NCAA Sweet 16 begins
CBS and TBS boast 2017 NCAA Basketball Tournament action. Games include Michigan vs. Oregon (7 p.m., CBS), West Virginia vs. Gonzaga (7:15 p.m., TBS), Purdue vs. Kansas (9:30 p.m., CBS) and Xavier vs. Arizona (9:45 p.m., TBS).
For years, the network had March Madness to itself. Just as CBS is sharing basketball with TBS, the network is attracting rather cable-sized audiences for the games. Last week’s games barely cracked a 1 rating in the 18 to 49 audience. That’s hardly better than the network’s ill-fated Thursday night series “Training Day,” which has been exiled to Saturday nights along with “Ransom,” another barely watched new series.
CBS is hardly alone. To date, 2017 has been a very difficult year for launching new network fare. While front page static might explain the terrible ratings for the new incarnation of “The Celebrity Apprentice,” poorly received shows like “Powerless” and “The Blacklist: Redemption” have no such excuses. Fox probably knew “Kicking and Screaming” was a throwaway, but the ratings for the “new” “24: Legacy” and “APB” have been sobering.
The most obvious reason for anemic numbers may be the advent of “peak TV.” The arrival of more than 400 new series a year has resulted in radical audience fragmentation.
Viewers are not only faced with a bewildering array of choices, they also have new ways to appreciate old favorites and familiar faces. NBC’s “Trial & Error” was clearly intended to appeal to fans of “Parks & Recreation,” “Community” and “30 Rock.” But fans of those series can also catch Aziz Ansari’s “Master of None” streaming a second season on Netflix on May 12, or Tina Fey’s “Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt” streaming its third Netflix season on May 19. And am I the only one confused when I see “Lost” alum Terry O’Quinn on two spy thrillers, NBC’s “The Blacklist: Redemption” and Amazon’s “Patriot,” both launched at roughly the same time?
Peak TV has brought viewers a wealth of options that would have seemed inconceivable five or 10 years ago. At the same time, it has presented sponsors with abysmal ratings that would have been unthinkable as well. How do commercial sponsors respond when they see that the CW’s “The Vampire Diaries” attracted one-tenth of 1 ratings point last Thursday?
Numbers like that do not result in the cancellation of a series; they threaten the survival of entire networks. We’ve already seen Pivot and the Esquire Channel vanish. Something tells me they won’t be the last to go.