美国国家公共电台 NPR TV Networks Unveil Fall Seasons At 2017 Upfronts

AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:

We talk a lot these days about how Internet streaming has rattled 1 the world of network television, snatching up Emmy nominations 2 and capturing attention in the press and on social media. But traditional broadcast TV remains 3 the biggest game around, attracting billions of advertising 4 dollars. And this week in New York City, the networks are rolling out their plans for the next TV season in a series of glitzy presentations for advertisers called the Upfronts.

Here to talk about what we can expect from the biggest players - ABC, NBC, CBS and Fox - is our TV critic Eric Deggans. Hey there, Eric.

ERIC DEGGANS, BYLINE 5: Hey.

CORNISH: So you're in New York. You're hearing the big pitch. How can advertisers actually know which show to back this far in advance?

DEGGANS: Well, you know, advertisers are looking for sure bets, and that's one reason why nostalgia 6 is one of the big trends that we're seeing this season. They want big names, recognizable stars. So ABC is bringing back "American Idol 7" and "Roseanne." CBS is doing "S.W.A.T.," if you remember that show from the '70s. NBC is bringing back "Will & Grace," and they're even bringing back the whole must-see TV marketing 8 from the mid-1990s when "Will & Grace" was first on the air.

I've always believed that stars don't make TV; TV makes stars. So it's kind of weird 9 to see network TV in this situation where they're going behind recognizable names when really it's the shows that come out of nowhere like "This Is Us" that makes stars. And then people get to know those performers, and they become more famous.

CORNISH: But even something like "This Is Us" - it's not putting up the numbers of those old shows that you mentioned, right? I mean the definition of a hit in this day and age seems a little bit different.

DEGGANS: Yeah, well, you know, these days, a hit show is basically a show that makes money for the network. But that is getting to be more complicated. You're right. Fewer people are watching television, so the benchmark for what makes a hit is going down. But you know, Les Moonves, the CEO of CBS, told us journalists today that less than 50 percent of their revenue comes from advertising, which means that a lot of that money comes from what we call the back end - so the money that you make when they sell the show to Netflix or they sell it into reruns or even when they sell it to companies that air it on airplanes. (Laughter) So more and more, networks have to look at all of that when they decide whether a show's a hit or not.

CORNISH: So how does that affect their decision making about what we see?

DEGGANS: Well, one controversial cancellation 10, the Tim Allen show "Last Man Standing 11" - now, conservatives were really worried because Tim Allen is a conservative, and that character on that show is politically conservative, and they thought it was some kind of liberal plot. Basically that show was getting solid ratings, but ABC didn't own it. So when they scheduled for the fall, they put in two dramas that they do own, "Once Upon A Time" and a new show called Marvel's "Inhumans" so they could get more of that back end we've been talking about.

CORNISH: How else are the networks spending their money?

DEGGANS: Well, the big unscripted show of course is "American Idol," and ABC spent a little time telling us why they bought it, and all the other networks told us why they didn't. Outside of the nostalgia stuff, what I liked was ABC has a show called "The Mayor" about this rapper who decides as a goof 12 to run for mayor in a town, and then he winds up winning.

Fox has a show called "The Gifted." That's an extension of the "X-Men" franchise 13 where these parents find out that their kids all have superpowers; they're all mutants. And CBS has a show called "Young Sheldon" that's a spinoff of "The Big Bang Theory" where that central character Sheldon is 9 years old, but he's going to high school. And I think these are those kind of shows that may come out of nowhere and make stars out of people that we don't know yet.

CORNISH: So those are all the new shows, the new bets, right? What about cancellations? What's going away?

DEGGANS: Well, ABC announced, for example, that the Shonda Rhimes show "Scandal" is going away, and CBS canceled a long-running comedy called "Two Broke Girls." And I thought that was troubling because for the second year in a row, all of CBS' new shows in the fall will feature males, which is a troubling trend I think. I asked CEO Les Moonves about this, and he replied to my question by saying that more women watch CBS percentage wise. But I wonder if they wouldn't struggle so much to get younger viewers if they had shows that had more diversity in gender 14 among their lead characters.

CORNISH: That's NPR's TV critic Eric Deggans in New York for the network Upfronts. Thanks so much, Eric.

DEGGANS: Always a pleasure.