Why do TV schedulers compete for the same audience in the same time slot?

Factual Questions
1

It seems to me very often a show is put in a timeslot of another show that has a very similar audience, and I can’t understand why.

For example, Arrested Development and Curb Your Enthusiam, I’ve heard (don’t have HBO) have very similar audiences. And there are very few shows catering to that audience. And yet, with the entire week open to schedule, one show decided to go to the same time slot of another. How does that possibly make sense? You have a limited audience, and you’re going to split that audience further by placing it next to a show competing for the same audience?

Let’s say you have 2 channels. You have 20 million people that watch reality shows, and 5 million people that watch quirky, smart comedies. Each channel has one of each show.

Now, to me, the smart scheduling would be for one channel to put the reality show on at 8, and the comedy at 9. And the opposite channel to put the comedy on at 8, and the reality at 9.

That way, the 20 million audience tunes into channel 1 at 8, and channel 2 at 9. The full 20 million watches each show. The comedy audience tunes into channel 2 at 8, and channel 2 at 9, again, the full audiences watching both shows. So that each channel gets 25 million viewers per night.

But how the actually happens seems to be that they’d schedule both comedies and 8, and both realities at 9. Assuming each was equally popular, you have 2.5 million of the comedy audience watching channel at 8, and 2.5 watching channel 2 at 8. To make a simplistic generalization, these reality fans don’t like the comedies, so they’re off doing something else during this period. Same with the opposite.

Then you have 10 million reality fans watching channel 1 at 9, and 10 million watching 2 at 9.

In each case, because you’ve chosen to competitively schedule, you’ve reduced your audience per night from 25 million to 12.5 million, to no advantage that I can see.

Can someone explain why this seems to occur?

2

Of course I meant to say that they tune into channel 2 at 8, and channel 1 at 9. The opposite of the first group.

3

There are a few reasons that come to mind:

  • That target audience may not watch TV on a different available night. The entire week isn’t really open. Even a low-rated network has profitable shows in most timeslots, most of the time.

  • The stronger of the two shows is deliberately scheduled against a similar newcomer.

  • Pride. Network execs are people, too. And people like to compete.

  • One of the key factors in scheduling is lead-in. In your example, the comedy may hold the reality show’s audience, but the reality show may not hold the comedy’s audience. You’d think, hey, same shows, who cares what order they appear in? But, it doesn’t work that way.

That said, sometimes schedules are rearranged for exactly this reason. This season, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip was moved from Thursdays to Mondays after Grey’s Anatomy was moved to Thursday. The two shows have a similar audience, and NBC didn’t want its flagship newcomer trounced by an established hit.

4

I don’t know, but I’ve always assumed it’s similar to the way if there is a weird specialised gidget shop on the Northside at a particular location, if someone sets up in competition, they’ll locate their weird specialised gidget shop nearby rather than, as you might expect, on the Southside. I’ve been told it’s something to do with preferring to split the available market (a cautious approach) rather that attempting to become a big loser (or winner) by pioneering a new location (or timeslot). I don’t know whether that makes sense, however.

5

Why do Coke and Pepsi compete for the same audience? Burger King and McDonald’s?

Because that’s where the money is. You can’t cede a big part of your audience to your competitor and allow it get richer, even if you think you could make some money elsewhere. In the long run, it’ll kill you.

Similar shops open near one another because people will check out all the stores of one type that are in close proximity before making a purchase. Both stores will see more business. Half of more business is better than being on opposite sides of the city and getting half of less business.

6

TV scheduling is one of the Black Arts.

For example, Sunday is the most-watched night of the TV. Saturday is the least-watched. You’d think it would make sense to put a big show on Saturday and have it clean up, but the evidence shows again and again that people (and by people, I mean demographically desirable audiences) don’t watch on Saturdays.

Thursday is the day that movies advertise, so all the networks schedule shows that cater to people who also watch movies.

Serious dramas do better later in the evening. Newsmagazines and reality shows are cheaper to produce, so you can put them in bad timeslots and still make a profit.

Networks want their highest rated shows to be “tentpoles” that hold up the entire night’s ratings.

As a result, the shows you love often wind up being scheduled against each other. The classic example of this is when NBC and CBS scheduled ER and Chicago Hope at 10:00 on Thursday nights. It made perfect sense for either show to be scheduled there, so that’s why both were. (Chicago Hope lost the ratings battle and got moved to a different night.)

7

Why less business? And assuming you’re right (and I assume you must be) don’t two shops together get half of more business at a lesser profit, where if they were separated they could afford to compete less intensely on price, because many customers would buy at the asking price rather than being able to conveniently play the two shops against each other?

8

But quite often, far more people will come to buy with 2 similar shops near each other because they can comparison shop.

9

Hmm. I suppose so. In which case the reason shops cluster together isn’t really the same as the reason TV shows are on at the same time at all.

10

Right. Two totally different sets of phenomena.

Try this scenario. You’re in the market for a widget. There are two shops, one on each side of the city. You go to the one nearest you. But it doesn’t have exactly what you want, or is out of it, or the price is high, or you’re not quite convinced. So you decide to go to the other shop. Problem is, that’s a long drive and you don’t have the time. So you put it off until you’ll be over there anyway. So sometime later, you’re there. But now you don’t really remember exactly what the first shop had and the brands and models aren’t exactly the same and you can’t figure out how to compare prices. So you want to go back to the first shop. Maybe you do and maybe you give up or go to the internet or just hold off until next year rather than using up a third day in the search for the widget you don’t care all that much about.

Or there are two shops down the block from one another, in which case you do it all in an hour and buy something from someone.

Which scenario do you think results in more overall business?

The best location for a shoe store is next to another shoe store. This is true for any product that you comparison shop for. If comparison shopping isn’t an issue - comic stores are one example - then spacing them far apart makes sense. Otherwise proximity gives the best results overall.

11

Hah. I just had one of those “now I get it” moments. Back when I was a student I knew socially the manager of a luggage store, one of three at one particular location: two right next door to each other and the other just across the road. She used to talk about how she could never understand the fact that the three stores stocked pretty much the same stuff, but at different prices, even though (as she knew from working there) they were all owned by the same company. My first suggestion was that maybe there had been three competitors but one had bought the other two, but she said that wasn’t correct and the one company had opened three stores from new. At the time, we both shook our head and said wtf a lot.

Now it all makes sense in a weaselly kind of way: clearly the idea was to create the illusion that you could go to this location and “shop around”.