Down the Tube
Desperate Networks by Bill Carter
Doubleday (2006), 404 pages, $35.95
American network television is showing its age. Like all baby boomers, the medium came alive right after WWII. Now, at 60 plus, television is facing a crisis unlike anything the major networks have seen. There is a scarcity of potential programs that could replace those currently on the air. Meanwhile, many of the network executives with the acumen to champion and nurture the development of any up-and-coming shows, have either retired or been lured to other jobs.
Also a problem for television is that sky-high salary demands from the stars are eating into network profits. And advertisers, who buy television time to reach the largest possible audience, are finding their messages are received by fewer than projected, as viewers are tuning into other offerings on specialty channels, or are eliminating commercial messages completely through the use of Digital Video Recorders (DVRs) such as TiVo. No wonder these are the days of Desperate Networks.
For the average viewer, all these troubles mean we will soon see an increase in tacky television: more inexpensively produced “reality” shows, such as Survivor; more gossip-inducing unscripted contributions, such as Big Brother; more gross-out stunts, like those featured in Fear Factor; and more mindless time wasters, such as The World’s Greatest Police Chases. It also means we will see additional sports on television, because football, basketball, hockey and baseball appeal to young urban males, especially those who happen to be between the ages of 18 and 49 – what advertisers call the ideal demographic. And we’ll see a few added network tricks, such as the Supersize editions of sit-coms, where special editions or season finales run 45 minutes instead of 30. In this way, two highly hyped successful shows can blunt the effective reach of three others on any opposition network.
All of this turmoil would make a first-class fictional drama, if it were written for television. However, NY Times reporter Bill Carter, who makes his living writing about television, has done an excellent job of capturing this real life madness in his latest book Desperate Networks. (Carter is also the author of The Late Shift, the ratings battle between NBC’s Jay Leno and CBS’ David Letterman.) Carter’s fast moving and vivid description of behind-the-scenes struggles, backroom deals and impending firings is enlightening and riveting.
Carter tells lots of anecdotes about how television shows get made, but the most astounding is how one single television program, Desperate Housewives, turned around a ten year long losing cycle at ABC TV. Given the strikes against it, it was a wonder the show got made at all. It began with Mark Cherry, the creator of Desperate Housewives, who had been out of television work since he finished writing The Golden Girls, which went off the air in 1992. As he approached his fortieth birthday, Cherry was down to his last few dollars when he wrote the script. His pitch for Desperate Housewives was rejected by the executives at NBC, who misconstrued the show to be a comedy and could not envision it as a replacement for any of their hits on Thursday nights. The show was similarly passed over at CBS, Fox, HBO and Showtime. Network executives who had read the script said it was brilliantly written, but not what they could see on their network. They could eat their words now, though.
Part of the fun of Carter’s book is what he says explicitly: he names every network executive at the four major U.S. networks (he includes Fox as the fourth) who had a clumsy part in misjudging and rejecting recent shows that turned into hits. And, part of the fun of the book comes from what Carter implies: Simon Colwell may be the king of the acid tongue on American Idol, but Fox Network is stuck with him for five years because he essentially owns the show; at CBS, Julie Chen is an anchor of the news program The Early Show but merges into the entertainment world when she hosts Big Brother thanks to her husband Les Moonves, who is president of CBS.
In Desperate Networks, Bill Carter tells us exactly why there is so much shallow swill on the air. One of the aspects of the book that makes it less than pleasant is that it jeers too much at NBC, and cheers too much for CBS. Carter also contends that 2005 was a watershed year for television; instead he should be recognizing that, at a certain age, the products of the baby boomer years can’t do things the way they once did. Still, it is a valuable book to help us understand the present mess that exists in the “massiest” of the mass media.
Mike Gange teaches at Fredericton High.
More of his reviews are posted at Frank Baker's web site:
http://medialit.med.sc.edu/gange.htm