Inside television-ball

As a former worker in the television industry who knows a bit about the inner workings of a basic tv affiliate station and programming choices as well...tv programmers are quite possibly, the dumbest people in television. Surprisingly, it's not because they choose crappy programs.

The most current example stems from an advertisement on the radio I heard on the way home from my Sunday ritual: the NY Times, Frank Rich, at Starbucks.

The Discovery Channel, a marginal-to-prominent cable channel which has done well recently is apparently fucking with their schedule now.

The highly popular and fantastic show, Dirty Jobs with Mike Rowe, has consistently aired new shows on Wednesdays at 9pm Eastern. Well, this just in...this is no longer true. They are moving Mike to Mondays at some time, I think it was 9pm Eastern still.

OY! The Discovery Channel wishes to fuck with one of it's stud shows by dicking around with the schedule. A channel in their position should NOT be playing Russian Roulette with a hit show.

The standard industry argument is as follows: Once a show becomes a "hit" and has a deep following, they will "find" the show wherever it lands on the schedule.

Back when there were only 5 major networks (ABC, NBC, CBS, FOX, PBS), this could hold water because it wouldn't be hard to find among 5 channels. Today with the internet, a billion television channels all going for a specific niche, fucking with a shows schedule will cause it to die an early death.

The proper way is to establish a "hit." Then, like NBC did with "Friends," they left it alone, but they developed new "hits" by putting those shows directly before or after "Friends," while promoting those shows during the hit. That's how NBC built their big Thursday night lineup years ago, and how ABC built up their TGIF lineup way back in the early 90s I think it was. I mean, come on! "Step by Step," "Family Matters" those were marginally good shows, but by programming, packaging, and promoting them effectively, ABC brass built them into "hits" that brought in the big dough.

Shame on the Discovery Channel and I hope Mike Rowe kicks their ass.