In crude numerical terms, if a show that costs X can't find an audience on a broadcast network that reaches 120 million households, what chance does it have of finding an audience (and a big enough one for ad rates to cover a signifcant part of "X") on a cable / satellite channel that is only available to 60 or 70 million? (Everyone doesn't have cable or satellite, and every cable
system doesn't offer every cable
channel, and finally every cable or sat. subscriber doesn't purchase every "tier" or block of channels offered. So the universe in which any given channel is actually available for people in a given household to watch is always much smaller for any cable or sat. network than that for any major broadcast network, and probably even smaller that that for a netlet like The CW.)
And, again, demographics matter. If you can reliably deliver a million or a million and-a-half males aged 18 to 42 that's worth a lot to certain very specific advertisers, and that can make a show a hit on a "guy oriented" network like F/X. The sub-demographic of women in the same age range to tend to like
the same kind of program is smaller, and much smaller than the female demographic at large, but that makes it even more valuable to certain
other advertisers. They get more bang for their buck advertising on a show on F/X that gets 1 to 2 million of "their" veiwers than they would by advertising on a network show that gets 20 to 30 million viewer, 99 percent of whom don't buy their products. This is why you don't see a lot of panythose advertised during NFL football games, and someone who makes products aimed primarily at the African-American market is gonig to try to get his ad on during the NBA finals - not the NHL playoffs.
Major broadcast network shows
have to be designed to appeal to a broader audience than the one attracted to FoodNetwork or The Sci-Fi Channel or BET. That means a show that is a flop with 3 or 4 million viewers on a network may not work on a cable channel because all but half a million of those viewers might be the "wrong" kind in terms of that channel's particular niche. Again, things aren't as simple as people sometimes imagine. If something so "obvious" as what was suggested in the original post would actually work,
they'd probably be doing it..
As often we call TV programmers stupid, especially when they do something we don't like, they actually tend to be fairly smart people who - like all of us - work within the constraints of reality. ("Why don't they put on better shows?" Well, they choose from among the scripts they get and pilots they commission. It isn't like they have a choice between perfection and crap. They often have a choice between total crap and slightly-less-crappy crap. And they have to make a decision on a deadline and get the shows in production by date "Y" and on the air by date "Z".)
The fact is that if someone made a magic wand and made all of us network programmers, there would be only two possible approaches and three possible outcome:
1) We'd do what we all say we would do, keep struggling shows on the air, spend millions to produce "wrap up" TV movies for series no one is watching in the first place, commit to full-season orders up-front and never cancel a show. This would lead to:
a. Our getting fired very quickly
b. Our network going out of business
2) We'd learn the business and start making decisions very much like those of the people we mock. This would lead to:
c. Our becoming the enemy and nothing very much changing.
Regards,
Joe