology that is used too much or in the wrong way.

Peacock is by far the most annoying of any of the streaming services I've seen. Actually, it's not even Peacock that's the issue - it's the company that owns it, taking their flagship programs off networks and forcing people to get peacock. No other networks have forced their streaming services on viewers to nearly the extent NBC has.

[kphoger]

In the interest of full disclosure... my family hasn't had cable TV in 10½ years, but we subscribe to Peacock.  So this sort of thing actually benefits me.

[NWI_Irish96]

20th century technology was all about solving problems.

21st century technology is about creating new problems so they can sell you solutions you didn't need before they started changing things that were perfectly fine how they were.

NBC (the same network that once prided itself on Must-See TV) may stop programming its 10 PM shows and give that hour back to its local affiliates (including WMAQ in Chicago and KING in Seattle).

This is where the Peacock app comes into play in making NBC consider cutting hours to the 10pm timeslots.

   Did anyone else make this connection?

Once HBO figured out that they could produce their own television shows instead of just showing movies, without the broadcast restrictions against language and nudity no less, and came up with their first huge hit in The Sopranos, we were always going to end up here with the broadcast networks.

Once streaming technology advanced, and streaming services like Netflix started producing original content, the big four networks were all going to have to have their own streaming platforms, and they were going to have to move a certain amount of content to it to generate demand. Having all of your favorite shows remaining on network TV was never going to be realistic.

I do think things will improve in one way in that within the next 10 years, I think you'll be able to subscribe to bundle channels and streaming platforms directly from providers rather than having to get your channels through a 3rd party provider.

I'll use NBC/Comcast as an example. I think packages like this will soon be available for smart TVs:

Free: NBC Broadcast, Peacock free
Standard: NBC Broadcast, USA, MSNBC, Universal Kids, Peacock Premium
Entertainment: Standard + Bravo, E!, Oxygen, Syfy
Sports/Business: Standard + CNBC, Golf Channel, Olympic Channel, NHL Network
Deluxe: Standard + Entertainment + Sports/Business + MSNBC World + CNBC World

Perhaps there's a deal with sports networks not owned by the big four like NFL Network and MLB Network to be in the Sports/Business package as well.

[bandit957]

Traditional broadcast radio and TV in America have declined greatly in the past 25 years, but the wounds are self-inflicted. This didn't have to happen.

In radio, a station with a 10 share today is roughly equivalent to a station with a 0.1 share in the 1980s in terms of how much they will be remembered years from now. That's not an exaggeration. In fact, it may be an understatement. I don't think WCLU in the 1980s even got a 0.1, yet people who listened to it back then still talk about it fondly. Yet nobody can even remember what today's top-rated stations aired just yesterday.

It's humiliating.

[Henry]

Traditional broadcast radio and TV in America have declined greatly in the past 25 years, but the wounds are self-inflicted. This didn't have to happen.

In radio, a station with a 10 share today is roughly equivalent to a station with a 0.1 share in the 1980s in terms of how much they will be remembered years from now. That's not an exaggeration. In fact, it may be an understatement. I don't think WCLU in the 1980s even got a 0.1, yet people who listened to it back then still talk about it fondly. Yet nobody can even remember what today's top-rated stations aired just yesterday.

It's humiliating.

And syndicated shows don't help radio's cause either, with iHeart as the main culprit behind it. In fact, I think there are too many of those as it is. Delilah, American Top 40 and Rush Limbaugh I have no problem with, but right now, there are lots more national shows than local hosts/DJs, and it's ruining what was once a great listening experience.

[Life in Paradise]

Traditional broadcast radio and TV in America have declined greatly in the past 25 years, but the wounds are self-inflicted. This didn't have to happen.

In radio, a station with a 10 share today is roughly equivalent to a station with a 0.1 share in the 1980s in terms of how much they will be remembered years from now. That's not an exaggeration. In fact, it may be an understatement. I don't think WCLU in the 1980s even got a 0.1, yet people who listened to it back then still talk about it fondly. Yet nobody can even remember what today's top-rated stations aired just yesterday.

It's humiliating.

And syndicated shows don't help radio's cause either, with iHeart as the main culprit behind it. In fact, I think there are too many of those as it is. Delilah, American Top 40 and Rush Limbaugh I have no problem with, but right now, there are lots more national shows than local hosts/DJs, and it's ruining what was once a great listening experience.

This is part of the overall fragmentation of the advertising market and available options.  With radio you also have satellite radio to contend with as well as Spotify, Pandora, etc.  A lot of the national shows (not so much of the countdown shows from weekends) came out of the fact that it was cheaper to run those shows than pay for "talent" on the air.  You could first pay minimum wage for the board op in a lot of small markets, or in this day and age you buy the computer software to run the commercials and broadcast the pre-recorded news and weather.  No one is necessarily sitting at the board.  For a lot of these small market stations, that's the difference between staying on air and going dark.  The ad market is so scattered that you can't charge even inflation adjusted amounts anymore.  In the case of iHeart, you also have to include the service cost for all the money they spent buying up radio stations, and now most of them are worth less.

