Month / October 2016

by Frank Maduri

Fall TV Season Reviews: Six Weeks In

The Fall television season is about six weeks into the schedule and with a review of the ratings to this point. I have done this the last few television seasons and reviewed ratings at the sweeps periods, and I have had some time for late night viewing of some shows on demand or via streaming services as well.

Those of you who have kept up with my blog here at Frank’s Forum are aware that I am not usually a fan of many of the new shows on the network slates in any given year. There have been a handful of shows that I would even recommend that any of you devote any of your valuable time to watching and following on a routine basis.

However, this season I am surprised that there are a few shows that have exceeded my expectations out of the gate. There are others that I have not seen but have read reviews from other writers whom I trust and have analyzed their ratings to know that they will most likely be cancelled.

No Bull

The first new show that I would recommend watching if you have not done so already is the CBS drama, Bull, starring Michael Weatherly of NCIS fame. I read a review of the show before it aired which was not very favorable, so I approached the pilot episode (which my wife really pushed me to watch) with trepidation.

I was pleasantly surprised, Weatherly is excellent as Dr. Jason Bull (a character adapted and based on the early life of Dr. Phil McGraw) who is an expert psychologist in the field of reading jury reactions in court proceedings. The cases are very interesting and thought provoking, the human behavior aspects are fascinating at points, and the cast is very strong. It is a very likeable show that will definitely entertain and is the character development, the writing, and the production are all excellently done. CBS has averaged around 17 million viewers and it is the top new show of the season for a reason, this program is poised to be another major hit for that network.

NBC Strikes Gold

I must admit that when I saw the trailer for the newest NBC drama, This Is Us, I thought it was a hastily produced fill-in for Parenthood which NBC ushered out of the lineup after a very strong multi-season run. However, this program written by Dan Fogelman is brilliant in the conception and the direction of the character arcs.

In an innovative way (without giving anything away to those who have not watched) it follows the lives of several people all at the same stage in life (mid 30s) and chronicles the unique challenges, joys, and heartaches that each has at that particular point.

The stories are woven seamlessly into themed episodes and the acting is excellent from Mandy Moore, Milo Ventimiglia, and the rest of the outstanding cast that makes this show the second most watched new series and a bona fide hit for NBC.

The only thing that could derail the momentum of this show (which has a massive social media following) is NBC getting involved from a top executive level and making changes to the creative direction or moving the time slot of the show (which that network does often) and it ends up ending in a loss of ratings.

This show is raw and real and very well produced, the writing is excellent, and it is well worth your viewing time.

Designated for Success

The ABC hit drama Designated Survivor looks like it is designated for a successful run on the network after very strong ratings to this point in the new television season. This newly launched show features Keifer Sutherland as the top billed star and the lone surviving Cabinet level official following a terror attack on the Capitol building during the State of the Union address.

I must admit two things: I did not like the premise of the show and the events that precipitate the conditions which the plot line launches, and I have not actually seen this program I have just read some very strong reviews about it.

I would think that it would have to appeal to those who like suspense and government spy type concepts to be the captive viewer for this program. I would tend to be of the opinion that if the ratings are this strong it is usually worth viewing the pilot episode and making a decision from there about it.

Kevin Can Wait

The new Kevin James comedy concept from CBS titled Kevin Can Wait has garnered some pretty strong ratings numbers despite being positioned to the male viewing demographic on Monday nights (opposite Monday Night Football).
In my opinion, the show has always struck me as a retread of the same antics that Mr. James used in his prior TV series hit, The King of Queens. I know that he has a loyal following of fans, but I personally think that you can wait on watching this series for the time being.

MacGyver It

I remember the original version of MacGyver and all of the wild scenarios that the lead character would get himself out of by coming up with some hair brained solution using normal items you would find around your house or garage.

The new CBS reboot which comes under the production guidance of Peter Lenkov (one of the guys who rebooted Hawaii 50 for CBS with great success) but the lead guy, Lucas Til, does not have the right look to be taken seriously as the new MacGyver.

The show has gained a pretty significant rating (the fifth most watched new series) but they will be walking the line between edge of the seat action and completely nonsensical, over the top stunts that could eventually drive away viewers.

Leaking Oil

Several returning shows are losing viewers like a truck leaking oil. The notables among those are two ABC programs Quantico and MARVEL Agents of Shield which will both probably meet with cancellation soon. In fact, ABC has another problem with a new series called Notorious (which is filling a lineup slot while Scandal is on hiatus due to Kerry Washington being pregnant) where the network announced they cut the number of episodes that will air already due to sagging ratings.

The TV industry calls that type of order reduction a quasi-cancellation, and so that series is definitely not worth your time.

