Writers' strike: Will it scuttle press tour?

You may have read in the trades last week that the big networks want out of January TV critics' tour because of the strike. As they see it, there will be no news for the press if CBS and ABC don't have any midseason shows for them to write about. Which is an interesting point of view, and they're welcome to it. But as of this moment, I wouldn't bet against a press tour in January. And it's not just so we can get an update from Paula Abdul...

The reason the networks want out, according to Ben Grossman in Broadcasting & Cable, is that presenting midseason shows is "not worth the costs that can total anywhere from $250,000-$500,000 per broadcast network for each one-day event."

I can see their point. In fact, as anonymous single-source stories go, this one holds up pretty well — unlike, say, Nikki Finke's widely publicized report that the big network heads secretly welcomed a strike because they considered this season a ratings loser anyway and wanted a "do-over." Well, last week it sure didn't look like CBS wanted a "do-over" on "CSI" or "Criminal Minds" or any of the other shows that are keeping the network in first place. Instead of a do-over, CBS was telling its showrunners, "Do what we paid you to do, or we'll sue."

Still, I was surprised at the complete lack of enthusiasm the networks have for continuing January tour. And I wondered how this report was playing with the showrunners of midseason network programs — the ones that would, under the networks' new agenda, be forced to do their song and dance at July press tour, eight to nine months before their shows debuted.

So I called one of them up. Ricky Blitt wrote for "Family Guy" and, with the support of that show's creator Seth MacFarlane, successfully pitched a comedy last year called "The Winner" to Fox. It starred Rob Corddry as a 32-year-old with a severe case of arrested development (hi Mitch!). Somehow Corddry's character became the "richest man in Buffalo," or so he told us in the show's introduction. But because "The Winner" didn't make it past six episodes, we never found out how.

The show's lack of success wasn't due to lack of talent. Critics, as Blitt noted, "were very kind" to his show. (For the record, I wrote a rave.) If anything, Fox erred by scheduling two-a-nights for "The Winner" last March. That meant it churned through all the episodes it had ordered in just three weeks. Blitt argues, and I agree, that two-a-nights work a lot better either as a summer reruns event or for a show like "The Office" where one-hour specials ensure that a popular show's audience sticks around longer.

Clearly, Blitt would have traded more conventional scheduling for a spot on the January press tour. But he also thinks his show would've been "invisible" at a July tour, nine months before his likely airdate, fighting for oxygen with all of the fall programs being promoted there. As it turns out, January TCA tour proved to be nearly all the publicity "The Winner" would get. "By the time the show aired," he said, "there was no publicity."

"I can see the networks' point, because they don't have tons of midseason shows," said Blitt. "For me personally, though, it was huge." Besides, if it hadn't been for TCA, "I wouldn't have been able to tell the critics that Faye Dunaway was an old bitch."

If you follow that last link, you'll see it goes to Ed Bark's blog. Uncle Barky is one of the best and hardest working TV critics I know. He had just begun blogging last January after having left the Dallas Morning News. You wonder why a guy would spend most of his freelance pay for the month to come to California for press tour, but then you see him at work (as evidenced by that column I just linked to) and you realize he's getting every penny's worth — even if the big networks say they aren't.

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So if the big networks don't come, who will?

That's easy: Cable, PBS and any top-tier authority from the world of digital distribution and the business of Hollywood who'd like to speak to a ballroom filled with newspaper, online, trade and wire reporters. We would probably schedule more set visits than we usually do, because even though they're kind of exhausting (at least when you do four a day), they just make for interesting stories.

Oh yes — and the TV critics and reporters will come. I sit on the Television Critics Association board, and our membership was polled last week after the strike, and the vast majority said they would almost certainly attend press tour in January, strike or no strike.

One pointed out how typically insane it would be for the networks to walk away from "a specialized and captive audience to whom they can air their side of what by then might be America's highest-profile labor negotiation." Another wrote a long and strongly-worded e-mail listing occasions in the past when networks were in a lot tighter financial situation than they are now — 1991 (Gulf War coverage costing millions), 1994 (Northridge earthquake coverage costing millions), and 2002 (9/11 coverage costing millions) — yet January tour went on.

Of course, if the strike is settled by January, the networks won't want any publicity for their returning shows anyway. Not at all.

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After TCA tour ended last January, I put together a collection of links to my fellow TV critics and called it "27 essential stories from Winter Press Tour." Some are offline right now, but most links still work, and they show a critics' corps at work.

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Given all the posturing that's gone on around the writers' strike, you may be wondering whether the big networks might be bluffing about not attending tour. Frankly, it's impossible to know right now. Our president, Dave Walker of the New Orleans Times-Picayune, will be teleconferencing with the network PR chiefs today and we should know more at the (literal) end of the day. Walker has the TCA's utter respect and devotion, and that may be owing to what he's been through away from tour (although he will always downplay it, noting that he only lost the use of the first floor of his house for a year).

But I think Dave's hard work — he actually flew out to L.A. to meet with the PR chiefs last week — and his unimpeachable honesty in his dealings with all the parties involved in TV critics' tour is a big reason he's so respected. Read his long and detailed memo that he wrote last week to the membership of TCA and see if you don't agree. "I may be making a huge mistake laying down our cards," Dave told me this weekend. "But this is all we have."

I think a lot of TCAers also feel that, as journalists, it's not our lot in life to go into meeting rooms and play hardball, which is what network guys do all day. One of them has even written how-to books for his fellow executives wishing to learn the secrets of Machiavelli. (They sell well and no doubt earn him a handsome side income, in no small part due to his talent at cleverly disguising his books as satires of Machiavelli.) Our job is to cover such intrigues, not become part of them. And in this age of PR spin, transparency can be a powerful card to play. Just ask the writers' guild, whose willingness to broadcast their deliberations to the whole world has helped reveal their unity and anger to a degree that no amount of not-for-attribution stories in the trades could have.

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Besides, who told the networks to spend $500,000 on January tour? We're not out there to be wined and dined. We pay our way right up to the buffet table, which is mostly supplied so that each day's press session can continue uninterrupted from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. (Even then, we come home with a pile of receipts from eating out.)

These are significant expenses, but our newspapers pay them — for the same reason they pay our sports writers and columnists to attend the Super Bowl. So we can sit in a roomful of other journalists and fire questions at well-paid stars and their coaches. So we can be where the game is played and wander out on our own and do some enterprise. So we can visit with the team owners and grill them about their performance this season. So we can trade notes with our fellow ink-stained wretches.

This is why I think we're being played. I can't believe the network PR chiefs don't see the blizzard of journalism that comes out of L.A. every January. Or notice those clippings from March or April that contain a quote or two garnered at a party they threw at winter tour. For landlocked journalists in middle markets, press tour is as vital as attending the Finals is to a sportswriter. The networks know this. They might even suspect that if they were to slash their budgets and present a stripped-down, no-frills tour, we'd come anyway. They'd be right.

So why don't they present a stripped-down, no-frills tour in January? Well, maybe because each of these guys is afraid the guys at the other networks won't follow their lead. Then they'll be the only dumb schmuck cutting back on tour. That's how guys think. A female journalist recently told me, "If women were running things in Hollywood, there would NEVER be a strike!" I know how she feels.

Comments

[Guyot]

You're right, Aaron. You are being played.

This is another ploy by management to turn media against our cause.