A lot of the building is rotted and, to me, it's an unsafe and ugly building. If Sharon (Kroeger) were going to fix it, then she should have fixed it. |
A lot of the programs on cable are things that are already familiar to older viewers and that they feel more comfortable with, rather than the new shows being offered on broadcast. |
Advertisers for the Super Bowl tend to be willing to pay a reasonable premium to reach a special audience. We don't have Olympic viewing parties. Pretty much to me, that says it all. This happens every four years. But it seems that the Super Bowl and Olympics somehow find a way to co-exist. |
Advertisers work on the premise that younger people haven't established a brand preference yet — haven't decided on a car, haven't decided on a fast food restaurant, and that they are more likely to be influenced by advertising. Whereas older viewers have already chosen their brand of toothpaste. |
All of this is positioning, ... The networks are trying to say 'we're not going to cede this exclusively to the cable networks.' |
Do they recoup it? No. |
Having the Winter Olympics on the near horizon and football for the fall will help but ultimately, it is series programming that makes the difference and NBC hasn't been able to make a turnaround in that area yet, |
His genius has been promotion and scheduling. Some of the pieces were in place, but if you don't exploit those pieces and don't schedule them correctly, you could have the best show on television and no one knows and no one sees. |
If advertisers are looking for stability, it's at CBS. |
If you look at the characters that were predominantly on their schedule, with 'The West Wing,' 'Frasier' and 'Seinfeld,' they were detached, elitist and urban, ... every network is trying to reach as broad an audience as possible. |
If you looked at this past fall, there was a certain degree of confusion, with the Martha Stewart and Donald Trump versions. I think now it'll be a bit clearer for the audience. |
Is it a guaranteed bet? No. Is it a good, reasonable roll of the dice? Yes. I think they have a good chance of people who don't normally watch their networks checking them out, without alienating their core audience. |
It doesn't seem there's a great deal of alarm |
It's almost like you're drinking hot coffee that's too hot, and you burn your throat, but you do that every day for six or seven weeks. |
It's so hard to break through (with viewers). Maybe you get to set an impression for a moment. If it's a familiar face, that reinforces what you're trying to say. |