Daily Variety, Jan. 11, 1996
'AFFAIR' TO DISMEMBER
Venerable tabmag out after losing clearances
By Jim Benson
Marking the end of an era in syndication, Twentieth TV will pull the plug on the venerable tabloid magazine "A Current Affair" at the finish of the season.
The program's demise, less than two weeks before the National Assn. of Television Program Executives conference, has set off a wild race to grab its primary early-and late-fringe time periods.
A number of stations will undoubedly downgrade the tabmag now that it has been canceled, creating opportunities for competitors for the remainder of this season as well as next fall.
King World's "Inside Edition" and Paramount's "Hard Copy" likely will be the two biggest existing magazines to benefit, adding some markets to the already large clearance lists.
The end of "Affair" also could generate a ray of hope for Warner Bros.' "Extra," which is in midst of upgrades, and two newcomers, NBC-New World's "Access Hollywood" and Paramount's videoclip reality series "Real TV," which has been hampered by weak time periods because station-programming alliances.
Whether "Affair's" pink slip will help the King World tabmag "American Journal" is less certain. Station execs and competing syndicators noted that KW chairman Roger King already used a good deal of leverage to get decent clearances for "Journal" in the last "Oprah Winfrey" renewal go-around. Shows from other genres would have to be considered longshots to inherit the vacated time periods, since the stations that carried "Affair" will be looking for similar fare.
Genre progenitor
Syndication today is dominated by the TV tabloid genre created by the early succes of "Affair"; however over the past few years the show had suffered massive ratins erosion and downgrades.
It succumbed to a combination of factors: increased competition, frequent talent and exec producer changes, the Fox-owned stations shifting from firstrun reality and magazine seriies to more compatible sitcom reruns in access and early fringe, and strategic alliances that locked the show out of desirable network O&O and affiliate slots in large markets.
The shows that "Affair" spawned - "Hard Copy," "Inside Edition" and "American Journal" - went on to surpass the granddaddy of tabmags in the ratings. Alrtought they have all experienced some year-to-year declines, none appears to be in danger of folding.
New Twentieth TV president Rick Jacobson, who already has eliminated the syndicator's entire firstrun development slate and the production entity Foxlab (Daily Variety, Jan. 10, said it wasn't easy to cancel the vintage tabmag.
"It's been rough, like all these decisions are," he said. "But it is one that had to be made."
Until recent years, "Affair" had been a strong ratings performer. It began on Fox-owned WNYW New York in July 1986 with Maury Povich as anchor, went onto the Fox O&Os in June 1987, then gradually rolled into national syndication.
Following Povich's departure in September 1991 for his Paramount talkshow, "Affair" underwent a series of upheavals with a dizzying array of new anchors and exec producers.
The last straw
The straw that ultimately broke "Affair's" back was NBC owned WMAQ Chicago picking up the new Warner Bros. talkshow with Rosie O'Donnell (Daily Variety, Jan. 10). The talker would have bounced the tabmag out of its 4 p.m. slot when the O'Donnell show premiers in June and onto another station.
Meanwhile, WNYW - following the lead of the other Fox O&Os - had planned to exile "Affair" from its 6 p.m. berth to make room for a glut of new, high-priced off-net sitcoms.
The Gotham station could still downgrade it to 12:30 a.m. this season, but the move should have little effect on the tabmags overall ratings. WNYW likely will run an additional episode in daytime, permitting Twentieth to combine (or cume) its numbers for the remainder of the season.
And in Los Angeles, where "Affair" now airs at 7:30 p.m., KNBC already is committed to "Access Hollywood" and "Extra." The Peacock network holds ownership stakes in both.
Although Twentieth could have moved "Affair" to indies in the top three markets, Jacobson said it likely would have gone into latengiht time periods on stations that are not compatible with newsmagazines.
With its estimated $500,000 per-week cost, "Affair" would have quickly piled up red ink without strong clearances in New York, L.A. and Chicago.
Early warning
"We needed to commit it to the right environment," Jacobson said. "Unless the cash license fees in the top markets are significant, the losses are huge. It would have been irresponsible to keep it going."
Because a number of stations already had renewed the program for 1996-97, Twentieth wanted to provide enough notice so the stations would have time to find replacements.
Despite the cancellation, Jacobson said Fox was proud of the show, and he voiced his strong support for John Tomlin and Bob Young. The exec producing team, which came last year from "Inside Edition" and "American Journal" to make a last-ditch effort to save "Affair," will remain under a long-term deal to develop network and syndie programming.
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