<<I see that everybody's playing along with their story that the entire Q, excuse me, the entire year, was fouled up by five days of 24/7 WTC coverage. >>
Well, though it is the excuse du jour, in the case of those in the broadcast industry, the effects of the WTC coverage are pretty much a series of dominos that will have a long lasting impact that MIGHT have been escaped without the tragic events. To wit, the ad market has been soft. It got softer due to the attacks AND 5 days of no ads is bucketload of lost revenue, not to mention that you have to find time to make-good on all the ads that were supposed to run. That process will last for months. Add in the lost revenue at places like ESPN that switched to all news for a few days, then had no live events when that's how they make their money. And geez. . . those poor home shopping networks!
Perhaps worse from the networks' point of view, the lost promotion time before the start of the new fall season has cast the launch of a lot of shows into doubt. Networks make as much money as their biggest hits let them make, particularly now that they tend to own pieces of the shows they air. Without promotion, and with a potentially changed appetite among the viewing public, Nielsen ratings will likely fall. Advertising rates are dependent on those ratings. Lather, rinse, repeat.
The movie business also just suffered its worst box office weekend of the year, though this is a typically slow time anyway. But still, further down the line, movies that were not "hits" in the theaters sell fewer videos and bring in less money on cable. So even if the audience returns (which they likely will), there are longer range problems from just the two to four weeks of poor audiences. And, of course, movies like Collateral Damage (an Arnold extravaganza) and Big Trouble (a Tim Allen comedy involving a bomb on a plane) have been delayed, costing untold millions in promotional expenses, not to mention the lack of box office revenues. Other projects with large investments behind them are also now delayed or permanently stopped, costing untold millions.
Anyway, I can see exactly how far more than this one quarter was impacted by the WTC event in the broadcast world. Saying it's just an excuse is not entirely fair (though I'm sure other losses will be dumped in there under cover of the WTC disaster). More interesting to me is that the network TV model, in particular, has become so tenuous that an event like this can impact profitability and hasten changes in a business that is loathe to change.
the freep |