The once popular series, How to Get Away with Murder has taken a tremendous decline in viewership this season to the point where it will most certainly be designated for cancellation in the near future.

The ABC network ratings overall have taken a big hit in a declining manner. They have to hope for stalwarts like Greys Anatomy and Modern Family to keep the ratings curve from bottoming out until they can begin production again on Scandal. The network will most assuredly also have a number of mid-year concepts that they will roll out in the winter for testing which could help buoy the ratings tide.

Deflated Ratings

The NFL once dealt with a major issue surrounding deflated footballs, it now has an issue with deflated ratings. The once gigantic ratings producing machine that was live NFL football game broadcasts are no longer the market leader they once were.

The NBC Sunday Night Football telecast was consistently the highest rated program of the week nearly every week that it aired for years. The telecast has experienced double digit ratings losses in 2016. There are some news media sources that track the ratings decline and tie it to the huge ratings that Sunday evening cable news programs are drawing due to the November Presidential election.

The other main national television “windows” for NFL broadcasts are down as well, Thursday Night Football is usually a reliable to be among the top five programs in the week and sometimes will crack the top three in the ratings charts. This season that package of games has also seen a double digit decline in ratings. This is driven by two factors: the matchups for the teams in most of the games have not been compelling, and the national anthem protests have also hurt the ratings for football overall as well.

The ESPN tradition of Monday Night Football has taken the most precipitous decline with viewership of their telecasts off as much as 25% from last season. That is a steep decline for a live sports content product as highly desirable as the NFL usually commands within the television industry. The biggest issue for this telecast and the other national television windows for the league is that the advertisers shell out some serious money for featured commercial time on these live game telecasts. The NFL ratings dip is cause for concern because they might hit the “giveback” territory in the numbers, where the advertising dollars get returned to the sponsors if the ratings decline to a certain threshold.

This type of scenario would impact the networks which pay huge rights fees to the NFL to broadcast the games. The league office in New York is reviewing the ratings decline, but it is certainly something fascinating because the numbers were once off the charts and now they have hit the wall.

Some of you may recall the piece I wrote on the oversaturation of the NFL on television. I wrote, once upon a time, about whether the league had reached a point where there were just too many games on TV and the impact that oversaturation would have on the ratings. It seems like we may have hit that point now.

The television season is still in the early stages, we have February “sweeps” and May “sweeps” periods left to go before all is said and done. We also have an election night in 12 days, and the holidays with specials and movies on the horizon. The networks have some shows they will keep for years, and others they will dump after a month or two. The major networks are split with CBS and NBC doing very well in overall ratings, while ABC, FOX, and the CW are in a ratings plummet that seems to get deeper by the week.

It will be interesting to see when we check in again around The Super Bowl and February sweeps, until then, stay tuned and keep streaming!

by Frank Maduri

Busy Signal: AT&T and Time Warner Proposed Merger

The news today of a potential merger between two giants in the media industry: AT&T and Time Warner brought with it both a wave of enthusiasm and skepticism in the financial markets and the multimedia/telecommunications industry. The enthusiasm was demonstrated on Wall Street, where Time Warner stock trading surged, with their stock price up around 13% at one point in today’s activity.

The skepticism comes on the part of some consumer groups who are concerned about what this merger might mean for costs of internet access, cellular phone and data plans, and satellite television services (AT&T merged with Direct TV previously). There is also some legitimate cause for regulators to reject this deal, so there is some caution in the industry that this merger may eventually come apart.

The proposed deal includes Time Warner’s film division and cable television division which includes channels such as TBS, TNT, CNN, as well as the crown jewel of premium cable networks, HBO. The deal is valued, according to sources, at $300 billion. It would be the largest merger in the media industry since Comcast completed the acquisition of NBC/Universal in 2011.

This trend would continue what I have deemed in other mergers as the “big getting bigger” scenario. Time Warner is a huge company with many different divisions and huge market presence in media of all forms. AT&T has a market cap of $233 billion and provides cellular phone, internet, telecommunications, and satellite television services to millions of consumers. The combined entity would be a goliath capable of competing with Comcast/Universal, which I maintain is one of the goals of this move today.

The trend of the average consumer looking to cut out their cable television service, or “cord cutting” as it is known, is something I have written about in the past, and it is an increasing trend. This trend is damaging the cable television providers and the cable networks from making revenue gains. This has particularly impacted Time Warner’s cable services division, and made this potential merger a way to partner with a larger company to expand their reach.

