Jimmy Kimmel's lacerating dissection of the TV industry has become an annual highlight of the week when the biggest networks reveal programming plans to advertisers, as they did last week. This year, he nailed the pie-eyed suspension of disbelief that characterizes each sales job.
"Remember those shows we were so excited about last fall?" Kimmel said at the ABC session. "We canceled all of them. And yet here you are again. I think you might have a gambling problem."
Big laughs, perhaps from the hint of recognition.
Of the 18 new series that debuted last fall on ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox, six survived to make this coming September's schedule -- a batting average of .333. Take away the relatively stable CBS, and it's three out of 13. That doesn't even count shows that appeared in midseason and are already history, such as "The Paul Reiser Show" and Matthew Perry's "Mr. Sunshine."
And yet, the dance begins again. While the ways to experience television have changed dramatically over the past decade with DVDs, digital video recorders and Internet streaming, the brutally inefficient ways of making it have not. There's little incentive to alter things, judging by predictions for this year's mad scramble to spend billions of dollars on advertising for next season.
The $8.5 billion hauled in by broadcasters last spring will almost certainly be topped, said Jack Myers of the industry newsletter Jack Myers' Media Business Report.
Big spending sectors such as the auto industry are expected to buy more commercial time. Advertisers these days have better access to research telling them that TV is their most efficient way to get their message across, Myers said.
The week had its usual displays of competition, snark and a whole lot of laugh tracks -- with a few clear trends emerging.
