Topic; Prime Time Schedule

[George WK Newman]

Any ideas in general on how many hours to offer the affiliates and what kind of shows we want to look for?

[George WK Newman]

My initial thoughts before handing it over to the prime time executives.

Prime Time refers to the block of time Monday-Saturday from 8:00pm - 11:00pm eastern and pacific times, and 7:00pm - 10:00pm central. Sundays begin an hour earlier, 7:00pm - 11:00pm and 6:00pm - 10:00pm CST.
Therefore there are 22 hours of prime time television per week.


Other Networks:
ABC, CBS, NBC broadcast in all 22 hours.
Fox broadcasts 2 hours per night plus 3 on Sunday (15 total)
CW broadcasts 6 nights a week (Sun-Fri) 2 hours a night, 3 on Sunday (total 13)
MyNetwork TV broadcasts 6 nights (Mon-Sat) a week for 2 hours (12 total)

What kind of schedule will we broadcast this fall? Where will the shows come from?

Ideas;

Original productions; may look to license some studios original shows like the big networks do but this will be on a limited basis. These are shows we create ourselves even though they come from a studio, since we don't own our own studio. First, I don't want a bunch of reality junk shows, and we also are not looking for bad quality Fx shows like Xena.
In order to make this type of show financially viable, we will have to be creative. Partnering with a cable outlet for example.

Failed Network Pilots
The problem of course is that all the "good" shows will be shopped to the big networks first, and we will have to look for the diamond in the rough.
We will also likely be calling producers whose pilots are reasonably priced to produce and have a pilot in the can but have been turned down by the big networks. This will save a lot of money on producing pilots that they decide not to pick up.
So watch for what pilots look interesting but are turned down by the bigger networks.
Running repeats of our original productions will likely be required to make it work. For example a show may cost us $800,000 in license fees, but we can only get $500,000 in advertising. To make this even close to work we would need to run it in repeat where we would likely be able to get the extra $300,000. However, a 22 episode show may only have 34 weeks to air. So that means only 12 weeks of repeats. We may have to use summer schedules or other nights such as Friday and Saturday (the dead zones) to bridge that gap for the other 10 episodes.

Pick up Cancelled Shows
Shows cancelled by existing networks might be thrilled to find a new home. They have a built in audience which may not be large for CBS/ABC/NBC standards but would be solid for us. This drives more people to our network. Sometimes you can also get a reduced license fee since the studio's real purpose is just to get more episodes produced to increase the property's value in syndication.

Foreign shows
Another possible source of content would be to license foreign first run shows from England, Canada, Australia, etc. The license fees would be a fraction of the locally produced, probably around $100,000 - $50,000 per hour.
Flashpoint is an example of such a show.

News Magazine show
Since many of the affiliates have their own news crews they could be used to blanket the country in pursuit of original news pieces, more in depth then the evening news. Middle ground between "Frontline" and "20/20" could be found, backed by network anchors. One or two hours a week?

Locally produced affiliate shows
This is a long shot.
Some locally produced, but not locally focused, shows might be candidates for a heftier budget and national exposure. Individual affiliates if they did not like the content could substitute it for one of their local shows as long as they make up the ad revenue. We want to avoid shows that a bit too much like "UHF" though!
Look through the wikipedia pages of our affiliate stations for a list of their shows.

Sports;
Possibly a flagship sporting league or event(s)? More ideas will be posted in the Sports section. We don't have a lot of money for license rights and all the big leagues are taken. But we could look at something like Major League Soccer, National Lacrosse League, College Baseball, or an anthology show like "Wide World of Sports".
WWE and Mixed Martial Arts are also possible ratings grabers.

Evening news;
Much as many of the Fox affiliates do with the last hour of prime time, it might be wise to get the jump on other local news broadcasts by producing a combined local and national news broadcast in the last hour of prime time.

Movies;
Go after lesser known and cheaper movies which will fit in with our branding. Independent films and diamonds in the rough where license fee's are not outrageous, and many people have not seen because of low box office and home video appeal.
Usually movies are priced so you can make a small profit on the showing.

Synergies:
Look at our network ownership group and explore their titles that they might be willing to help pay promotion for if they were turned into shows, or revived.

Cable Hits
Maybe there is a possibility of taking a hit cable show and producing it for prime time.

These are just some ideas to get you started. This is your network so work together to get a good mix of shows that will help us grow.

[George WK Newman]

General plan for the network unveiled today in an affiliates meeting was to offer 16 hours of prime time programming per week.

8:00pm-10:00pm Mon-Fri,
and 7:00pm-10:00pm Sat-Sun

There may be some slight modifications to that schedule depending on what sports programming becomes available.

The hours will likely be filled with something along the lines of;
3 hours of reality programming
1 hour of news magazine
2 hours of original sports
1 hour of sports entertainment
1 hour of a foreign pick-up
2 hours of movies
6 hours of original drama, and sit-com programming

An announcement regarding the development of a signature reality program is promised for later this week that will put Liberty Television on the network map and should help sign up more small market affiliates.