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Send a Compliment at 12:47 PDT, 21 May, 2009
Medium jumping ship to CBS makes so much sense it's scary. As CBS chief Nina Tassler suggested, the show is practically the spiritual lovechild to the Eye's own Ghost Whisperer and Numb3rs. NBC offered the somewhat dubious reasoning that the network wants to go younger, and just didn't think people cared enough about Medium. Even though, you know, it gets higher ratings than Chuck. (Surprising, right? Chuck fans must be just very vocal. And also hungry.) With Medium switching networks, and folks rallying for My Name Is Earl to find a new home somewhere not run by Ben Silverman, loyalty seems to lie with the shows, not the networks. Of course, whether fans follow the Patricia Arquette whodunit to CBS remains to be seen, but I bet it'll be just as popular, if not more so.
Confession time: The only show I watch on CBS is The Amazing Race. That's all. I've caught a few episodes of How I Met Your Mother, but have yet to fully commit. Yet, out of all the networks, CBS seems to be the most focused, offering procedurals, traditional sitcoms and reality shows for the masses. As Time magazine put it, the network's audience is "sometimes older, sometimes not, but generally more conservative in its taste." There's certainly nothing wrong with that. The network has some of the highest-rated shows on TV in The Mentalist, NCIS and CSI and its brood of stepchildren. But does liking CBS make you less cool? And, uh, boring?
Stumble It!
Comments (6 comments)
CBS is the only network with enough guts to refuse to stream its shows online.
This might save them (and the whole broadcast TV sales model) or it could make them a dinosaur.
In any case, there should be no more streaming of Medium if they keep their current policy.
Thoughts?
Here's the address of the Kung Fu Monkey article with this quote:
"Ironically, CBS's utter refusal to stream their shows, generally seen in the industry as a failing, is the smart play. You want a CBS show, you either watch/tivo it -- where the ad pricing from the old monopoly still creates at least a framework for monetization -- or you buy it once the advertising bloom is off the rose, and the money filters back into the Viacomm coffers. Or you pirate it. And we have yet to see a single reliable statistic on revenue loss due to piracy."
http://kfmonkey.blogspot.com/2009/05/4gm-plausible-premise-and-itunes.html
And my loyalty is definitely to the SHOWS, not the networks.
Here's another KFM comment on loyalty to content over networks (or more specifically, pointing out that strong content creates a brand identity for a network and that's what matters):
"Netflix will give you a movie, or TV show, whatever's available on DVD and now streaming. It does not care, its jobs do not depend on dominating any marketplaces or shares. It's job is to Get You Stuff from People Who Make Stuff. It is catering to strong brands. Better or worse, if I pay for HBO, I know what I'm paying for. I pay for Showtime, I know what I'm paying for. I pay for NBC ... what am I paying for? Kings or My Name is Earl? Dateline or 30 Rock? I like Southland, why am I paying for Last Call with Carson Daly?"
http://kfmonkey.blogspot.com/2009/05/4gm-consoles-consoles-consoles-netflix.html
Will there be any more episodes in this season of Medium? Does anyone know?
I think that all shows should be streamed. The system currently in play gives companies like Lion's Media the choice of whether or not to continue putting money into a great show as rating lag or canceling the show and selling the rights to syndication to a syndication house, after which their ratings drop to nonexistant status.
A better way would be to stream all shows and employ a model that takes into account all online views, to give us an online ratings system that will be compared alongside the Nielsons TV audience. Revenue for the show can be obtained by offering profit share to mirror hosts from commercials that they are required to play alongside the episode. Any will cut down the number of illegal hosts to those who choose not to run commercial and so make it easier for the network's IT departments to track them down. It will cut down the amount of R&D that the networks have to go through in terms of interface and interface design; Every time they have a new show come out they have to design a new user interface for that show's website, graphic design for the backdrop, foreground, and icons etc. The amount of money that the networks will save by just releasing the episode as a packet, and then letting their mirror sites package them however they want will more than make up for the amount that they are paying them...blah blah blah, shmackety, shmackety. I have no more to say, it's just a good idea. Talk Hard!
IMHO all shows should be streamed (despite the fact that here in germany it is the only way for a germany lad with german television to watch us-series without hiddious dubbs).
The thing simply is, that if you want to add ads on streams you simply could. So i doubt it makes any difference whether you stream and get your money as a network through ads on the net or through sales after the show has aired.
Anyway, i don't care. Because, well, if the thing, whatever it is, that CBS does keeps CBS alive which means Medium goes on. I am with CBS. And just because one and only one thing, because CBS makes that show... and some more... So for the big Network vs Show sticking thing.
Show wins!
Greetings :)