Fast Track
By Staff -- Broadcasting & Cable, 10/29/2006 7:00:00 PM
Items:
Think You Need Liposuction? Ask 'Nip/Tuck' Fans
Fox Stations To Strip 'L&O: CI'
Fox, Nielsen Resolve Ratings Row
NBC Shakes Up Programming
Boo! Comcast Launches FearNet
B&C's Grossman Promoted in L.A.
Think You Need Liposuction? Ask 'Nip/Tuck' Fans
Not sure whether you should get that brow lift? You can solicit the advice of Nip/Tuck fans.
In an effort to keep the hit plastic-surgery show's viewers engaged, FX has launched some offbeat features on its Website, including an area where users can upload pictures and let fellow viewers weigh in on whether they should go under the knife. A "social-podcasting" section allows fans to simulate "talking" to the show's actors and creators.
With distinctively irreverent Nip/Tuck in its fourth season, FX beefed up its site to keep savvy fans engaged with both the program and each other. "It's essential to provide people with more-meaningful experiences," says FX Executive VP of Marketing Stephanie Gibbons. "We feel like if we don't keep moving forward, we're going to lose them."
Through eight new episodes, the show is up 3% over last year in total viewers to an average 3.98 million, and 5% in the 18-49 demo to 2.84 million.
To participate in the social-podcasting feature, viewers enter personal information online, including a phone number, and then receive a call designed to appear to be from the Nip/Tuck doctors. Caller ID displays an area code in Miami, where Nip/Tuck is set, and the name "McNamara/Troy," its fictional plastic-surgery practice. FX compiles fan questions, includes the actors' responses, and offers the result as a podcast on FXnetworks.com and iTunes. Another podcast lets viewers sound off on the show.
Since the podcasts' launch on Sept. 29, FX has received 180,000 fan requests for weekly show updates and 2,000 requests for the podcasts on iTunes. Traffic to the show's site is "healthier" than last year, with 5 million page views over the past month, says Gibbons.
Another feature, "Skin Deep," invites viewers to upload their pictures and let other visitors vote on whether they should get plastic surgery. FX has so far received 2,100 photos to the section, which it is labeling a "social consultation."
"Miami Mashup" lets fans use technology from Google maps and Web company Ning to chart and discuss hot spots visited on the show.
FX is planning more social-interaction features for its upcoming originals. The Website for new celebrity-magazine–set program Dirt, for example, will likely offer social videocasting, where fans can submit video questions to be answered by the actors.
Says Gibbons. "We keep getting closer and closer to the physical nature of community fancasts."—Anne Becker
Fox Stations To Strip 'L&O: CI'
NBC Universal Domestic Television Distribution has sold off-net episodes of Dick Wolf's Law & Order: Criminal Intent to the Fox-owned stations as a Monday-Friday strip for next fall.
The straight 50-50 barter deal for the procedural crime drama, in its sixth season on NBC, marks the first time in years that a major off-net hour has been offered to stations for weekday runs.
NBCU is shopping the show to other station groups after preparing for months to take it into the market. Fox has acquired it for its New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and other major-market outlets under a multiyear agreement.
In the late 1980s and early '90s, shows like Magnum, P.I.; Quincy; and 21 Jump Street were staples of weekday broadcast syndication. But since then, big off-net dramas like CI have been sold as strips to basic cable networks and to stations for straight barter on weekends (The WB netlet briefly aired off-net ER episodes earlier this year in its 3-5 p.m. weekday block before returning to comedies).
As with top off-net sitcoms like Seinfeld and Friends, CI may wind up airing in the same broadcast and cable time periods in some mid- and small-level markets. It will continue running on NBCU's USA and Bravo networks next fall.
USA strips the show at 7 p.m. weekdays, where it averages a 1.4 household rating and 1.3 million viewers. Bravo gets the weekend run, airing it after 6 p.m. on Sundays with an average 0.7 rating.
The newly shared cable-broadcast window, encompassing one run per day, could help ease the financial burden on USA, which had paid most of the combined license fee of nearly $2 million per episode since CI began its off-net run last fall.—Jim Benson
Fox, Nielsen Resolve Ratings Row
Nielsen and Fox have resolved their long-standing dispute over TV ratings.