The trend toward streaming content is also a driving factor in this proposed merger, as AT&T has been actively pursuing the development of their own streaming content service which would be offered via the Direct TV platform. The combination with Time Warner would provide AT&T with more advantageous content streaming negotiations because they would be better positioned to control the content from TBS, TNT, CNN, and most importantly, HBO.

HBO has top rated content that is sought after by competing streaming services and cable and telco providers. This would put AT&T in the proverbial driver’s seat of those negotiations, but is the same reason why regulatory boards will have issues with this deal.

The Wall Street Journal reported that regulators have some regrets over the Comcast merger with NBC/Universal which they do not want to have repeated by this potential media industry transaction. The Time Warner properties in the cable network division also have exclusive rights (or partial exclusive rights) to sports content such as the NCAA Tournament in college basketball, NBA basketball games both regular season and playoffs, and Major League baseball both regular season and playoff games. This made the deal more attractive for AT&T because of the demand for live sports programming, but it will also make the regulatory scrutiny that much more heightened because that content is meant to be seen by everyone and not meant to be restricted to only certain providers.

This proposed merger, should it gain approval, would give AT&T a huge advantage in providing streaming content for their cellular phones and their new service with Direct TV customers. It would provide Time Warner with more outlets for their content and more consumers in parts of the country which they could not reach with their traditional cable television services. It would offset the loss of cable television consumers through the streaming rights agreements for their content that they will gain through millions of AT&T customers.

However, in the end, this media giant would have more control over more content and that should give both the industry and the consumer cause for concern. This merger should be stopped because it will provide too much control to one corporation, we saw what happened with Comcast and NBC, we cannot afford to let that happen again.

(background information and stats courtesy of CNBC, The Wall Street Journal, and CBS News)

by Frank Maduri

Haiti After Hurricane Matthew

It has been a week since Hurricane Matthew roared through the small island nation of Haiti and decimated the towns and villages there. Some areas have been wiped completely out of existence by the ferocious Category 4 storm. The death toll is catastrophic with one estimate by Reuters of 1,000 lives and other estimates between 500 and 700 lives.

The aid for this desperate nation has been slow to materialize. A report by NBC News with sources from the U.N. stated that the outlying areas of Haiti have no clean water supply and no antibiotics. The spread of cholera is a real concern in the conditions there and medical supplies as well as food supplies are limited in many areas which will lead to more deaths unless that situation rapidly improves.

The loss of basic human services will create conditions where other diseases will take the lives of the elderly and the children. The destruction has displaced families and orphaned children who then have to travel several miles on foot, often while injured, to get medical attention. Then, upon arrival they are told that there are no supplies or medicines to provide that treatment.

The situation in Haiti is a humanitarian disaster. The U.S. Marines, as many news agencies have reported, have been very active in deploying to remote areas in helicopters with supplies but the need is tremendous and they need more help.

In my career I have worked in the non-profit sector and the healthcare sector. I worked for an organization that provided medical supplies and pharmaceuticals to Haiti. The situation there has seen long periods of instability, corruption, and violence. A natural disaster such as Hurricane Matthew serves to exacerbate these issues.

However, there are also partner agencies and trusted NGOs as well as humanitarian operations through the U.N. that can provide the necessary support needed for this ravaged country to rebuild. The U.N. has announced an emergency campaign with that goal in mind. The relief efforts have to be ramped up, and with the infrastructure there already compromised, the need for helicopter drops and coordinated supply routes remains crucial to the success of the entire relief operation.

Haiti is a neighbor to us and is in dire need of help. The impoverished nation will be forever altered by this disastrous storm. They need our support more than ever. In my experience with working with people who have supported operations on the ground there in the past, the roadway systems are not good in ideal conditions. This has played a key role in cutting off so many people in need of assistance that the U.N. estimates that 1.4 million people have received little or no assistance.

Furthermore, of that number about half of them, or about 750,000 people are in danger of dying from either starvation or disease. The emergency aid provided in the immediate future will literally save lives.

There are several relief agencies that are trusted which will be involved in the coordinated effort. Please consider supporting this cause by contacting the U.N. or The Red Cross to make a donation or determine which organizations will be aiding in this massive humanitarian operation.

You can make a difference in the lives of so many suffering people through your support. My prayers remain with all those impacted by Hurricane Matthew.

by Frank Maduri

The Inevitable Demise of An American Icon: Sears

Sears has been in the news again this week with news regarding the potential sale of one of their iconic brands. I wrote a post for another site a few months ago when Sears first decided to put three of their mainstay brands up for sale: Craftsman tools, Kenmore, and Die Hard. This is most certainly an effort to increase cash flow through both the sale of the brands and through the almost certain jump in Sears stock as a result.

