Games networks play
Whether it’s to distract viewers from reality or prop up bottom lines, this summer’s TV schedule is full of fluff
Turning on TV this summer is like powering up a time machine set for “disco era.” The U.S. networks have crammed summer schedules with 1970s revivals.
ABC alone has brought back Battle of the Network Stars, The Gong Show, The $100,000 Pyramid and, going even further back, To Tell the Truth. Fox has launched a revival of Love Connection.
Why is television taking a big swing away from the clutter of “Peak TV” toward mindless distractions? Here are five reasons:
Making America great again
Two words: Donald Trump. Sure, you can watch a nation implode every night if you want to on CNN or the late-night talk shows. If ever there was a summer when America wanted to escape reality, however, it is now.
The networks have responded with mindless time fillers such as game show revivals, as well as the sight of former child stars squeezing into Spandex and short shorts to fall into dunk tanks.
Hey, it worked to take viewers’ minds off of staggering out of Vietnam as well as the aftershocks of Watergate in the mid-’70s. Summer has always been silly season According to New York-based Program
ming Insider Marc Berman, network executives have historically assumed “that the mind of the traditional TV viewer turns to mush as the temperature rises in the summer.”
Berman says that began to change when U.S. cable networks “realized they could step to the plate with original summer fare while the ‘Gone Fishing’ sign was up at the broadcast nets.”
The TV expert feels, however, that “in this era of ‘Peak TV’ with so much original content, fewer people are now watching these platforms in the summer and the emphasis has returned to mindless fluff.”
Want proof? NBC is back with its brand of breezy summer fare, including new seasons of American Ninja Warrior, The Wall and Hollywood Game Night. Even PBS has imported a summer winner with The Great British Baking Show.
CBS, meanwhile, is phoning it in with Candy Crush. The modern gamer finds former Survivor and Big Brother contestants scrambling over giant video walls in search of 15 more minutes of fame. Survey says: Hire Steve Harvey Steve Harvey is TV’s Teflon Man. He survived the embarrassment of announcing the wrong Miss Universe winner. Not even news of a nasty leaked memo has curtailed his career.
The former member of the Original Kings of Comedy is now the King of Summer TV. He hosts ABC’s toprated Celebrity Family Feud as well as the regular, syndicated version of the classic game show. He also hosts NBC’s kiddie talent series Little Big Shots, plus spinoff Little Big Shots: Forever Young and the Shark Tanklike pitch series Steve Harvey’s Funderdome. This fall, he will welcome celebrity guests as host of his own Ellen-like daytime series, Steve. Relaunching classic brands Gang-tackled by cable and digital, networks have found it increasingly difficult to cut through the clutter and retain audience share.
Reaching back to relaunch heritage brands reminds older viewers — who grew up with the original versions of these shows — exactly where to find their summer TV fix.
Missing Chuck Barris as host of The Gong Show? ABC offers an outrageous new host (Mike Myers as bawdy Brit Tommy Maitland) plus celebrity comedian panellists (Zach Galifianakis, Andy Samberg, Will Forte, Jennifer Aniston, Anthony Anderson and executive producer Will Arnett) to make you forget all about Jaye P. Morgan and even Gene, Gene the Dancing Machine. Revive the bottom line Back in the ’70s, when these shows were new, the Big Three U.S. networks could afford to leave the lights on all summer with game shows and reruns, secure in the knowledge that viewers would watch just about anything. Now premium services such as HBO and Showtime have seized the summer, bringing back scripted hits such as Game of Thrones (which returned for a seventh season Sunday on HBO Canada). Networks have to compete with new fare but, with dwindling revenues, they need to do it on a dime.
So why not do it with shows and concepts where you already own the intellectual property rights? Take ABC’s revival of The $100,000 Pyramid. Originally launched in 1973 — in the middle of the Watergate hearings — the series offered one of TV’s greatest jackpots. Today, however, 100 Gs is walking-around money for host Michael Strahan. An even better deal is the paltry $2,000.17 awarded each week at the end of The Gong Show. As Tommy Maitland would say, summer TV is no longer about the money; it’s all about the “funsies.”