Broadcast TV Faces Struggle to Stay Viable

CBS, home to “60 Minutes,” the “CSI” franchise, “Two and a Half Men” and the new hit crime drama “The Mentalist,” is having a better year in prime time than any other network. And yet, as at the other networks, profits have declined sharply at CBS.

For decades, the big three, now big four, networks all had the same game plan: spend many millions to develop and produce scripted shows aimed at a mass audience and national advertisers, with a shelf life of years or decades as reruns in syndication.

But that model, based on attracting enough ad dollars to cover the costs of shows like “Lost” and “ER,” no longer appears viable. Network dramas now cost about $3 million an hour.

The future for the networks, it seems, is more low-cost reality shows, more news and talk, and a greater effort to find new revenue streams, whether they be from receiving subscriber fees as cable channels do, or becoming cable networks themselves, an idea that has gained currency.


http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/28/business/media/28network.html?th&emc=th

If they can't afford to do the job, give up the broadcast license.

It's tempting to just chuck them and go back to broadcast. But it would be a considerable shock, because apart from PBS there is very little intelligent programming on the broadcast networks. Well-- cable isn't all that much either, when you think about it. But most of us have a few cable channels we rely on, so it's a hard choice.

I'd hate to give up the C-spans, and I have a few other favorites: Turner Classic Movies, Sci-Fi, MSNBC. But geeze it's getting expensive.

We have Dish 200 with DVR. Right now it is $49.99 a month--price locked in for the last two years and will continue one more year. Then--the going rate now is $57.99 and I'm sure it will be higher in a year.

We have to decide: go down a notch to Dish-100 with DVR and lose a few favorite channels and pay somewhere around $45, go back to cable--the only way to stay under $50 is to get only the basic cable package! DirectTV is higher than Dish at all levels. Free TV could be done--we'd have to buy a converter box and an antenna. And if we wanted a DVR with it, we'd have to go to Tivo, purchase a DVR for $300 and subcribe for $10.75 a month for the Tivo programming service. But then what would there be to record? Very little other than what PBS would have to offer!

Argh.