The news that an as yet unnamed bidder (rumor has it the bidder is Black & Decker) is interested in paying a significant amount of money for the Craftsman name with some estimates in the $2 billion range; has Sears stock trading at an increased level in the past two days. Craftsman is a symbol of uncompromising quality in tools and related hardware products that is well established in the consumer marketplace.

The unfortunate other side to this transaction is that many industry experts and financial market insiders with great knowledge of the situation indicate that even if Sears divests Craftsman in this deal, the cash flow is not enough to make a reversal of the outlook for the company.

In fact, those same experts as well as some other reports I reviewed state that even if Sears sold all three of those brands at a premium it still would not help their cause. This is where the Sears merger and acquisition of Kmart stores again looms large in the negative outlook for the company.

In my understanding of the situation having covered this as well as other failing retail brands in the past is this: essentially while the sale of the brand, in this case it is Craftsman, may help Sears in the short term; Sears will lose the profit generated by the sale of those branded products which it currently owns outright.

The mere fact that Sears put these three well established brands on the block to be sold is (if some of you remember my previous work on this subject) an indication that the times are desperate there. It is an indication that the company is definitely preparing for “reorganization” (i.e. bankruptcy) in the near future.

Sears also owns a great deal of real estate between the buildings of their brick and mortar retail stores and the land that those stores are situated on which contributes to their profit and loss situation. It is expensive to maintain both buildings and land, so Sears has either been divesting itself of one or both, as well as determining some other methods of cost reducing those components of their business model.

A couple of prime examples of these strategies are right in my backyard in New Jersey. Sears owns the building that is home to their Freehold Raceway Mall location, in order to control some of the costs the company consolidated their inventory from multiple levels of the store onto one level. They subsequently rented out the other two levels to an Ireland based company called Primark, a retailer of discounted products, mostly clothing brands.

In Middletown, the Sears location and the large piece of land it sits upon was sold to Investors Bank. The bank is now constructing a new branch location at that site, and most certainly has some kind of long range plan for the development of that land in the future. Most retail and financial market experts put the time frame for the bankruptcy and demise of Sears at 18 to 24 months from now.

It still boggles my mind that Sears, such an iconic retailer will cease to exist in potentially that short a period of time. I always think of those employees who will be out of work, some of whom have undoubtedly served the company for many years. These same workers have a set of skills and experience in the retail field which is shrinking and may have a difficult time finding new employment.

Conversely, Sears could not seem to get it right, they were missing that connection with the consumer. They were the retailer that was an afterthought in the minds of the average consumer. Sears is thought of as a place where you get tools or tires or a dishwasher; and not where you would get a television, a jacket, or a pair of sneakers. They could not seem to connect the value of their full complement of products to the consumer in the way that Wal-Mart and Target most certainly have accomplished.

The management at Sears keeps telling Wall Street that they are in the middle of a “turnaround” but that has not seemed to materialize. I liken it to the professional sports team that is in seemingly a constant rebuilding mode and never seems to turn that corner where the results manifest themselves tangibly.

Sears CEO, Eddie Lampert, has stated again this week that the company will not close down the Kmart division of the business, which is seen as an anchor around the neck of the entire business operation. They will continue to close Kmart stores that are “underperforming” as they recently closed my local Kmart here in New Jersey. They will not shutter the entire division. I think that this is a mistake and that there is a point where you have to start bailing the water out of the ship before it sinks further.

The business model for Sears in this turnaround phase is a case of “too little, too late” as the saying goes. The damage has already been done. The executive team is now focusing on selling off the brands that are most profitable, closing down lapsed consumer credit lines, and whittling down their overhead costs through the sale of real estate holdings or through sublet type agreements as I mentioned similar to the location in Freehold.
Those are all signs that the executives are trying to maintain what little profitability remains in the business. Therefore they can divide up those revenues when it comes time for them to take the “golden parachute” ride before the operation shutters the doors for good.

The demise of Sears is inevitable it seems, and it is sad because I am sure that most of us at a certain age have memories of shopping there, or of our parents bringing home a picture of the new Kenmore refrigerator. I remember going in the garage and seeing all of my father’s Craftsman tools or getting a Die Hard battery for one of the cars during a harsh winter. My mother would take me to Sears to get clothes for an athletic team I had joined.

All of those instances and so many more will remain memories that other generations of American children will never have. That is due to poor business decisions by Sears, marketing campaigns that consistently missed the target, and the societal shift towards online shopping and away from traditional retailers. It is a scenario where it is essentially “adapt or fail” and Sears failed to adapt in time to save an iconic American retail brand from joining the long list of other retailers who no longer exist. It is a sad trend overall, but one that is a harsh new reality.