This might be a slightly anachronistic question, since I haven’t lived in the US for over five years, and my connection to American TV has been through satellite and cable.
From what I understand the WB network gets pretty low ratings compared to the first three - NBC, CBS and ABC. But some of NBC’s highest rated shows come from Warner Brothers - Friends and ER for example. Why doesn’t Time Warner simply decide that to help their company they’ll put the top rated shows on WB?
I imagine the same question could be asked about Paramount show and UPN, etc.
Contracts. ER and Friends signed with NBC and can’t switch networks unless NBC agrees (not bloody likely).
Also, Paramount and WB make much more money selling TV shows to other networks than they do if they put it on their own. When they sell a show to another network, someone pays them; when they sell it to their own network, they pay themselves.
Nah, that’s really not it.
First of all, both ER’s and Friends’ contracts with NBC have come up for renewal in the past few years, and WB re-signed with NBC for both.
And it isn’t the issue of who pays for the shows. Whatever network broadcasts a show is presumably making a profit over what they paid for the show, so WB, all things being equal, would make more money broadcasting shows it created than by selling such shows to another network. Indeed, this is the current trend in broadcast television - more and more shows are being developed “in-house”.
So, why does the WB sell these shows to NBC? Because all things aren’t equal. The WB network simply doesn’t have the same potential audience as NBC. Because more people are willing to watch an NBC show than a WB network show, the show is more valuable, and WB makes more profit selling the show to NBC then they would from ad revenue on their own network.
Not knowing what the contracts say, it’s all speculation. But, the first thing that occurred to me was: odds are, there’s a clause in the original contract between NBC and WB that states that NBC will have first right of renewal. That is, as long as NBC wants to renew the contract, they can; no other network can air “Friends” unless NBC declines to renew. Aren’t such contracts common in the television industry?
Networks pay “license fees” to producers (studios) to air a program. The license fee includes the right to air a particular episode X number of times and also includes the right to renew.
Occasionally you will see a program canceled by one network and then picked up by another. And in the very recent past, there was the case of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. When the studio wanted a higher license fee, the network (WB) refused to pay it, so the studio actually cancelled the network as it were, and sold the series to UPN.
But for those exceptions, once a series is sold to a network, it stays on that network.