Replacements plentiful for TV networks
Focusing on the notion that you’re irreplaceable, rather than expendable, can be healthy.
Sadly, facts can sometimes get in the way. Take a pro league, whose player salaries averaged $1.83 million per year, that skips an entire season. That leaves the league’s national TV carrier to gin up replacement shows to fill what would have been hundreds of hours of playoff coverage.
As the National Hockey League and its players association continued to meet this week, this must be depressing: TV ratings, so far, suggest as many viewers might want to watch hockey players bowl as watch them play hockey.
ESPN’s “Bowling Night”, in which pro athletes from sports including hockey hit the lanes, is a stalwart in a replacement lineup that’s now averaging 0.7 percent of U.S. cable TV households on ESPN and 0.4 percent on ESPN2.
That might not sound like much. But consider that at this point last year, ESPN/ESPN2 had aired 46 NHL playoff games — and drawn “identical” average ratings.
Beyond celebrity bowling, tying the NHL’s ratings has been a team effort. The new “Battle of the Gridiron Stars” pitched in with NFL players competing in tug-of-war. Longtime ESPN researcher Howie Schwab showed anybody can wear makeup as he went in front of the cameras for his “Stump the Schwab” sports trivia game show. And who knew the old “Newlywed Game” had a sports application? On the new “Teammates,” pro athletes from the same team find out how much they really know about, say, each other’s taste in pajamas.
The timing, for the NHL, is unfortunate. ESPN has until June 1 to exercise an option to pay $60 million to pick up another season of NHL coverage. The league, which already has agreed to let NBC carry its Stanley Cup Finals without paying a rights fee, is not exactly holding the upper hand in any upcoming negotiations.
After all, there are always plenty of people actually playing games who are ready to go on TV. “In our sport, speaking for all the coaches and players, there’s an incredible appreciation for the exposure,” says UCLA softball coach Sue Enquist, whose team has appeared in four of the 10 college softball games that have been added so far by ESPN or ESPN2 and averaged 0.4 percent on each. “I’m not so proud to say we’re on TV because hockey wasn’t on. I don’t care. I love it.”
Cue the gloating at ESPN. John Wildhack, ESPN senior vice president/programming, says the NHL implosion “amounted to an opportunity,” and ESPN “has shown we’ve been able to replace the NHL with high-quality programming that resonates with our viewers.”
NHL spokeswoman Bernadette Mansur counters that ESPN’s NHL ratings don’t include all viewers - some ESPN games also were on local TV - and “the point is not about the ratings.”
(A reminder before we move on: When leagues or networks say ratings are not really the point, they’re usually talking about unflattering ratings.)
Mansur says the point is “we’ve delivered in ad sales on the strength of our 18-to-34 demo” - the ratings, that is, for 18- to 34-year-old males. But Artie Bulgrin, ESPN senior vice president, counters that “we’ve had episodes of “Battle of the Gridiron Stars” that have done double (what hockey does) among 18-34 males.”
Like origami, ratings can be twisted many ways.
But the NHL still might end up actually beating ESPN’s replacement programming, since last year’s playoff ratings rose as they progressed. And if not, maybe its players can move on to TV bowling.
Costas revamped: Bob Costas’ “On the Record” HBO show, which had been a late-night series that ran 12 weeks, will be rejiggered into “Costas Now,” a monthly show starting Friday that will focus on sports and air year-round in a 9 p.m. ET/PT time slot. The earlier start time means Costas will no longer be HBO’s lead-in to its provocative “G-String Divas.” Says Costas: “I predict, without me, that they’re doomed.”
The revamped show will emphasize sports, using comedian Wanda Sykes and a panel Friday that will include Charles Barkley, John McEnroe and Cris Collinsworth. The revamped show will focus less on the entertainment world than “On the Record “did. Says Costas: “Last year, although the program was good on its own terms, what those terms were weren’t always clear to the audience. It lost some of its focus.”