What is the deal with the layoffs?
Yesterday, Global TV announced that they're laying off 200 people in their news divisions coast to coast. Corus was decimated by fifty or so earlier in the week, leaving a massive hole in their west coast prescence. (And before you start the usual Toronto-grumbling, Vancouver -- I think this is more than offset by the news that CTV is reorganizing their development dept under Louise Clark, working out of Vancouver. Right person. Right job. And as a Toronto guy, sorry to say -- right town. The locus of TeeVee right now in Canada is VanCity, baby.)
Alliance Atlantis also laid off some people recently, didn't they?
Now the stuff at CTV and the former CHUM parts of the Globemedia collossus is understandable -- it's reorganization now that the merger has gone through -- but why all these changes and chaos now? Is this a quarter end balance sheet thing? Is it just that everyone woke up from a warm summer's sleep? I don't get it. Enlighten me.
Meanwhile, Canadians, I don't know if you've noticed, but apparently Global and CTV are in a deep deep ratings war, firing off angry press releases left and right to the press, claiming ratings victories and...oh well, read some of Bawden in The Toronto Star:
CTV sources noted the lowest-ever premiere for a season of Survivor this week – it's a Global show.
What really hurt CTV's pride was Global's assertion that CTV was fast becoming an older viewers' network.
The press release battle is really about positioning: establishing the kind of clout that Grey's Anatomy (a CTV show) can command among U.S. advertisers to become the most expensive U.S. series on which to advertise this fall.
Global claims that its viewership was up 39 per cent in the 18-49 age group, but CTV points out that it was still ahead 547,000 to Global's 487,000, for the same age group in ratings Week 1. The CTV range increases even more when the network uses ratings in the 25-54 age range.
Global's newfound aggressiveness may have temporarily rattled CTV, but the network that has enjoyed ratings supremacy for more than a decade is vowing to keep to the high road in the future.
Okay. Now. Is it just me...(I know, it frequently is just me) but is all of this rather unseemly? Let's unpack it a bit. In essence what these two big money-printing concerns are sayin is:
"Our selection of shows that we had nothing to do with making but cherrypicked from ABC, CBS, NBC, and Fox are doing way better than their selection of shows that they had nothing to do with making but cherrypicked from ABC, CBS, NBC, and Fox. And our promotion which basically just slides on in on the much more massive American promotion for the same show in the same timeslot is beating the hell out of their promotion which basically just slides on in on the much more massive American promotion for the same show in the same timeslot."
I understand there's lots of advertising money at stake. I do. I'm not naive. I just...well, I just don't think it's something to be all that proud about. Picking shows, developing, greenlighting, scheduling = hard. Going down to L.A. twice a year and writing a check? = Not so hard.
It's weird, isn't it? How come none of you nabobs in the press take that angle? You know, in the Globe and Ma...oh, right, CTV Globemedia.....but what about in the National Post or say the Vancouver Su...oh...riiiigggght...Canwest Global papers...
Hmm...
I'm so glad to be well served by our benignly concentrated news media. Now, where's that latest press release?
See why I'm not a business guy?
2 comments:
I get why they want to jockey for the best ratings position, but the way they do it is so amateur hour. The National Post blog reprinted the recent volley under the headline: "CTV calls Global an 'also-ran,' Global calls CTV old and cranky" which pretty much sums it up. I imagine their PR people shoving each other at recess.
If both nets are in a shouting match over who is better, then good. Let them go at it awhile, and then...
HAVE THEM PROVE IT.
It's a great lead in for the public (via the critics) to ask, "Well just what the hell HAVE you done for me lately?"
And then you can swing the conversation over to what they have been doing TO you and not FOR you.
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