Money’s No Object When It Comes To TV
It’s getting mighty expensive to be in the broadcast television game these days.
Consider this. Since the start of the new year, NBC has agreed to spend $13 million an episode, $286 million for the whole season, to keep the hit medical drama “E.R.” on its airwaves next year. The Peacock gang also dangled a $5 million-per-episode paycheck in front of Jerry Seinfeld to try to convince him to continue his show for another season. And then, three of the four networks agreed between them to shell out more than $17 billion over the next five years to air professional football.
While these eye-popping business transactions would have been unthinkable nightmares just a few years ago, more and more they are the way of the new world in TV.
It may shock the network financial execs to be writing such large checks, but the fact is, the value of a show like “ER” to NBC or football to CBS goes way beyond traditional profit-and-loss business accounting.
“I don’t feel they are just loss leaders, not when you count all that goes with them,” said Leslie Moonves, president of CBS Entertainment. A show “can’t be viewed as a half-hour island in the middle of the night. You have to consider what it means to the (affiliated) stations, to news and to the (network-owned stations.)”
Likewise, Moonves said he doesn’t see the high price of these recent deals prompting producers to start seeking bigger fees. Moonves likens “Seinfeld” and “ER” to basketball’s Michael Jordan. “In every area, there’s a superstar that will always get more,” he said. “This is not like the trickle-down theory.”
That said, the broadcast networks are paying more for programming than ever before - even as ratings are at all-time lows.
“The network-TV business was historically a license to print money,” said Warren Littlefield, president of NBC Entertainment. “That’s not true anymore.
“We have a history of paying for success. We would rather pay on the success side than find ourselves in deals where the terms going in really limit the upside.”
In recent years, all of the networks have come under fire from critics who maintain that the broadcasters have hamstrung themselves with deals that guaranteed big stars large sums of money even before a concept for a program has been found.
Indeed, CBS took heat last season for signing Ted Danson to a deal without a show. That produced “Ink,” which never generated a large enough audience to keep it on the air. And this season NBC has been hurt by guaranteed deals with Tony Danza and Jenny McCarthy, who toplined sitcom bombs.
But similar deals between Bill Cosby and CBS, and Michael J. Fox and ABC have proven to be successful, said Moonves. “Some of the other deals were not,” he added. “We’re in a business where the failure rate is quite high.”
Does the high cost of a program - or a high-priced 22-episode obligation - keep network brass from axing it if ratings sour? No, say those involved with such decisions.
“I don’t think that’s happening,” said Jamie Tarses, president of ABC Entertainment. “Everybody is legitimately trying to put their best shows forward.”
Fox Entertainment honcho Peter Roth agreed. “We all start out with good intentions,” said Roth. “We don’t go in saying, ‘There’s too much money involved, or too much corporate pride.”
“The biggest issue,” said Tarses, “is coming up with programming that keeps (viewers) interested, keeping the cost of business down, and just making sure there’s enough of a profit.”