The FCC and TV

In light of my recent rants, you might be interested in this article in today's New York Times. Briefly, TV people are concerned that increased corporate consolidation will stifle creativity. "It's hard to challenge the premise that `All in the Family' would never be scheduled on a network today," said Tom Werner, a partner in Carsey-Werner-Mandabach, one of the more prolific independent production companies. "I'm not even sure `Seinfeld' would get on. It would look too quirky."



But not everybody agrees. Here's the kicker to the article: ""The fact of the matter is with 100 channels in competition, it is tougher than ever to break through," said Warren Littlefield, former entertainment president for NBC and now the president of the Littlefield Company, a production partnership with Paramount Network Television. "That's why no good idea can be turned away. It's still more important than anything to a network to have that hit show."



But here's a question: how can a show become a hit if it's never aired in the first place? A hit means "the most popular among what is being offered." What's going to combat the bias every institution has towards playing it safe and doing what worked before? The raw demands of 100 cable channels, perhaps? Even then, will we see 20 different types of channel, repeated five different times? Quick, somebody tell me the difference between Discovery and TLC. Or USA and TNT....