Good Enough TV: New Landscape Created by Cost-Efficient Online Video
By emeadows
August 29, 2012
August 29, 2012
- Analysts attribute recent cost-cuts at NBC, which included the elimination of about two dozen jobs on “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno,” to Comcast focusing on “improving the financial performance” of the network.
- In an opinion piece published in Multichannel News, Gary Arlen writes that this reported 10 percent decrease in payroll for the “Tonight Show” staff (Leno reportedly took a significant salary cut to avoid further layoffs) won’t likely be detectable to the average viewer, perhaps making it a good move for Comcast.
- “More significant to the TV industry as a whole — and especially to the growing stable of Comcast-owned content channels — are the implications of this cost-cutting,” suggests Arlen.
- “Beyond the lavish pay scales for celebrities (both in front of and behind the camera) is a new TV economic landscape,” he writes. “Improved, and admittedly costly, technology is bringing down the price of production and making possible new kinds of appealing entertainment. (Let’s not even talk about el-cheapo reality programs.)”
- This new landscape includes individuals with online video channels and hundreds or thousands or more subscribers.
- “These conditions and more are paving the way for what I’ll call ‘good enough TV,'” notes Arlen. “Certainly, second-tier cable channels have survived for years on ‘adequate’ quality shows: well-produced made-for-video movies and series that would have qualified as ‘B’ films a half-century ago. They’re good enough for prime time, a launch-pad for young talent and a sinecure for past-their-prime performers.”
- Google’s financial infusions into its YouTube channels, much of it designated for original programming, is a great example of the “good enough TV” ethos, writes Arlen. “Other ‘good enough’ shows take advantage of the interactive capabilities that young producers can now create on a financial shoestring.”
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