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USA Network to Explore Sitcoms and Reality Shows

May 6, 2013 by Leave a Comment

For most of the past decade the USA Network has lived by the mantra “blue skies,” which has translated into programming a string of upbeat hourlong drama hits, like “Burn Notice” and “Royal Pains.”

That strategy has paid off, with USA ranking as the most-watched entertainment network on cable for eight straight years. So why is the network going to make a new pitch to advertisers on May 16 that emphasizes areas previously little explored by USA, like situation comedy and reality shows?

The most obvious reason: USA paid a hefty price — $1 million to $1.5 million an episode — three years ago to acquire reruns of the hugely popular ABC comedy “Modern Family.” Those episodes become available this fall, so a shift toward some comedy-based nights was inevitable.

But the network’s top program executives also acknowledge that in order to grow, and to maintain the top position in a competitive cable environment, it is time to branch out into new programming directions.

At its advertiser presentation next week, USA is expected to announce that it has ordered its first two original sitcoms, as well as several new reality shows, and a new drama that breaks with the USA tradition by taking a bit of a walk on the dark side.

“One of the dances any network does, and we’re doing one now, is the balance between breadth and depth,” said Jeff Wachtel, the co-president of USA. “We are a very broad general entertainment network in a world that is increasingly about the depth of the commitment.”

He added, “We have a reservoir of good will. Now that’s great, but it’s also a trap. Because if anybody imputes a formula to you, you really are in danger of being formulaic. We’ve got to challenge the audience.”

Other cable networks have been doing that with great success: AE has the reality hit “Duck Dynasty;” History collected big audiences for “The Bible;” FX has forged a reputation for dark dramas like “Justified;” and AMC has the biggest drama in all of television with “The Walking Dead.”

“There are a lot of networks infringing on USA’s territory,” said Derek Baine, a media analyst with SNL Kagan. “Changing the program lineup can be done. You just have to tread carefully because it can be jarring for the audience.”

USA’s numbers are unquestionably potent. Under Bonnie Hammer, who now is the chairwoman of the cable entertainment group for NBCUniversal, USA has been a profit machine. In 2012, the network exceeded $1 billion in profit for the first time, and it projects the number to be higher in 2013.

USA still has the top overall audience among cable entertainment networks with an average of 2.92 million viewers, ahead of the 2.43 million for the History Channel. USA is down slightly, 2 percent, this season.

It has remained No. 1, though narrowly, over TBS in one of the two audience groups that dominates sales to advertisers — viewers ages 25 to 54. But it trails TBS this season so far in the most important audience category, viewers ages 18 to 49.

That might not be bad news for USA, however, and not only because TBS gets a springtime bounce from college and pro basketball. The big winner for TBS is its package of repeats of the hit CBS sitcom “The Big Bang Theory,” which runs as often as 16 to 20 times a week on TBS.

Chris McCumber, the network’s other co-president, said USA would most likely use “Modern Family” much as TBS has used “Big Bang” — all over its schedule, sometimes filling a whole night of prime time.

“We want to be careful not to overuse it,” Mr. McCumber said. “But we think it will raise all boats in prime time.”

There is some question about whether “Modern Family” can perform as “Big Bang” has. It is a filmed comedy without a laugh track, and those tend to repeat less well than taped shows with audience laughter.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/06/business/media/usa-network-to-explore-sitcoms-and-reality-shows.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Filed Under: Media Business Tagged With: , ,

Broad-Based S.&P. 500-Stock Index Ends at Record High

March 28, 2013 by Leave a Comment

The most widely followed barometer of the United States stock market rose above its 2007 peak to hit a high on Thursday, while most of the rest of the world could only look on in envy.

The nominal record set by the Standard Poor’s 500-stock index is the latest sign that the American economy is recovering some of the strength it had before the financial collapse of 2008, partly helped by stimulus from the Federal Reserve.

It has been a little more than three weeks since the Dow Jones industrial average hit a milestone high, also set in October 2007, but the S. P. is considered more representative of the breadth of American stocks.

The S. P. reached its new nominal high after several days of flirting with the record as investors struggled with the turmoil caused by Cyprus’s banking crisis. The milestone capped a strong first quarter, in which the index rose 10 percent to hit the high.

Meanwhile, stock markets in nearly every other large economy around the world are still well below their records. An index of the entire world’s stock market, without the United States, is still down about 29 percent from the level it hit in 2007, according to an analysis by Ned Davis Research. Only some smaller nations, such as Denmark, Mexico and Colombia, have fully recovered their losses.

Workers in the United States have learned that the stock market’s performance is not always a good gauge of the underlying economy’s strength. Unemployment in the United States has remained stubbornly high at the same time that share prices have risen since bottoming out in March 2009. Even with the record level, the S. P. 500 is still not back to its 2007 level when inflation is taken into account.

