NBC of course in recent years have been the top canidate since they had Jeff Zucker in charge, but that's not the main point of this discussion. I'm going to break things down on their divisions: Entertainment, News and Sports:
Entertainment
NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- ABC needs to pull a desperate housewife out of its fall schedule.
In 2004, after suffering a drop in upfront ad sales thanks to an overdependence on game show "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire," ABC greenlit "Lost" and "Desperate Housewives," which fueled its resurgence. This fall, ABC's hoping for a similar jolt. The network has grown reliant on a group of aging stalwarts and that has ad buyers concerned.
ABC can't afford to lose any viewers of its aging 'Grey's Anatomy.' How bad has it gotten? Even ratings-challenged NBC, no longer so far behind ABC in terms of performance, has been taking potshots. For the 2009-2010 prime-time broadcast season, ABC saw its average viewership come in third, behind CBS and Fox, according to Nielsen. More crucial, perhaps, is its viewership in the demographic coveted by advertisers -- people between the ages of 18 and 49. ABC nabbed an average of 2.692 million viewers, Nielsen said, while NBC, boosted by its broadcasts of the Winter Olympics, captured an average of 2.686 million viewers between 18 and 49 -- not too far apart.
Couple that with ABC's recent spate of executive turnover -- ABC news chief David Westin has indicated he will leave by the end of 2010, and the network has parted ways with both Stephen McPherson, the man who devised its new fall schedule, and Michael Benson, one of the executives who was supposed to market its new shows to the masses -- and it will be a year of rebuilding.
"Their tentpole shows are indeed aging," said Don Seaman, VP-director of communications analysis at Havas media-buying firm MPG. He suggests the "younger" shows that have potential will need strong sampling to gain a foothold among younger viewers. "Otherwise you might be looking at a longer reclamation project for the Alphabet network," he said.
Producing better-watched programming is crucial to ABC's success. ABC has seen its upfront sales decline in recent years, according to recent estimates from Fitch Ratings. The Disney net once marched in lockstep with the arguably more stable CBS, securing about $2.5 billion in ad commitments for the 2008-2009 TV season. This year, ABC was only able to notch around $2.2 billion, according to Fitch, after falling to $2.1 billion in 2009. Meantime, lesser-ranked NBC and better-rated Fox increased their smaller totals year over year.
This comes after ABC, like all the other broadcast networks, saw overall ad revenue drop in recession-plagued 2009 by 2.1%, to about $5.06 billion from $5.17 billion, according to Kantar Media. (ABC's decline was less than that experienced by any other broadcast rival that year.)
News
Westin may be confident, but hes dead wrong. The news division has been decimated since he arrived during the ides of March.
I worked at the ABC News in the Washington, D.C., bureau when Westin was hand-picked by parent company Disney President Robert Iger (whos now Disney CEO.)
Even now, I remember the shock and disappointment among the journalists that a lawyerWestinwould be running their beloved news division.
He moved from D.C. to Manhattan when he got the ABC News job and quickly fell into an elitist, out-of-touch, mainstream media mindset. He fired the conservative Bill Kristol (who moved to Fox News) and promoted liberal journalistsDiane Sawyer, George Stephanopoulos, Fareed Zakaria and, most recently, Christiane Amanpour.
Westin was not a news man. But, as time went on, Westins bigger problem was that he wasnt a businessman. His management style was to only act out of fear for his own position. He also seemingly did Igers bidding without pushing back. He was risk averse.
However, Westins biggest weakness was that he lacked the entrepreneurial spirit to launch innovative and creative ventures.
ABC Didnt Adapt
The old three-network broadcast TV industry changed with the development of cable TV and the Internet.
Journalists like to think themselves above the fray of the business side of their industry. But media is a business like any other. When existing revenue streams are drying up (TV shows lose viewers) and there is no new revenue streams (new programs, cable outlets, digital media), then expenses have to be cut.
The networks that have succeeded during this period did so by doing two things: creating new programs that appeal to viewers and develop a cable network outlet. ABC News, under Westins failed leadership, did neither.
Furthermore, while all media has suffered in the recession, ABC News in particular was hit hard because it was trying to manage lower ad revenue with no new revenue streams to shore up the loss.
Cable networks are the most profitable part of news divisions, but ABC did not utilize that model. Without the cable counterpart, ABC News is dependent on the dwindling viewers of broadcast news.
Westin could have boosted profits by creating new programming or adapting to the changing media landscape. Instead, he dealt with dwindling profits by cuttings costs related to news gatheringclosing bureaus and cutting staff.
During the past two years especially, Westin made drastic staff cuts which affected ABC morale. By late April, Westin closed every domestic bureau (except Washington, D.C.), fired half of the correspondents and cut the staff by about 400 people.
He emailed the staff after the massive cuts that from this base, we are positioned to grow and to do even greater work than we have in the past.
Again, he was wrong.
Roone Arledges Success
Roone Arledge was one of the greatest minds in broadcast history. His talent was in creating dynamic news shows around stars such as Peter Jennings, David Brinkley, Barbara Walters, Ted Koppel and Diane Sawyer.