The two have signed an eight-year agreement under which Nielsen will provide ratings for the Fox Broadcasting Co. and 35 Fox TV stations—including local-people-meter ratings to Fox TV stations in markets that have the meters. Recipients also include Fox News Channel, FX, Speed, National Geographic Channel, Fox Soccer Channel, Fox Sports Net, Fox Sports en Español, DirecTV, Twentieth Television and Twentieth Century Fox Film Corp.
Nielsen has agreed to spend $50 million to improve the response rates, particularly for younger demos and minorities. Fox had been highly critical of Nielsen's new Local People Meters, which it has said undercounts minorities to the detriment of Fox stations in major markets.—John M. Higgins
NBC Shakes Up Programming
In a major shake-up of its programming lineup, NBC is returning to an 8-10 p.m. comedy block on Thursdays and pulling its short-lived Wednesday-night sitcom Twenty Good Years off the schedule. There is no firm date set for its return.
Nine episodes of the older-skewing comedy starring Jeffrey Tambor and John Lithgow have been shot. NBC intends to complete all 13, indicating the network may bring it back at some point later this season.
Under the revamp, NBC will keep My Name is Earl and The Office from 8-9 p.m. Thursday. Starting Nov. 30, it will return utility hitter Scrubs at 9, followed by 30 Rock, which moves from 8 p.m. Wednesdays to 9:30 p.m. Thursdays leading into ER.
The third weekly edition of Deal or No Deal, which over five Thursday night airings this season at 9 had averaged a distant third-place 3.3 rating/8 share in adults 18-49, will be benched. But with all of the holes in NBC's schedule, it is a safe bet that it won't be gone for long.
The change will follow a "super-sized" Thursday night of comedy two weeks earlier on Nov. 16, with 40-minute episodes of Earl, The Office and 30 Rock.
On Nov. 15, Medium will return to the Wednesday-night schedule with an extended 9-11 p.m. episode. The Biggest Loser will kick off the night at 8. In subsequent weeks, specials will air at 8, Loser at 9 (except for its expanded 8-10 finale in December) and Medium at 10.
The moves come after NBC had trouble getting its Wednesday-night comedy block rolling with the two freshmen sitcoms, which faced off against stiff competition from ABC's Dancing With the Stars and CBS' Jericho.
In their two October airings, 30 Rock has been averaging a 2.6/8 and Twenty Good Years a 2.3/6. But from week one to two, 30 Rock dropped 21% from a 2.9 to 2.3 rating, while Twenty Good Years, which at 8:30 retained 88% of its 30 Rock lead-in audience, fell a like amount, from a 2.5 to 2.0.
By returning to a comedy night on Thursdays, NBC will try to build on momentum created in the first hour by Earl (scoring in the high 3s) and The Office (low 4s). Deal had been hurting at 9 against two of TV top-ranked series, ABC's Grey's Anatomy and CBS' CSI.
Scrubs, which previously appeared in double runs at 9-10 Tuesdays, held up better than NBC anticipated against Fox's American Idol and House. —Jim Benson
Boo! Comcast Launches FearNet
Comcast will launch FearNet, an on-demand horror channel, this Halloween. A co-venture with Sony and Lionsgate, FearNet will debut as a video-on-demand channel free to Comcast digital customers, as well as a Website and a mobile offering, the first of several multiplatform networks Comcast is developing. FearNet online will offer nine free streaming movies at launch. Extra features allow fans to chat with each other online, search a database of movies, and buy or rent movies.—Anne Becker
B&C's Grossman Promoted in L.A.
Broadcasting & Cable's Ben Grossman has been promoted to co-chief of the Los Angeles Bureau.
"It's a pleasure to have Ben expand his role with us," says Editor in Chief J. Max Robins. "Since coming aboard 18 months ago; he's done a superb job, in both a reportorial and an ambassadorial capacity and in expanding the breadth and depth of our coverage of the Hollywood community."
Grossman will work alongside Co-Chief Jim Benson.
A graduate of Boston University with an M.B.A. from UCLA's Anderson School of Management, Grossman has held positions at TV Guide, Fox Sports, the XFL and The Sports Business Daily.
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