Why don’t the networks take a page from the pr0n handbook: lots of free, older stuff to get you… um… interested while you have to pay for the good stuff? If you have to pay for it, perhaps then network TV could take a page from HBO, Showtime, etc and become more edgy, sexy, intelligent (ie, everything network TV rarely is). Imagine Dexter on ABC. Imagine Fox not canceling Firefly. Imagine no more erection and diarrhea commercials!!!
For more than 60 years, TV stations have broadcast news, sports and entertainment for free and made their money by showing commercials. That might not work much longer.
The business model is unraveling at ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox and the local stations that carry the networks’ programming. Cable TV and the Web have fractured the audience for free TV and siphoned its ad dollars. The recession has squeezed advertising further, forcing broadcasters to accelerate their push for new revenue to pay for programming.
That will play out in living rooms across the country. The changes could mean higher cable or satellite TV bills, as the networks and local stations squeeze more fees from pay-TV providers such as Comcast and DirecTV for the right to show broadcast TV channels in their lineups. The networks might even ditch free broadcast signals in the next few years. Instead, they could operate as cable channels — a move that could spell the end of free TV as Americans have known it since the 1940s.
Pedro #37:
The last two seasons of Lost were 14 and 16 episodes. Battlestar Galactica averaged 16 episodes per season. Two extremely popular and critically acclaimed shows.
Every episode of Big Bang Theory has been 18 minutes long this season due to packing Two and a Half Men with extra commercials into a 4 minute break mid-show, making it last until 8:31 PM, shortening BBT.
22 episodes is still a long way from the 33 episodes of The Lucy Show, My Three Sons, and other great shows from the “Golden Age of Television”; and they did not start the season in October, show 6 new episodes then take a two month break till the end of January to restart new episodes.