Broadcast Networks in Good Time Slot for Sale

NY Post

 

The upfront presentations may have wrapped up last week, but the broadcast networks' sales pitches may be just beginning.

With General Electric in the process of selling NBC Universal to cable giant Comcast, some Wall Street dealmakers predict Sumner Redstone and Disney will begin debating whether to put CBS and ABC, respectively, on the block.

Among bankers, CBS appears to be garnering the most attention amid signs Redstone these days isn't dismissing out of hand the notion of selling CBS.

"This is a good time to sell a network," said one Wall Street exec. "Retransmission makes it look more interesting. [CBS] has assets in radio but no long-term strategy in cable." Retransmission refers to fees for "retransmission consent," in which cable and satellite operators pay a network a monthly per-subscriber fee to carry the channel on their systems.

Reps for CBS and for Redstone, who is CBS' majority owner, declined to comment.

Meanwhile, ABC's future in the Mouse House is also not guaranteed, with Disney chief Bob Iger said to be taking a hard look at the network.

"There are no guarantees," he said recently about ABC's future at Disney. A source said the issue is what to do with the accompanying stations.

Sources said this year may be broadcast TV's best hope for finding buyers. While the audience tuning in to broadcast TV continues to erode, the Big Four networks -- ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC -- collectively are expected to pull in as much as 20 percent more in ad dollars at this year's upfront than in last year's dismal showing. (News Corp. owns both Fox and The Post.)

Further, the networks are gaining ground in their years-long fight with cable and satellite operators to get paid for their broadcast signal the way ESPN and MTV do.

Analyst Larry Gerbrandt forecasts that networks could each reap up to $400 million in the coming years, thanks to retransmission fees. He predicted that by 2016, the networks' take from retransmission consent could hit $5 billion.

That's good news because these days broadcast networks make little, if any, profit just by airing sitcoms and dramas.

While audiences will still show up in droves for tentpole events like the Super Bowl or an awards show, the increased popularity of cable is eating into broadcast networks' bottom line, which is further hampered by the high costs associated with producing series, steep sports-rights fees and expenses tied to owning a news operation. Also weighing on broadcasters is their ownership of local TV stations, which have been hit hard by the ad slowdown.

Experts said the networks' real money-making opportunities lie in ancillary businesses, such as international syndication, DVDs and other merchandise, and ownership of a network isn't necessary to reap those benefits.

ABC News Sees a Digital Future

LA Times

But the network faces a delicate balancing act: the immediacy and cost-savings of such 'backpack' reports versus technical, ethical, editorial and quality issues.

Reporting from New York — Dan Harris, an anchor and correspondent for ABC News, has a firsthand grasp of how digital journalism could transform the future of network news.

Working without a camera operator or sound technician, he and his producer, Almin Karamehmedovic, have used hand-held digital cameras to track American sex predators in Cambodia, sneak up on silverback gorillas in the Central African Republic and document child exorcisms in Congo.

"There's never been once when I missed the bigger crew," said Harris, who lugs equipment and mikes-up interview subjects himself, much as he did when he started as a local reporter in Bangor, Maine. "The level of intimacy you can achieve so far surpasses what you can get with a big team, it's beyond compare."

But even digital journalism acolytes such as Harris caution that the pared-down approach has its limitations.

 When he was covering the recent earthquake in Haiti, "I couldn't do some basic journalism because I needed to worry about tech stuff," he said.

"There are enormous benefits, but there are also real concerns that we have to do this wisely."

That's the balance ABC News is wrestling with as it cuts 25% of its 1,400-person staff and halves its ranks of bureau correspondents, replacing them with two dozen digital journalists.

Network executives say smaller cameras and laptop editing software offer them a lifeline as they struggle to contain costs. Instead of relying on different people to produce, report, shoot and edit stories, one or two people with the right equipment can handle those tasks.

In dramatically overhauling its newsroom structure, ABC offers a stark illustration of how the economic squeeze is remaking traditional media organizations and what viewers see on the news. Stories shot with hand-held digital cameras often have a personal, rough-hewn quality familiar to a generation raised on amateur Web videos, and can lack the polished production values that mark network news.

Some veteran broadcasters are skeptical that digital journalists, burdened by so many duties, can effectively cover a story.

While it may save money, "what it is going to do in the process is simply cut down on an individual's ability to tell the story properly and well," said Ronald Steinman, executive editor of the Digital Journalist, a magazine about visual journalism, who spent four decades producing news for NBC and ABC.

That sentiment is shared by many ABC staffers, who declined to be quoted by name for fear of losing their jobs. They fret that the expectations being put on digital journalists are unrealistic.

ABC News President David Westin said the network will still cover the majority of stories with a producer, correspondent, camera operator and sound engineer that make up the traditional four-person crew, particularly newsmaker interviews with politicians and celebrities. But he argued that digital journalism actually gives reporters more control over their stories.

"This is a way to maintain or enhance our editorial footprint and get to the stories that are really important, and in some cases, do it in a more compelling way," he said. "In my heart of hearts, this is really about the journalism, not the money."

Digital journalism is common at local news stations, which expect their limited staffs to multitask. But in recent years, it has also been embraced at the network level.