Still, the performance of the American stock market would have seemed improbable during the depths of the crisis, given that it was financial markets in the United States that led the global economy into recession. Strategists and economists have said that the divergence since then is largely a result of the relative speed with which the United States government and corporate sector responded to the causes of the 2008 crisis.

“The U.S. addressed the problems of the financial crisis faster and with much more ferocity than the rest of the world,” said Edward M. Clissold, a market strategist at Ned Davis Research.

The S. P. 500 finished Thursday up 0.4 percent, or 6.34 points, at 1,569.19. The Dow Jones industrial average climbed 0.4 percent, or 52.38 points, to 14,578.54. That is 11 percent above its level at the beginning of the quarter.

The Nasdaq composite index rose 0.3 percent, or 11 points to 3,267.52, far below the heights it reached during the dot-com boom in 2000.

Economists have given much of the credit for the market’s recovery to the Fed, which worked quickly with the rest of the federal government to bail out and revamp the nation’s banks and financial system, which the European Central Bank started doing in earnest only last year. While bank bailouts remain contentious, they have allowed the institutions to resume lending.

The Fed also acted on its own to pump money into the economy with bond-buying programs known as quantitative easing. Many central bankers around the world worried that those programs would result in extreme inflation. There are also fears that the American economy will not be able to remain on its current trajectory once the Fed draws back. But all that has not stopped other countries from beginning to copy the Fed’s lead.

“The Fed has won the battle, and continues to win the battle,” said Jack Malvey, the chief global markets strategist at BNY Mellon.

In Japan, the government of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was elected last December after promising a more aggressive approach to monetary policy. Japan’s Nikkei index has been the best performer of any of the world’s large stock markets in the first quarter of this year, rising 19 percent. That still leaves the Nikkei almost 68 percent below the heights it scaled in 1989 before Japan’s real estate market soured.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/29/business/daily-stock-market-activity.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Filed Under: Global Business Tagged With: , ,

Off the Charts: In a Survey of Bosses, Good News for Job Seekers

April 9, 2011 by Leave a Comment

In a quarterly survey of chief executives, the Business Roundtable found that 52 percent of companies planned to hire workers in the United States over the next six months, while just 11 percent said they expected to reduce employment.

Never before have so many chief executives said they planned to hire, or so few said they planned to cut payrolls. The survey has been taken every three months since late 2002.

The Business Roundtable includes chief executives of 200 major American companies. If most of them did add workers, that would almost certainly have a substantial effect on employment in the country. Two other broader surveys of companies are taken each month by the Institute for Supply Management. Its survey of manufacturers has been showing more companies planning to increase employment than reduce it since the fall of 2009, and indeed manufacturing employment rose in 2010 for the first full year since 1997, according to the Labor Department.

It took longer for service companies to begin hiring. But the I.S.M. survey of such companies has shown positive readings since last fall, and the latest government report indicates that employment in that sector has risen to the highest level in two years.

All the surveys are aimed at measuring the breadth of employment plans, as opposed to the magnitude of such plans. So a company planning to add a few workers would count just as much as one planning to add thousands.

Whatever the companies say, though, consumers remain far from certain that jobs will materialize. In the latest consumer confidence survey by the Conference Board, only 20 percent of respondents said they expected jobs to be added to the economy over the next six months, slightly fewer than the number who expected a decline. Still, consumers have a history of pessimism in that survey, as is shown in the chart, and the proportion expecting gains is higher than it was in the years before the recession.

The I.S.M. numbers are normally presented on a scale of zero to 100, with 50 indicating that as many companies are hiring as are firing; numbers above that level indicating more hiring. The higher the figure, the more prevalent hiring is. In the charts, the figures are rebased so that zero is the neutral number.

Both the service and manufacturing figures slipped a little in March, which could indicate that growth is slowing. But the manufacturing figures for each of the first three months of 2011 were higher than in any previous month since 1973.

The Business Roundtable survey was conducted from Feb. 28 through March 18, and received responses from 142 of the 200 chief executives, which the organization said was the largest response rate ever.

The survey includes three questions, each of which produced unusually optimistic responses. Asked about their own companies’ plans for capital spending in the United States, 62 percent said they planned increases, while 6 percent expected to reduce spending. That was the best response since the first quarter of 2005, when 60 percent planned increases and only 3 percent expected to spend less.

In response to another question, 92 percent of the chief executives said they expected increases in sales for their companies, while none said they expected a decline. It was the first time that none of the executives thought sales would decline.

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=e5e55ed3c4541782f6eac0c9c0022e42

Filed Under: Economy News Tagged With: , ,