[Scott5114]

Delilah and Rush Limbaugh both make me want to hurl, for completely opposite reasons.

That being said, even though Oklahoma City still has local talent for the most part, I don't really feel like they add a whole lot to the experience.  If a guy is just reading out the name and artist of the song they just played and the station ident and nothing else, I don't care whether they're in Oklahoma City or American Falls, Idaho because they're not doing anything special. After all, Spotify or whatever will give you the same information.

KOMA (and before that KRXO) used to have a DJ named Dave Kelso, who was a font of random information about various classic rock songs and artists. He'd usually ramble off a few factoids about what he was about to play, which definitely made listening to him more entertaining. Unfortunately, he died of cancer a year or so ago.

[CtrlAltDel]

Delilah and Rush Limbaugh both make me want to hurl, for completely opposite reasons.

I thought Rush Limbaugh was dead.

[thspfc]

Traditional broadcast radio and TV in America have declined greatly in the past 25 years, but the wounds are self-inflicted. This didn't have to happen.

In radio, a station with a 10 share today is roughly equivalent to a station with a 0.1 share in the 1980s in terms of how much they will be remembered years from now. That's not an exaggeration. In fact, it may be an understatement. I don't think WCLU in the 1980s even got a 0.1, yet people who listened to it back then still talk about it fondly. Yet nobody can even remember what today's top-rated stations aired just yesterday.

It's humiliating.

I don't remember the last time I listened to music on the radio. Only thing I listen to radio for is sports. If I listen to music, it's from my playlist.

[bandit957]

Traditional broadcast radio and TV in America have declined greatly in the past 25 years, but the wounds are self-inflicted. This didn't have to happen.

In radio, a station with a 10 share today is roughly equivalent to a station with a 0.1 share in the 1980s in terms of how much they will be remembered years from now. That's not an exaggeration. In fact, it may be an understatement. I don't think WCLU in the 1980s even got a 0.1, yet people who listened to it back then still talk about it fondly. Yet nobody can even remember what today's top-rated stations aired just yesterday.

It's humiliating.

I don't remember the last time I listened to music on the radio. Only thing I listen to radio for is sports. If I listen to music, it's from my playlist.

The only thing I still listen to on regular radio is the old 'American Top 40' broadcasts from the Casey Kasem era on WGRR.

[roadman65]

Delilah and Rush Limbaugh both make me want to hurl, for completely opposite reasons.

I thought Rush Limbaugh was dead.

One thing I will give credit to him was the fact the man made millions off of insulting public officials. Something many of us do each and every day, but get paid nothing.

[US 89]

I don't remember the last time I listened to music on the radio. Only thing I listen to radio for is sports. If I listen to music, it's from my playlist.

I listen to music on the radio when I'm too lazy to connect my phone to the car, which usually means I'm driving in town for no more than 15-20 minutes at a time.

[vdeane]

I enjoy Throwback 2K (to the point where I stream the last half hour online once I finish watching This Week and Empire State Weekly from a station I know broadcasts it Sunday mornings), but otherwise prefer the regular radio station programming over the syndicated shows.

At least one Audacity station I'm aware of pre-records some of their programming, probably for the same reason that many stations run syndicated shows.

[brad2971]

20th century technology was all about solving problems.

21st century technology is about creating new problems so they can sell you solutions you didn't need before they started changing things that were perfectly fine how they were.

NBC (the same network that once prided itself on Must-See TV) may stop programming its 10 PM shows and give that hour back to its local affiliates (including WMAQ in Chicago and KING in Seattle).

This is where the Peacock app comes into play in making NBC consider cutting hours to the 10pm timeslots.

   Did anyone else make this connection?

Once HBO figured out that they could produce their own television shows instead of just showing movies, without the broadcast restrictions against language and nudity no less, and came up with their first huge hit in The Sopranos, we were always going to end up here with the broadcast networks.

Once streaming technology advanced, and streaming services like Netflix started producing original content, the big four networks were all going to have to have their own streaming platforms, and they were going to have to move a certain amount of content to it to generate demand. Having all of your favorite shows remaining on network TV was never going to be realistic.

I do think things will improve in one way in that within the next 10 years, I think you'll be able to subscribe to bundle channels and streaming platforms directly from providers rather than having to get your channels through a 3rd party provider.

I'll use NBC/Comcast as an example. I think packages like this will soon be available for smart TVs:

Free: NBC Broadcast, Peacock free
Standard: NBC Broadcast, USA, MSNBC, Universal Kids, Peacock Premium
Entertainment: Standard + Bravo, E!, Oxygen, Syfy
Sports/Business: Standard + CNBC, Golf Channel, Olympic Channel, NHL Network
Deluxe: Standard + Entertainment + Sports/Business + MSNBC World + CNBC World

Perhaps there's a deal with sports networks not owned by the big four like NFL Network and MLB Network to be in the Sports/Business package as well.

