TVSquad: "Why FOX Refuses To Get Into the Late-Night Game"

[JamesG]

Why FOX Refuses to Get Into the Late Night Game
by Danny Gallagher
posted May 26th 2010


Late night is one of television's most hallowed genres.
Hell, it's transcended genres. It's an institution.

Millions of people use it just before they drift off to sleep whether it's to laugh the troubles of the day away or fall asleep fast in the case of Jay Leno's "Tonight Show".



FOX, however, hasn't even tried to pick a fight with the likes of Letterman, Leno, Ferguson, O'Brien or Fallon for quite some time. (If you just asked yourself, "Well, what about Carson Daly?", you need to be tied down to something heavy so we know where you are at all times.)


Instead, they have tried to carve a section of their Saturday night schedule into a new proving ground for their talk shows. It's accomplished very little.

Most of you probably didn't know they had even had a late night talk show on Saturday nights whether it was the underrated "Talkshow with Spike Feresten" or the recently canceled "The Wanda Skyes Show".

So just why is FOX so afraid to run with the big dogs?





Their affiliates would eat them alive


TV bookies across the board thought that when Conan jumped from NBC's sinking ship, he would surely be rescued by FOX's gold plated battle cruiser.

The mere hint of a schedule shakeup sent FOX's affiliates into a hissy fit that could make a cranky kid in the grocery store cereal aisle tell them to "chill the f#*$ out."


FOX's local folks have more freedom with their schedules after the news, choosing instead to fill their late night blocks with syndicated shows and reruns and even a few local programs.

If FOX chose to squeeze a new late night show in their mix, their local channels would have to rearrange an entire block of programming and even sacrifice part of their budgets, because stations already have paid for the rights to air those syndicated shows.

The network wouldn't have as strong of a commitment with their affiliates for the same reason.









ABC destroyed their last window of opportunity


"Nightline" might have seemed like a hard obstacle for ABC to overcome when it decided to join in the late night mambo, but it actually served as a perfect launching point for Kimmel's show.

Starting a half-hour later than the other late night shows gave viewers an incentive to switch over to something new after the comedy portions of Leno and Letterman's shows ran out to make way for the interviews. It gave late night viewers who didn't care about Maggie Gyllenhaal's skin care regimen an extra block of comedy before drifting off to dreamland.


Of course, Kimmel's comedy and ability to turn just about any bit into a viral mega-hit has more to do with his success than anything else, but timing has its advantages.









FOX wants to own the show


There is little room for compromise at FOX's negotiating table, which explains why it's guarded by rabid pit bulls and a sniper tower. When they pick up a show, they want all of it, lock, stock and barrel.

Like every major network, they want it so they can turn a new hot property into an ungodly mountain of merchandise and flood every World Series game with more free ads than the wall of a truck stop men's room stall.


That's how TBS managed to pull Conan away from FOX. Well, that and a pile of money that requires NASA scientists to count it.









Anything they would do would seem like a poor clone at this point


There are a million ways to do a late night talk show, but the process is so refined and familiar that changing it would mean marketing suicide.

FOX is the last player at the poker table and any move they make would just feel like a poor attempt and copying someone else's successful grab for the pot.

Speaking of poor moves...









Four words: "The Chevy Chase Show"


FOX has a long history of late night attempts, but they have been obscured by the shadow cast by one of TV's biggest bombs.

The show died from a quick mercy killing when FOX put Chevy Chase's head on the chopping block with the noose still around his neck, and the network has never attempted another one in the late night weekday slot since then.


Some call it cautiousness.
Others call it a curse.
I call it an earthquake so destructive that the aftershocks are still being felt to this very day.

http://www.tvsquad.com/2010/05/26/wh...te-night-game/