MyNetworkTV slightly growing

from variety

Down but not out
Despite low ratings, MyNet to stay the course
By MICHAEL SCHNEIDER

MyNetworkTV is still waiting to be Somebody's NetworkTV.

Since its Sept. 5 launch, MyNet has averaged just under a million
viewers in primetime.

Steven L....

It was a big mistake to strip the two telenovelas 5 nights a week. That
means that their fans would have to give up watching ALL OTHER
prime-time television from 9 to 11 PM, foregoing most of the shows in
the Top 20. That means someone has to be such a fan of "Desire" and
"Fashion House" that he prefers them to everything else--cop
procedurals, sitcoms, game shows, and reality shows. And that's not
going to happen.

They would have been better off running "Desire" for two nights a week
(two hours each) and "Fashion House" for two nights a week (two nights
each), with Friday night for recap episodes. That way you could at
least choose to watch one telenovela (Fashion House is supposed to be
the better of the two) and not miss everything else on prime-time.

For comparison's sake, that means MyNet regularly places below the top
15 cable networks, including even Spike TV and A&E.

And its major market stations have seen primetime fortunes plummet as
much as 90% (Seattle and Tampa, particularly) from last year, when
they still programmed WB or UPN shows.

Patty Winter (patty1...

They don't have a lot of choices. If they dump MyTV, they'll have to
rely on syndicated shows for primetime. Presumably all the hottest
shows have already been snapped up by other stations, so what kind
of ratings could they get with the leftovers?

Steven L....

Originally they were considering developing some new reality shows as an
alternative to telenovelas.

But now that NBC has committed to doing reality and game shows for the 8
PM hour, that option is foreclosed. Nothing MyNetwork could come up
with could compete with NBC's slick production values--look at how NBC
jazzed up a dumb game show like "Deal or No Deal" into a visual feast.

David...

They could move some of their daytime shows to primetime. They have a
right to air some of them twice a day so it wouldn't even cost them
anything.

Fox TV Stations and Twentieth TV execs behind MyNet (which still
doesn't have a dedicated staff of its own) say it's too soon to judge
the venture.

"We didn't know what to expect," says Fox TV Stations CEO Jack
Abernethy. "There's no way to handicap a new business. You've got to
be very careful not to set yourself up to a premature sense of failure
or success."

That said, Abernethy admits that he'd like the ratings to be better.

A slight uptick in viewership last month gave the upstart service some
reason for optimism.After launching at 1.3 million and dipping down to
just above 800,000 viewers at the end of September, MyNet crept back
up to over a million viewers by mid-October.

That's an improvement, but by no means a turnaround.

"As long as we're growing, I could be happy," says Abernethy, who
contends Nielsen samples can be hard to read at MyNet's low levels.
Meanwhile, execs at major MyNet affils are anxiously looking at the
numbers, and say advertisers have been slow to join the telenovela
train.

"The agencies, generally speaking, do not take a chance on new
product," says Sinclair exec VP/chief financial officer David Amy.
"There's a reluctance from agencies to commit money until they see
numbers. From that standpoint, it's a much tougher sell."

Abernethy says he understands advertiser hesitancy to "place a bet and
then have it go south," but that it's a problem "quickly fixed by
better ratings."

What that ratings benchmark might be isn't clear just yet; nor is any
backup plan MyNet might have should the telenovelas ultimately fail to
take off. With production already under way on their fifth and sixth
telenovelas (set to debut in March), MyNet appears to be committed to
the strategy through at least June.

Amy says MyNet's strategy of turning over more ad time to affils
(tripling local inventory) has offset some ratings losses on
Sinclair's affils. That's bought the netlet a bit of patience from
station owners like Sinclair, which for now is giving Fox the benefit
of the doubt.

"We still have great confidence that they will be a success in the
long run," Amy says. "We're not worried about the first six months or
year but everyone would have liked to have seen more time to develop
the whole thing, from promotion and marketing, to get more viewers to
the product than what they have."

It wasn't for lack of trying.

MyNet got a lot of media attention thanks to its unconventional
low-cost (about $100,000 an episode) all-telenovelas, all-the-time
approach and the fact that it was rising from the ashes of two defunct
nets.

Fox TV Stations also took advantage of its much stronger Fox Network
outlets to promote MyNet -- raising the hackles of Fox Broadcasting
execs, who were concerned that the marketing was overshadowing its own
shows.

Sinclair's Amy says he's impressed that MyNet managed to get on the
air at all, given the short time News Corp. execs had to launch the
netlet.

MyNet was thrown together virtually overnight, after Fox execs were
blindsided by the formation of the CW network.

"They did a lot in a hurry and did a heck of a job getting it off the
ground that quickly," Amy says. "The folks at Fox have proven
themselves in the past that they know what they're doing."

When Warner Bros. and CBS announced in January that they were shutting
down the WB and UPN, the Fox TV Stations Group -- with its stable of
top-market UPN affils -- scrambled to figure out how to fill that
primetime hole.

Abernethy and Fox TV Stations chairman Roger Ailes decided to tap the
telenovelas being developed by their 20th TV syndie arm for a netlet
to be launched with News Corp.'s former UPN affils as charter outlets.

MyNet also originally planned to throw reality skeins and newsmags
into the pipeline. But by summer, Fox and 20th execs were so pleased
by the netlet's first two dramas ("Desire" and "Fashion House") that
they decided to stick with that genre exclusively.

MyNet may still be wedded to the telenovelas, but execs say they're
willing to try something else to air in addition to -- but not replace