I ran into an old friend recently who asked me what I was up to. This didn’t used to happen in Hollywood. A few years ago, when there were fewer television networks to choose from and fewer shows on the air, it was easy to keep track of what your friends were doing. If someone you knew was working, you knew about it.
“I’m producing a television comedy,” I told him. He looked at me blankly. “For a cable network,” I added helpfully.
“Where is it,” he asked, “on my thing?” He mimed pressing a button on a remote control.
Which led into a tiresome discussion about finding the network on which my current series airs, because it depends on the cable company – or the satellite provider – that a viewer has. The truth is, you have to flip around a bit to find the network.
I explained all of this to my friend. He looked exasperated. “Well, what time is it on?” That depends, I told him, on where you live.
“But we’re talking Tuesdays, right?” he asked. “Basically,” I said. “Although the show is rerun on Wednesday nights on another cable channel.”
“Where do I find that one?” he asked. And the conversation began again.
It’s a struggle, in the multichannel universe, to get your shows noticed. And in a world in which we’re all pulled in multiple directions, if a show or network isn’t easy to find, it’s going to stay lost.
Years ago, a large American television network spent most of its promotional budget on a series of quirky and offbeat advertisements about the joys of television watching. There were billboards that said, essentially, “Go Inside and Watch More Television,” and print ads extolling the virtues of sofa-based snacking. The spots were playful and fun – and totally ineffective. People didn’t need to be told that watching television was fun. People already knew that it was fun. They needed to be told what day and what time a certain show was on.
That’s boring, of course, and no self-respecting creative advertising genius in an expensive haircut and important eyewear would be caught dead pitching something so prosaic and practical to the client. The result – no surprise here – was the almost total failure of that network’s entire season.
If you make it hard for people to find your shop, they’ll simply go to someone else’s.
The television news channel Al Jazeera America, for instance, is struggling hard in a very competitive news marketplace. It’s facing the Fox News juggernaut and stiff challenges from other more entrenched channels like CNN and CNBC. There’s also, for some American viewers, something slightly off-putting and suspect about a news channel that has its headquarters in a faraway and mysterious place, and that broadcasts so much of its content in Arabic. In many ways, Al Jazeera America has a steep hill to climb.
But the biggest challenge Al Jazeera America faces is its location on the dial. Where is it, the viewer might ask himself while miming holding a television remote control device, on my thingy?
I can’t help wondering if some of the money the network spent on glossy advertisements all over New York and Los Angeles might have been better spent telling lazybones like me, in idiot-proof language, where exactly to find it.
All of this went through my head as I was trying to explain to my friend – a smart, educated professional – how to figure out where my show was appearing on his television. I knew the conversation was a total failure when I began a sentence with, “Just go to your cable provider’s website….”
He put his hand up to stop me.
“I’m never going to do that,” he said. “So let’s make this easy. You’re the executive producer of the show, right?”
“Right,” I said.
“So, as the boss, presumably you have access to DVDs of the episodes, right?”
“Right,” I said.
“So why don’t you just put some episodes on DVD and send me a package? Can you do that?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Good! Do that,” he said.
“One question, though,” I said. “What format?”
“Excuse me?” he asked.
“What format is your DVD player?” I asked.
At which point he walked away without a word.
Rob Long is a writer and producer based in Hollywood
On Twitter: @rcbl
