Wednesday, October 29, 2003
This Just In: Morning TV Still Sucks
When I first started seeing promos for ESPN2's morning show Cold Pizza, which Salon's King Kauffman reviews at the link above, I guessed that it would be pretty much like Kauffman portrays it. It is hosted by a blandly handsome everyman who is enough of a cipher to allow male viewers to imagine it is they who are surrounded by the three female co-hosts: the cute one, the smart one, and the outrageous one. All four of them prattle on for two hours about the sorts of things that we used to call "kicker stories" back when I was still in broadcasting (in what now seems like the Paleozoic era)--lifestyle and celebrity news and human oddities that used to merit 10 seconds before the weather forecast but now power entire television networks 24-7. And because this is ESPN, there is also lots of sports.
Kauffman notes that instead of going for the young male demographic, which ESPN should own pretty much by default to begin with, this show appears to grab for the soccer mom crowd--the same people likely to watch perky Katie Couric, perky Kelly Ripa of Regis and Kelly , or perky Robin Meade on the perky morning edition of the continually perky Headline News (a woman who epitomizes almost everything that's wrong with broadcast anchors these days, which is quite an accomplishment if you think about it). And maybe that's a smart move, as the young male TV watching demographic, ages 18-24, appears to be shrinking. This group is one of the most desirable to advertisers, and executives of the major networks have been scratching their heads wondering why viewership among the group is down 20 percent in the first month of the new fall TV season. Many theories are being floated--quality of the programming, better choices on cable, higher Internet usage--but my favorite is that the mobilization of reservists to Iraq, most of whom are young males aged 18-24, is to blame. Nice try, but we ain't sent that many over there. Yet.
When I first started seeing promos for ESPN2's morning show Cold Pizza, which Salon's King Kauffman reviews at the link above, I guessed that it would be pretty much like Kauffman portrays it. It is hosted by a blandly handsome everyman who is enough of a cipher to allow male viewers to imagine it is they who are surrounded by the three female co-hosts: the cute one, the smart one, and the outrageous one. All four of them prattle on for two hours about the sorts of things that we used to call "kicker stories" back when I was still in broadcasting (in what now seems like the Paleozoic era)--lifestyle and celebrity news and human oddities that used to merit 10 seconds before the weather forecast but now power entire television networks 24-7. And because this is ESPN, there is also lots of sports.
Kauffman notes that instead of going for the young male demographic, which ESPN should own pretty much by default to begin with, this show appears to grab for the soccer mom crowd--the same people likely to watch perky Katie Couric, perky Kelly Ripa of Regis and Kelly , or perky Robin Meade on the perky morning edition of the continually perky Headline News (a woman who epitomizes almost everything that's wrong with broadcast anchors these days, which is quite an accomplishment if you think about it). And maybe that's a smart move, as the young male TV watching demographic, ages 18-24, appears to be shrinking. This group is one of the most desirable to advertisers, and executives of the major networks have been scratching their heads wondering why viewership among the group is down 20 percent in the first month of the new fall TV season. Many theories are being floated--quality of the programming, better choices on cable, higher Internet usage--but my favorite is that the mobilization of reservists to Iraq, most of whom are young males aged 18-24, is to blame. Nice try, but we ain't sent that many over there. Yet.
