Advertising: Broadcast Networks Are Amply Filling Schedules

Broadcast Networks Are Amply Filling Schedules

This article is by Bill Carter, Stuart Elliott and Brian Stelter.

James Spader is a star in "The Blacklist," which ad buyers say resembles the movie "The Silence of the Lambs."

AS the television upfronts week for the 2013-14 season gets under way in New York, one trend is already apparent: strength in numbers - or is it safety in numbers?

Executives at NBC and Fox, the first of the big broadcast networks to present their coming schedules, are wooing advertisers and agencies with considerably more new series than they offered up for the 2012-13 season, which ends this month. NBC, part of the NBCUniversal division of Comcast, discussed 17 shows at its presentation on Monday morning at Radio City Music Hall.

Fox, part of News Corporation, outlined plans at its presentation, on Monday afternoon at the Beacon Theater, for 11 new series, along with two limited-run “event series” - a k a mini-series - that include a return of the popular Fox drama “24.”

The reasons to fill the programming shelves so amply seem twofold. One goal is to have sufficient content on the bench, ready to replace the shows that will (inevitably) fail. The other goal is to counter the rising competition from cable channels and online video publishers, which restock their lineups year-round, by having enough wares available to schedule original content outside the boundaries of the traditional fall-to-spring broadcast season.

If the broadcasters needed any reminder of the challenges they confront in attracting attention nowadays, it was provided by Netflix, which promoted its coming release of a new season of the Fox sitcom “Arrested Development” with a stunt less than a block from Radio City. Thousands of passers-by formed long lines for free snacks from a re-creation of the Bluth's Original Frozen Banana stand that figures prominently in the plot of “Arrested Development,” while a young man dressed in a banana costume gave away “Mr. Manager” stickers, bearing the Netflix logo, that salute a character on the show.

(To add frigid fruit to injury, Netflix intends to bring the stand to various high-traffic Manhattan locations through Thursday, coinciding with the duration of the upfronts week.)

“The competitive landscape has changed dramatically,” Kevin Reilly, chairman for entertainment at Fox, acknowledged in a conference call with reporters, “because of the way people are watching TV today on multiple platforms.”

As a result, Mr. Reilly said, Fox wants to “break out of the confines of the traditional broadcast season,” which runs from September through May, and schedule series that could appear, say, from “late spring into the summer” or from “summer into the fall.”

Fox also wants producers to provide “13, 15, 17” episodes of series if that is sufficient to tell a story, Mr. Reilly said, rather than the standard 22-episode order. “There's no magic number,” he added.

Some new Fox series will be introduced in the fall, while some are scheduled for midseason, a term Mr. Reilly would prefer to forgo.

“I'd like to strike ‘midseason' from our lexicon,” he said, as Fox shifts to “staggering our resources throughout the year.”

The 2013-14 schedule will bring Fox within “striking distance” of having “virtually year-round programming,” Mr. Reilly said during the Beacon Theater presentation, which has been a Fox goal dating back at least a decade.

NBC executives, during their presentation, seemed to emphasize volume over entertainment value as they outlined their schedule for the fall, when NBC's “Sunday Night Football” dominates the ratings; the winter, when NBC will present the 2014 Olympics; and the spring.

Initial reaction to NBC's new schedule seemed to center on the number of shows being introduced as well as their generally mainstream approach. Several ad buyers said the drama that NBC executives seem to be highest on, “The Blacklist,” bore a striking resemblance to the movie “The Silence of the Lambs,” with a criminal locked in a cage who will work with only one new female F.B.I. agent.

“I hope Thomas Harris doesn't sue,” one senior NBC executive said after the presentation, referring to the author who created the Hannibal Lecter character featured in “Silence.” That executive and another, analyzing the network's new fare, suggested it was heavy on familiar and somewhat derivative ideas, citing, along with “The Blacklist,” a revival of the venerable NBC police drama “Ironside” and a medical series, “The Night Shift,” that looks like a new version of the NBC hit “E.R.”

Some ad buyers expressed surprise that NBC did not have Seth Meyers - the longtime host of the “Weekend Update” segment on “Saturday Night Live” who was just selected to take over “Late Night” from Jimmy Fallon when Mr. Fallon becomes host of the “Tonight Show” in February 2014 - perform an upfront-centric edition of “Weekend Update” as he did for several upfronts in the past. Instead, Mr. Meyers was seated in the audience.

Mr. Meyers performed such a skit already this year but, in a reminder of the competitive pressure on the networks, he did it for Hulu on April 30, during the Digital Content NewFronts, instead of for NBC during the upfronts.

Ad buyers were also puzzled at the absence of Mr. Fallon from Radio City, although his band, the Roots, played before and after the presentation. Mr. Fallon did appear on tape, in the morning's only dab of entertainment, as he and Jay Leno sang a lip-synced parody of a “Les Misérables” medley.

Fox, for the second consecutive year, tried to position itself during its upfronts presentation as innovative, as much of a social network as a television network. A video played at the beginning of the event featured futurists and social media strategists singing the network's praises and describing it as a generator of online water-cooler conversation. Fox also announced a promotional partnership with Twitter.

Among those scheduled to present on Tuesday, the second day of upfronts week, are two units of the Walt Disney Company, ABC and ESPN; Discovery U.S. Hispanic, part of Discovery Communications; Telemundo, which like NBC is part of the NBCUniversal unit of Comcast; and Univision Communications.

A version of this article appeared in print on May 14, 2013, on page B9 of the New York edition with the headline: Broadcast Networks Are Amply Filling Schedules.