Again. As it happens every year, the big TV networks, starting mid June close the shop for holidays and come back in mid September.
It’s the old story, based on a more and more weak separation between the “commercial period” and the rest of the year. This is about what is called the “Guaranteed period” (exactly between September and June), when the networks guarantee to advertising investors specific results in terms of audience. That’s the reason why all the resources are invested in this special period of the year.
This is an old strategy, related to a time when all of Italy would go on holidays in August. Mothers and kids would leave the cities at the end of the school to move to the seaside. Cities were desert during the summer and it could prove challenging even to find an open store to buy some food.
And when at the seaside you wouldn’t watch TV because only few families had a second TV set available.
I guess not so many readers would recognize themselves in this description today. Simply because the world has deeply changed within few years.
Families do fewer holidays, spread all over the year and not only in August. Some don’t do holidays at all and the screens to follow TV programs are everywhere or even portable on your devices.
The weakness of the current summer programming makes this period a golden moment for smaller networks or thematic channels. A moment in which they can be found and watched with less effort, as there’s no competition from the big guys.
So when we’ll hear again the whining from the big networks about the drop in audience and the following drop in advertising sales, let’s remind that part of the issue is self generated.
The above is already annoying if we consider entertainment shows. But it becomes unbearable if we think about the news programs.
So it happens that until June the big networks bored us to death with talk shows, very similar one to another, dedicated to non-news: PM Renzi & Co., the reform of our Senate and other soporific subjects like these. Then, dear us, when they are all on holidays, the real news arrive but there’s no one ready to discuss them: the Islamic terrorists conquering one state after another, a war in Ukraine that looks as a time machine trip back to the Cold War, Libya again out of control and consequent increase of illegal immigration on our shores, beheadings branded ISIS, weapons supplied to the Curds military, …
If someone wants to find out more, he only has the option of the All-News channels (God bless them) and online news. In fact on the big networks we’ll only find programs of edited and re-edited archive material, some good old movie (Deo Gratias!) and repetitions of almost everything.
And talking of repetitions, does Crozza (a popular comedian whose repetitions run on a network anytime) believe that repeating the repetitions of the repetitions of its shows does him any good? We’ll get to the new episodes worn out.
Mainstream TV, the classic TV to be clear, should take advantage of the summer period to reinforce the relationship with its most loyal viewers. Those remaining in the desert cities and in need of entertainment at night. These are mainly the older and less healthy audiences. Regarding whom at least the State Television should remember that the Television Fee is paid for the full year (yes, also for the summer!).
For those thinking that TV should always aim young, tall, beautiful and blonde audiences we remind that this kind of people has already moved away from traditional networks. So while these networks identify a strategy to become again appealing to them, they’d rather make happy their current loyal viewers.