Surprised no one posted this yet...

(via Variety.com)
CW to sell off Sunday night
Conglomerate will develop programming, sell ads
By MICHAEL SCHNEIDER

Long a low-rated night for the CW, the net is planning to radically alter how it does business on Sundays.

The CW is close to sealing a deal with an as-yet unnamed media buyer to take over the night. Under the deal, the CW would sell the 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. block to an advertising conglom, which would turn around and develop programming and sell ad time.

In some ways the plan is a throwback to the early days of TV, when advertisers were more involved in programming primetime. More recently, UPN initially sold the slot for "WWE Smackdown" to World Wrestling Entertainment as a time buy.

Time buys have become the norm on Saturday mornings, where nets like NBC and Fox have sold their Saturday morning kids blocks to outside companies. The CW will do the same thing beginning this fall, when 4Kids takes over the block that had been Kids' WB.

Decision to sell the Sunday primetime block is an acknowledgement that the night has been a tough one for the CW - and before that, the WB, which also struggled to gain ratings traction there.

Deal would allow the CW to focus its attention on Monday through Friday nights. CW has been looking to create more weekday flow on its sked, and believes it will be able to do so after "Smackdown" departs its lineup at the end of September.

Time buy also allows the CW to maintain a presence on Sunday nights, rather than give the night back to affils.

The CW could not be reached for comment.

quote:

Originally posted by CanadianTVFan:
Surprised no one posted this yet...

It is posted in the Wednesday thread.

This arrangement to sell off Sunday is almost exactly what they were doing with Friday/Smackdown. Smackdown wasn't generating any significant revenue because CW licensed Smackdown for a very low rate and Smackdown was in charge of all of the advertising sales for the night (with Smackdown keeping the ad revenue they brought in)? The reason that Smackdown is gone from CW is that Smackdown wanted to end that ad sales arrangement, get a bigger license fee from CW, and leave CW with all the cost/difficulty of selling ad time for the 2-hour wrestling show. CW didn't want to pay the higher licensing fee. CW didn't want to have to take on all the overhead/work of selling 2 additional hours of ad time per week. CW recognized that if they were going to take on that extra cost/work, they needed to find programming that would actually be useful to their network. So, non-significant-revenue generating Smackdown was cut loose.

This new plan for Sunday programming sounds like the CW is going to go out and find some new group to do the same thing that Smackdown did with Fridays. The new group will take on the marketing/ad sales so CW doesn't have to take on that overhead. The hope, of course, is that the new group will program something more useful to the network audience than what Smackdown delivered. I don't think it is a 'given' that the timeslot will be filled with infomercials. It is just as likely that it will be filled by some cable outlet buying up the time and airing some of their syndicated programming or some movie studio buying up the time to air some of their catalog.

All in all, this is a better idea than CW slapping out a 'movie night' with the Warner Bros. leftovers (the good Warner stuff is already going to TNT/TBS) and a much better idea than turning the night over to the local affiliates.

quote:

It is posted in the Wednesday thread

My bad!

quote:

Originally posted by CanadianTVFan:
My bad!

No, you are good. You put the discussion where it belonged and where their would be a reasonable chance to find it weeks/months from now. The 'advanced search' feature on this board leaves a bit to be desired.

Like I predicted in my schedule.. Cw needs to let someone's shows repeats or movies air on Sundays.. They don't have enough good progamming for 6 days..

Cable outlets....I'm wondering if they would sell it to lionsgate television. They are looking for a new home for their cable production 'Wildfire'

some independent film studio named media is going to be the one taking over Sundays..

It won't be infomercials. More likely the CW will wind up with 3 hours of a block of something like Adult Swim, Smackdown or 4kids. Something that will have its own brand and own little logo to put in the corner of the screen opposite the CW logo.

How about a deal with the NCAA for college sports? Big 10 football game of the week or ACC basketball game of the week or even something small potatoes like women's college volleyball or women's college softball?

The company that bought Sunday night on CW is called 'Media Right Capital'.

Futon Critic lists them as having a summer project on HBO called The Life & Times of Tim: an animated show from the people that did the Budweiser lizards.

This Adage Article says that the company has several othe rprojects going including The Goode Family ans How Not To Live Your Life for ABC, DNA, Loaded, and Pedro for FOX, and Name That Tune for MTV.

So, if nothing else, I think we can rule out infomercials/sports and focus on Sunday night's CW being real programming.

quote:

Originally posted by Obveeus:
The company that bought Sunday night on CW is called 'Media Right Capital'.

Futon Critic lists them as having a summer project on HBO called The Life & Times of Tim: an animated show from the people that did the Budweiser lizards.

This Adage Article says that the company has several othe rprojects going including The Goode Family ans How Not To Live Your Life for ABC, DNA, Loaded, and Pedro for FOX, and Name That Tune for MTV.

So, if nothing else, I think we can rule out infomercials/sports and focus on Sunday night's CW being real programming.

i suppose they can't do any worse?

quote:

Originally posted by Obveeus:
How about a deal with the NCAA for college sports? Big 10 football game of the week or ACC basketball game of the week or even something small potatoes like women's college volleyball or women's college softball?

Well they could do that, but Big 10 Football is on Saturdays and I don't see them wanting to compete against the NFl. Will this stuff get counted in the Cdub's weekly average? If so, things could really take a tumble if they go with women's volleyball. Who knows though...

Whatever is programmed on CW Sunday should count on their weekly average since Smackdown! did.

Per this Hollywood Reporter Article, the CW Sunday lineup will feature 2 comedies and 2 dramas. I'm thinking that they plan to take on the aging FOX animated fare with some animation of their own.

Somewhat shocking to see that they will be this aggressive. How funny would it be to see this Sunday lineup do better than the regular Cdub programming and more importantly, how much and where will the promotion come from? The CW or other cable and outside places MRC buys ad time with?