I wouldn't presume MSNBC will be around long enough for NBC/Comcast to create such channel tiering. Not to get too political, but MSNBC's base audience can get along just fine without that channel. And Comcast knows this, which is why MSNBC gets LESS per cable subscriber per month than NBCSN did just before that channel was taken down.

Golf Channel and CNBC, on the other hand, are high-dollar advertising platforms.

[brad2971]

Delilah and Rush Limbaugh both make me want to hurl, for completely opposite reasons.

I thought Rush Limbaugh was dead.

One thing I will give credit to him was the fact the man made millions off of insulting public officials. Something many of us do each and every day, but get paid nothing.

Again, not to get too political, but it does say something about both the news/talk radio business AND the Limbaugh legacy audience that Clay Travis+Buck Sexton, Dana Loesch, and Dan Bongino, PUT TOGETHER, are having considerable difficulty even reaching 50% of Limbaugh's cumulative per-week 12-3PM Eastern live audience.

[brad2971]

Traditional broadcast radio and TV in America have declined greatly in the past 25 years, but the wounds are self-inflicted. This didn't have to happen.

In radio, a station with a 10 share today is roughly equivalent to a station with a 0.1 share in the 1980s in terms of how much they will be remembered years from now. That's not an exaggeration. In fact, it may be an understatement. I don't think WCLU in the 1980s even got a 0.1, yet people who listened to it back then still talk about it fondly. Yet nobody can even remember what today's top-rated stations aired just yesterday.

It's humiliating.

And syndicated shows don't help radio's cause either, with iHeart as the main culprit behind it. In fact, I think there are too many of those as it is. Delilah, American Top 40 and Rush Limbaugh I have no problem with, but right now, there are lots more national shows than local hosts/DJs, and it's ruining what was once a great listening experience.

This is part of the overall fragmentation of the advertising market and available options.  With radio you also have satellite radio to contend with as well as Spotify, Pandora, etc.  A lot of the national shows (not so much of the countdown shows from weekends) came out of the fact that it was cheaper to run those shows than pay for "talent" on the air.  You could first pay minimum wage for the board op in a lot of small markets, or in this day and age you buy the computer software to run the commercials and broadcast the pre-recorded news and weather.  No one is necessarily sitting at the board.  For a lot of these small market stations, that's the difference between staying on air and going dark.  The ad market is so scattered that you can't charge even inflation adjusted amounts anymore.  In the case of iHeart, you also have to include the service cost for all the money they spent buying up radio stations, and now most of them are worth less.

One of the smarter things the likes of iHeartMedia and Cumulus have done with property and equipment (and I think Audacy has done this as well) is sell their towers to a company called Vertical Bridge, which uses those towers to colocate wireless communications equipment and services on them in addition to the radio stations.

https://www.rbr.com/vertical-bridge-issues-360-5m-of-secured-tower-revenue-notes/

[roadman65]

The thing is in general, people tend to like abrasive talk as well as perverted talk.   I think with Rush he was very abrasive to attract people whether you liked or disliked the guy. Though, he wasn’t perverted,  look at Howard Stern who was perverted.

To respond to your comment, the others who don’t have the audience are not that abrasive as Limbaugh was, or perverted like Stern is.  I went to school and learned about advertising and demographics, so it’s delivery and how you say it as supposed to just being there talking about it.

And also annoyance is big attention grabber. So people like Limbaugh and Stern will attract.

[ZLoth]

This just demonstrates how traditional "linear" programming has deteriorated in the past decade or so. To put this in the proper context... prior to the 1980s, it was extremely uncommon for homes to have more than one television. The "family" theoretically decided on what to watch that evening, but in reality, the hierarchy was that papa the breadwinner had first choice, followed by mama the homemaker, then everyone else. The first cracks emerged in the early to mid 1980s when video cassette recorders (VCRs) become cheap enough to be commonplace, and not did people try to time-shift programs, but they also rented movies as well. Cheaper televisions followed as well.

Anyone who remembers the show Airwolf knows that the first three seasons (totaling 56 one-hour episodes) aired on CBS, and that Universal commissioned 24 additional episodes that aired in 1987 on the USA network (at a very reduced budget) for the sole purpose of having 80 episodes for syndication repeats (16 weeks). After that season ended at the beginning of August, 1987, Star Trek: The Next Generation began airing at the end of September, 1987, and became one of the biggest first-run syndication hits. Nowadays, it's the cable and streaming series which eventually come to syndicated television. And, what are the talked-about recent series? Stranger Things (Streaming), The Mandalorian (Streaming), Game Of Thrones (Cable), Squid Games (Streaming), Yellowstone (Cable). Did I miss any series airing on over-the-air television?

To be quite honest, I'm hard-pressed to even have one series, either broadcast, cable, or streaming, that I'm actively watching. Right now, I don't have much free time due to work, so I place a premium on what I have available to me.