 "A good three years ago, we were like, 'This is the future,' " said Alexandra Wallace, senior vice president of NBC News, who estimates that 20% of the network's on-air stories are digitally produced. "There are huge upsides that have nothing to do with cost."

ABC plans to deploy its digital journalists in two-person teams, but some correspondents function as "one-man bands," such as CBS' Mandy Clark, who just spent two weeks embedded with the Marines in Afghanistan producing her own pieces. CNN has four such reporters working around the country, and Fox News uses solitary reporter-producers in remote places such as Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Kevin Sites, a former network producer who was one of the first "backpack journalists," said he got the idea while covering the war in Kosovo for NBC. "I remember having to move almost a semi full of equipment into a war zone," said Sites, currently a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University. "We were so top heavy."

Sites later spent a year as a solo journalist producing video reports about conflicts around the world for Yahoo!, an approach he said produces more authentic reporting. To make it work, however, ABC needs to be wary about hiring technically savvy but editorially green reporters, he noted.

"They know how to capture things with a camera because they've been doing it since they were 12 years old for YouTube, but will they be able to do something ethically and editorially sound?" Sites asked.

ABC executives said they plan to draw digital journalists from across the company's ranks and offer extensive training before they are deployed.

Still, veteran television executive Philip Balboni, who runs GlobalPost, a website that provides digital coverage of world news, cautioned that it's not easy to find people who are equally proficient in writing, reporting, shooting and editing. Balboni said that perhaps 10% of his 70-plus correspondents can claim that.

"High-quality television does take a lot of craft and skill that is not easily learned," said Balboni, the founder of New England Cable News.

ABC anchor Bill Weir, who often shoots his own material on assignment, agreed that his footage is not as good as that of a professional camera operator. But in some cases, the "cinéma vérité quality" enhances the storytelling, he said. While embedded with U.S troops in Afghanistan in January, he filmed a firefight during a dawn patrol, footage he then edited in the field before transmitting to New York.

"Moments like that prove it can be done," Weir said. Hopefully, he added, "we can come out on the other side of this and keep doing our work in a more efficient, nimble way. Because if we don't change now, maybe the entire place goes."

Oscar Party Crash: No Deal in Cablevision-ABC Feud

In Cablevision-ABC Fight, Oscar Viewers Could be the Losers

Cablevision Systems Corp. said early Sunday March 7, 2010 the stall in negotiations should be blamed on Disney CEO Bob Iger [Pictured].

NEW YORK (AP) - Millions of cable subscribers faced the prospect of Oscar night without the Academy Awards broadcast Sunday after ABC's parent company switched off its signal to Cablevision customers and the two companies blasted each other for failing to reach a deal in a dispute over fees.

In dueling statements dispatched early Sunday, the two companies traded blame for the stalemate ahead of one of the most-watched nights of television.

"Cablevision has once again betrayed its subscribers," said Charissa Gilmore, a spokeswoman for the Walt Disney Co. and ABC Television Group, in a statement. "Cablevision pocketed almost $8 billion last year, and now customers aren't getting what they pay for ... again."

Cablevision Systems Corp. said the stall in negotiations should be blamed on Disney CEO Bob Iger. "It is now painfully clear to millions of New York area households that Disney CEO Bob Iger will hold his own ABC viewers hostage in order to extract $40 million in new fees from Cablevision," said Charles Schueler, a Cablevision executive vice president, in a statement.

The signal can still be pulled from the air for free with an antenna and a new TV or digital converter box.

Cablevision has argued that Disney is seeking an additional $40 million a year in new fees, even though the company pays more than $200 million a year to Disney.

Disney counters by arguing that Cablevision charges customers $18 per month for basic broadcast signals but does not pass on any payment for ABC to Disney.

The dispute is similar to a standoff at the end of last year between News Corp. and Time Warner Cable over how much Fox television station signals were worth. That tussle, which threatened the college football bowl season and new episodes of "The Simpsons," was resolved without a signal interruption.

Cablevision also feuded with Scripps Networks Interactive Inc. in a January dispute that temporarily forced the Food Network and HGTV off the service. Neither side provided terms of an agreement that restored the channels after three weeks.

Disney and Cablevision have been airing dueling advertisements about the ongoing dispute for the past week. Also, lawmakers in Washington have chimed in, suggesting the Federal Communications Commission step in.

The company's previous contract with Cablevision expired more than two years ago, but it was extended month by month as talks continued.

Under previous arrangements, Disney was paid for cable channels such as ESPN and Disney Channel, but gave its ABC broadcast signal away for free, a situation that most broadcasters are now trying to change.

"We can no longer sit back and allow Cablevision to use our shows for free while they continue to charge their customers for them," WABC-TV president and general manager Rebecca Campbell said in a statement.

Schueler suggested that disgruntled viewers should blame Disney's top executive if the station goes dark.

"There is one man who is going to decide whether New York gets to see the Oscars, and that's Disney President and CEO Bob Iger," he said in a statement late Friday. "We call on Bob Iger to stop holding his own viewers hostage, end his threats to pull the plug on ABC at midnight and instead work with us to reach a fair agreement."

WABC-TV is the most-watched TV station in the country, said Disney, which is based in Burbank, Calif.