Tuesday, December 02, 2003

Convergence on the tube Convergence is common to all economic activity. Businesses tend to imitate each other, customers keep demanding from one vendor some product of service that they see others getting, and companies that don't adapt to competitive moves and changing fashions tend to disappear. In an economy dominated by oligopolies, however, convergence is accelerated. It seems that the few players in an oligopoly tend in most ways to become just like each other. This may seem wrongheaded; surely there's no competitive advantage in being just like your biggest rivals; after all, isn't originality what gives one company distinction and advantage? Certainly originality can be a plus. But as oligopolies tighten, rivals have the means and interest to match every competitor's breakthrough. The comparative advantage of any original move is short-lived, readily imitated. And on television, it's truer than ever that most users have "50 (or 100) channels and nothing's on." Let's take for example the spread of "reality" shows on US television. These programs, which place generally narcissistic volunteers in embarrassing or semi-dangerous situations, were once a staple of MTV. Then suddenly CBS came out with "Survivor", as a space-filler in the summer doldrums of 2000. The program caught on big: advantage CBS/Viacom. Soon ABC and NBC were coming out with their own reality series, ad nauseam. The CBS advantage was short-lived. Similar things happened with crime investigation shows, prime-time million-dollar quiz shows, and a decade earlier, celebrity biography shows. None of this is very surprising. The networks are always looking over their shoulders to see what the other guy is doing. In many cases, the executives or the talent are moving from one network to another, in an attempt to get the magic from one to rub off on the other. The network news divisions jealously eye what works for the other guy. CNN has gone through a long period of trying to imitate Fox News, even hiring away their correspondents and skewing increasingly to the right. ABC and CBS keep trying to imitate the resurgent Today show on NBC, hiring away whoever they can and imitating the set, the topic mix, and outdoor audience in Manhattan. This convergence soon leads to conventional mindsets that endlessly trot out the well proven, no matter how diminishing the returns. On TV, most sitcoms look the same and the cop shows are pretty similar as well. This is not some temporary aberration, some lapse in good taste; it is an inevitable result of oligopolies in competition. And this trend is getting worse, as TV networks more and more are producing their own programs. This result is outlined in a Salon article by Dann Halem ("Dr. Joe Friday, Esq.", 10/16/2002), which laments the sameness of TV dramas. Where everyone is either a cop, a doctor, or a lawyer. Each year, the major networks review hundreds if not thousands of pitches for possible new shows. Of these, only about 100 pilot scripts are commissioned, and of these, perhaps 20 or so possible dramas are filmed, with nary a fraction of pilots finding their way into the fall lineup.... Which means, with competition fierce, and rewards for creating a successful dramatic franchise high, today's creative result is often an exercise in groupthink. Though modern conventional wisdom can often be trumped by successful shows from the past, a sampling of rules from Network Programming 101 includes staying away from low-stakes professions, avoiding basing shows on foreign soil, or jumping into the middle of military conflicts ... with apologies to "Lou Grant," "China Beach" and "M*A*S*H. Sure, there are breakthough programs and original ideas, but they are finding a stepper set of obstacles all the time. Even PBS is starting to look like a middlebrow extension of infomercial laden cable stations, as it jockeys for ratings and fundraising with. Deepak Chopra and other self-help programs (plus Yanni). And, of course, there is little alternative to network TV, as the oligopoly-owned cable stations keep running "me too" shows, lugging network projects, and reruns from the networks. 6:50:48 PM

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