Arledge created programming to meet the audience demands. Magazine shows, derided by critics as being undignified for a news division, were the most profitable divisions at ABC News. He wasn't elitist and met the public demand with shows such as 20/20 and Prime Time Live.
The late night news program Nightline evolved out of a nightly report on the Iran hostage crisis that was getting good ratings.
Arledge recognized the space for competition to NBC's Meet the Press so he decided to create his own Sunday public affairs show. He hired David Brinkley, who was languishing at NBC, and made him the anchor of the antiquated Issues and Answers show. This Week with David Brinkley quickly became the Sunday morning standard both in ratings and revenue.
Westin inherited the Arledge legacy and proceeded to squander it.
He never created a new show. He shuttered the once-profitable news magazine shows. He refused to move into the profitable cable TV business.
From a management standpoint, Westin was weak and afraid of Arledge's stars, who used their shows to promote themselves, instead of the network.
World News Tonight with Peter Jennings was the No. 1 evening newscast for years. Westin, however, never pushed Jennings to groom his replacement. So when Jennings died, the network scrambled for months to determine the replacement. (Compare this model to NBC which kept a content Brian Williams in the wings ready to jump in the anchor chair when Tom Brokaw retired.)
Westin finally came up with the cockamamie plan of putting Elizabeth Vargas and Bob Woodruff rotating between the anchor desk and on-site reporting. The choice of Vargas and Woodruff was made because Westin assumed that younger viewers like watching younger anchors. His assumption was incorrect.
Even though the co-anchor concept was prematurely broken up after Woodruff's brain injury in Iraq, the ratings had been going down and continued to do so until Vargas was shown the door.
Charlie Gibson, who had waited patiently his entire career to land the evening news anchor chair, seemed tired and unmotivated in the slot. He never took on a leadership role in the New York bureau so World News Tonight limped along for another couple years.
Despite the economic recession and dwindling profits at ABC, Westin gave Diane Sawyer $16 million to anchor after Gibson. Sawyer's star power has not changed the direction of the sinking ship and the broadcast is still behind Brian Williams on NBC.
Westin gave Sawyer the evening anchor chair at her demand, but the decision was short-sighted. She left an open seat at Good Morning America which Westin filled with George Stephanopoulos. The musical chairs continued and Stephanopoulos anchor chair at "This Week" was filled with CNN's foreign affairs correspondent Christiane Amanpour.
Stephanopoulos was well regarded in the Sunday show slot, but with the switch, ratings have fallen for both Good Morning America and This Week and critics have panned both shows. Amanpour is so miscast as anchor of a political Sunday show that even ABC staff find the show unwatchable and embarrassing.
Westin attemptedbut failedto partner ABC with CNN and Bloomberg to bring in much-needed revenue. Instead, he should have spent his time creating new shows with audience appeal and new concepts to adapt to a changed media landscape.
Once the number one news source for Americans, ABC News is now limping to its inevitable end: getting sold to anyone willing to take on the mess left by David Westin.
Sports
Nearing the four-year anniversary of being rebranded ESPN on ABC, ABC has lost the rights to many marquee sporting events over the past decade -- often to ESPN.
Just recently, ABC has lost the British Open to ESPN (after a half-century covering the event) and most of NASCAR's Chase for the Cup (the network will air one race, with ESPN carrying the rest). The network would have been completely shut out of the NBA's Eastern Conference Final as well, had the series not been moved up due to a short second round.
Of course, those are small potatoes compared to the network's biggest loss. Starting next year, ESPN will televise the entire Bowl Championship Series -- including the Rose Bowl (on ABC since 1989) and the National Championship Game. ABC will be left with just one bowl game (the Outback Bowl in 2011), only five years after airing as many as three on one day.
The network's dwindling sports line-up resulted in frustration from its affiliates earlier this year, which ESPN responded to with a weekly, two-hour block of studio programming. The block, ESPN Sports Saturday, has not been particularly successful in the ratings (excluding weeks when it had a strong lead-in), although the affiliates appeared at the outset to be pleased by the move.
ESPN has repeatedly touted ABC's lineup. In February, ESPN/ABC President George Bodenheimer told Sports Media Watch as much: "We still have an extremely strong line-up -- Indy 500, NBA Finals, Little League World Series, college football Saturday night -- we still have an extremely strong line-up on ABC, and I expect that to continue."
However, that line-up does not appear very strong compared to its competitors, CBS (NFL, NCAA Tournament, The Masters), NBC (NFL, Olympics every two years) and FOX (NFL, World Series, Daytona 500), or even cable nets TNT and TBS (NBA Conference Finals, MLB LCS and NCAA Tournament).
ESPN on ABC also pales in comparison to ESPN itself, which in addition to the Bowl Championship Series also has the rights to Monday Night Football, regular season and postseason NBA, regular season Major League Baseball and much more.
Overall, 2010 has been a very good year for ABC -- mainly because the network has actually aired marquee sporting events. The BCS, the NBA Finals and the World Cup have made ESPN on ABC as relevant as its ever been -- the aforementioned Texas/Alabama National Championship Game and Celtics/Lakers Game 7 were the two most-viewed events on ABC since the ESPN on ABC rebranding.
However, with the BCS moving to ESPN and the World Cup gone for another four years, that success will surely diminish next year.
