Broadcast TV networks badly need a visionary

Hey, Steve Jobs, are you interested in running a broadcast TV network?

If any industry could use a visionary right about now, it's television. While things are going pretty swell over on the cable side, the networks have been slow to adapt to the changes around them.

Now, this should surprise almost no one. The big broadcast networks have been both blind and resistant to change for decades. The industry itself has run on archaic principles for more than 40 years, and network executives have either been unable or afraid to change them.

In a fear-based, results-oriented business where network executives have a relatively short life span, the urge to start a revolution is almost nonexistent.

Oh, people have tried. Several entertainment presidents and network chairmen have talked openly about a 52-week season (instead of the traditional September to May one that currently exists), but none of them have been able to make the notion successful.

In fact, this summer all but killed off the idea that networks will put original scripted series on the air. The audience didn't show up in sufficient numbers to offset the cost of production.

And yet, this can't be entirely blamed on viewers. For years, a year-round schedule was seen as both inevitable and necessary given the inroads that cable series have made through the years.

It used to be that cable would start programming in June, just as the networks turned out the lights, and with smaller budgets and less talent, they'd put on a show and hope to cherry-pick the available audience. Well, not only did that work, but the percentage of overall viewers swung in favor of cable in the early 2000s, not coincidentally about the time cable - from HBO to FX - began making better and more interesting series.

Now everybody - or it least feels like everybody - is in the scripted game. From TNT to AMC, USA, Syfy and even MTV, cable channels are giving viewers something to watch.

Although some viewers stuck with summer fare on the broadcast side, years of "burning off" canceled series in the hotter months has left a kind of muscle memory with the audience.

Besides, if they tune in to a show on TBS or Lifetime in the summer, chances are that series will return next summer. On the networks? No guarantees, no consistency.

There are problems beyond summer. Cable rarely cancels a series mid-run. Networks do it all the time. Cable spreads out its season over those aforementioned 52 weeks, while the networks jam September with premiere after premiere.

Can normal viewers watch 18 new series in a week? No. Not even if they give up on their favorite returning shows. And the networks wonder why 80 percent of new shows get canceled.

Do something different. Don't do something strictly because "that's how it's always been done" for decades.

Yet, even with the old model not working, change rarely comes. And when it does - as in this halfhearted attempt to program year round - the networks are quick to say they tried but it didn't work. But they should look beyond the structural problem of when to put shows on the air and focus instead on quality and reliability. Those are two dreadful network shortcomings.

Can NBC or CBS, which programs 22 hours a week, afford to make something as artful and precious as "Mad Men," like AMC, and get a couple of million viewers for their efforts? No, cry the programmers there, citing the "big tent" philosophy inherent in the word "broadcasting." They need huge, popular mainstream hits - not critical favorites that sop up all the ink of good reviews and magazine covers.

But that's the kind of flawed thinking that has hurt the industry (and has nearly ruined the movie business).

Viewers want quality, yes, but they're not exactly begging for "Mad Men" or "Breaking Bad" or even HBO's latest epic, "Boardwalk Empire." They'll watch "The Closer" and "Royal Pains" and all kinds of cable shows that look like broadcast series but have fewer episodes and less-famous stars (and smaller casts), which keep production costs down.

Make better shows, not just more expensive or bigger shows.

There's a way to balance quality with financial constraints. See: cable. And yes, cable is a different animal, blah, blah, blah. At least it's an animal that's thriving, not dying. The ratings gap is closing - because you're losing viewers no matter how much you spend. Now's the time to remodel your business. You know, not just changing the color of the computer, but creating the iPod, the iPad, the iPhone.

The industry needs a visionary, or at least a new vision. If the networks can't figure all of this out soon, the disappointing numbers from this fall will continue to plague them and blunt-force that change.

E-mail Tim Goodman at tgoodman@sfchronicle.com. Follow him at www.twitter.com/bastardmachine.

This article appeared on page E - 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle