Posted on 06/22/2005 9:55:22 AM PDT by My Favorite Headache
ESPN gets less sports-centered Cabler to broaden its field with more series, telepix
By JOHN DEMPSEY
Less hockey and baseball. More original movies and series. That's one big equation on the mind of Mark Shapiro, executive VP of programming and production for ESPN, who's gung ho about broadening the audience for ESPN by reaching beyond the stereotypical potbellied sports nut, stretched out in his undershirt on a Barcalounger with a can of beer in one hand and a remote in the other.
ESPN and ESPN2 aimed the National Hockey League games it carried from 1999 through 2004 squarely at this viewer, but Shapiro says the NHL's ratings had fallen to such a depressed state by the 2003-04 season (a labor dispute obliterated the 2004-05 schedule) that he won't pay cash license fees anymore.
And Shapiro is negotiating a new contract with Major League Baseball but says, "I'm not interested in carrying five games a week unless I get full network exclusivity," a concession baseball seems unwilling to grant except for the traditional ESPN game of the week on Sunday night.
And that's where scripted programming comes in. Shapiro says one of the reasons ESPN's scripted series about Las Vegas poker players "Tilt" failed to find an audience earlier this year is that the only free night not saturated with live sports commitments was Thursday, where, at 9 p.m., the show had to go up against such strong series as "CSI" on CBS, "Will & Grace" on NBC and "Extreme Makeover" on ABC. Against those odds, "Tilt" never really had a chance.
By contrast, ESPN's other scripted series "Playmakers," a warts-and-all look at the members of a fictional pro-football team, fared much better with audiences in 2003's late summer and fall because the network was able to carve out a weekly primetime slot on Tuesday, where the competition was not so fierce.
Despite solid ratings, "Playmakers" got a reluctant cancellation notice after its first 13-episode season, falling victim to the hostility of the National Football League, most of whose owners hated the portrayal of some athletes as drug users, wife beaters and other unsavory types.
The mistakes ESPN made in shepherding "Playmakers" and "Tilt" onto the schedule have only reinforced Shapiro's goal of coming up with one or two hit series in the next few years and with at least four highly exploitable original movies a year, starting in 2006.
The man who created "Playmakers," John Eisendrath, is working on an untitled drama pilot set in the world of boxing, which is slated as ESPN's next series.
Shapiro says he has 30 movie projects in the works, with two in production: "Four Minutes," a docudrama about Roger Bannister, the first athlete to run the four-minute mile, and "The Code Breakers," a script based on the 1951 West Point scandal in which the school expelled 83 Army cadets, including most of the football team, for cheating.
Sports-media consultant Kevin O'Malley applauds Shapiro's push to get ESPN into scripted movies and series.
"These shows are already getting more women and younger men to watch the network," O'Malley says.
Getting different kinds of people to watch ESPN, says Neal Pilson, a sports consultant and former president of CBS Sports, will help to pump up the network's advertising revenues.
Kagan Research says ESPN already harvests more ad revenues than any other cable network, projecting a record $869.2 million in 2005, a 9% gain over those of last year.
ESPN should look at the example of MTV, says David Carter, a principal with the Los Angeles-based Sports Business Group.
"MTV became an integral part of the pop culture," he says, "by morphing from a musicvideo network to a channel carrying a wide range of programming."
However, Mike Trager, former head of Clear Channel Entertainment, says ESPN "has to walk a fine line between reaching out for new viewers and alienating its core audience."
Or, as another sports analyst puts it: "Women may watch an episode of one of the series, but that doesn't mean they're going to abandon Lifetime to become devotees of the NFL and the NBA on ESPN."
8 hours of poker, 8 hours of Sportscenter reruns, and 8 hours of Pimp My Ride/The Hoop Life/Drink Martinis at Vince Carter's Pad/Clubbin' with Shaq is not what I need. See ya, ESPN. Wouldn't wanna be ya.
Sure. It had nothing to do with the fact that most people find watching other people sitting on their butts playing cards to be about as entertaining as watching paint dry.
Despite solid ratings, "Playmakers" got a reluctant cancellation notice after its first 13-episode season, falling victim to the hostility of the National Football League, most of whose owners hated the portrayal of some athletes as drug users, wife beaters and other unsavory types.
The NFL doesn't want the truth about it's criminals being shown. Besides, if you want to hear about players acting like asses on the field, beating their wives, using drugs, and killing people in DUI accidents, you don't need to watch a fictional TV series. All you have to do is watch Sportscenter and read the local paper.
They need more women sports announcers who know nothing about sports...
more music videos......oh wait...wrong channel.
Considering how conservative the general viewing audience of the History Channel is, it's beyond me what they were thinking. It must have been the same programming director for the Military Channel who decided that Wings Over France was a good show to air constantly just when France decided to actively slow-roll the war in Iraq.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.