THE UPS AND DOWNS OF 'CROSSWORDS'

Program Partners rolled the dice at NATPE this year, announcing that it would take on the big studios with a new game show with the same pedigree as syndication stalwarts Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune.

In fact, Merv Griffin’s Crosswords is an equal partnership of Program Partners, the William Morris Agency and Merv Griffin Productions, the production company founded by the late entertainer and entrepreneur that created and still produces Jeopardy and Wheel for distribution by CBS Television Distribution.

The three-way deal was intended to mitigate risk in the tough first-run syndication market. The partners agreed to forego taking fees off the top and pour everything into production and marketing.

With the magic Griffin name, Program Partners was able to clear the show across most of the country, with the NBC stations providing the outlets in the major markets. The lively play-along show, hosted by Ty Treadway, debuted on Sept. 10.

Despite its roots and aggressive marketing, the show is off to a slow start, consistently posting less than a 1 rating in weekly syndication reporting.

Program Partners is a partnership of two industry veterans, Ritch Colbert and Josh Raphaelson. Like Crosswords, Colbert has some great TV DNA. His father was Dick Colbert, a pioneer in the syndication business.

In this interview with TVNEWSDAY Editor Harry A. Jessell, Colbert says he still likes Crosswords’ chances, saying that the show is showing signs of growth and that it continues to enjoy the marketing and promotional support of Program Partners and of its broadcast outlets.

And edited transcript follows.

The last number I saw on Crosswords was a 0.8. Is that good enough? Do you find that disappointing?

While a 0.8 is not a particularly high number, relative to the other first-run shows that were launched this year, we are certainly at the top of the heap.

When you look at the numbers for the new shows season to date, we’re basically No. 2 behind TMZ. We’re outperforming David Young, which is essentially safely nestled inside of a court rotation. We’re outperforming Steve Wilkos, which is generally protected inside of a Maury and Jerry Springer block.

In the top markets, Crosswords is often isolated in very high profile, highly competitive environments. It’s relatively high national ranking tells us that we’re probably doing quite well in the down markets, especially relative to our competitors.

If you do a 1.1 or 1.2, that’s almost good enough these days. What’s your goal for the show?    

We want to continue to see incremental growth, and we are seeing that. We have only six weeks of full data, but we’re seeing steady growth in markets across the country—big markets, little markets in a diversity of geographical areas and competitive situations.

Just this week in Philly, where we’re in daytime on the CBS O&O, we’ve had our best performance this season with a 1.2 rating. In Dallas, on the NBC-owned station, at 2 o’clock, we did a 1.2. We’re up 50 percent season to date. Last week, we did a 1.9 in women 25 to 54, beating everybody in the market. In Houston, we had our best performance season to date this week with a 1.5.

We have plenty of very good stories. But what we’re seeing with all the new first-run shows is just this increased decimalization of the marketplace. It’s simply more difficult today to capture the fascination of the viewers in such a fractionalized market. It’s just harder. So getting these viewers to sample new programming in a densely crowded market has become increasingly difficult despite massive promotion.                                                         

The NBC platform is sort of a blessing and a curse. It’s a blessing because it’s NBC, a big station group, but it’s a curse because it’s NBC, not exactly the place you want to be in daytime.      

It’s tough, you’re right. In New York and LosAngeles particularly, we launched in historically weak time periods on the NBC-owned stations in the most visible and highly competitive environments in syndication facing both Oprah and Judge Judy.

But the NBC stations are great partners and together we’ve invested in the Crosswords brand at launch and, throughout these early days on the air, we’re continuing to promote and implement various initiatives to support the show together.

The growth happens to mirror closely the development of another great Merv Griffin series, Jeopardy. People forget that that was a great series that started off very slowly on the NBC network. Merv liked to talk about how the executives used to say, the show’s too hard, and they kept encouraging him to make the show easier to play.

But Merv basically ignored the network and of course the series went on for another 11 years on the network, not to mention its 25 year legacy in syndication. So, if history’s any indication, a slow build translates into a long-term success. We invite our partners, particularly our NBC stations, to join us and just be patient as the show continues to build, recognizing that the payoff can be a long-term show like Jeopardy.        

Your comment about Merv’s response to the Jeopardy critics is interesting.  I’ve heard both things about Crosswords—that the show is too dumb and that it’s too smart. Are you tweaking the show at all?      

We did do some testing recently. What we found was that people like the premise of the show. They certainly liked Ty. Some of the feedback that we got was that viewers would like to see more of Ty. They’d like to see him interact more with the contestants. They’d like to see the prizing increase. So we were responsive. We went back into the studio and made some refinements that we believe are additives. Those episodes will begin airing this coming Monday and through the November book.                        

NBC Universal says it is bringing Deal or No Deal to daytime in 2008. Is that good news or bad news for you? Will that be a complement or a competitor for time slots?     

I think it’s a complement. The NBC stations have certainly picked up a couple of shows, [Warner Bros.’ Bonnie Hunt and Deal or No Deal], but they haven’t finalized their 2008 schedule.

They have said to us on a number of occasions that it has been their intention all along to explore Crosswords in 2008 as a Deal or No Deal companion. That’s one of the reasons why we did a double run in many of their markets, knowing that the second run would probably go away in 2008 in favor of Deal or No Deal. So we think generally it’s a good thing.

And that’s the vibe you’re getting from those at NBC, although there’s nothing official?

Correct.

What else is lurking out there? Debmar is out there with Trivial Pursuit and there may be other games coming. Any comment on that?          

Based on my discussions with the NBC stations, I don’t believe there will be any sudden moves with respect to Crosswords. They want the show to succeed as much as we do. They recognize the slow build and the nature of the show.

They also recognize that anything new that they would put into that rotation would require an enormous investment of time and resources and promotion. They’re facing the same challenges going into 2008 as they faced going into 2007. That is the decimalization and the fractionalization of the market and just how incredibly challenging it is to get viewers to sample new programming.

In retrospect, would you have put more money in the upfront marketing?    

Well, we put enormous resources into the upfront marketing, both nationally and locally. New York was blanketed with billboards. We’ve made great use of Ty Treadway. He appeared recently on The View with Joy Behar and we’ve gotten great coverage by Access Hollywood and Extra. We’re now rolling out the Crosswords puzzle book. We’ll have end cap displays at Border’s and Target. We have a THQ game coming out. We’re working with an online developer to create and introduce more robust online components. These are all ongoing initiatives that began prior to the launch of the show.

So going now into our seventh and eighth weeks on the air, we are as aggressive as we were launching the show in late summer. We have not put the breaks on our promotional initiatives nor have the stations.

Given the high risk of first-run, if Crosswords fails, do you think you would attempt another big first-run show like this?

We came to market with a business model that mitigated our risk. We would try it again if we could replicate that business model and come to market with a first-run show that doesn’t put our company at enormous risk.

We’re intrigued by the court genre. We will, of course, continue to look closely at games. Additionally, we’re putting resources into the development of broadband initiatives, especially those that would allow us to work closely with local broadcasters in leveraging their local legacy brands.

So, we’re not discouraged. The marketplace has been particularly welcoming to independents being aggressive in the marketplace. Everybody feels that the business overall is better off when independents are thriving, whether it’s Monday-through-Friday or weekend television.                                   

What else are you up to? I know you have some good off-net titles here, DeGrassi and DaVinci’s Inquest. How are they doing?           

DeGrassi we launched at the same time that we launched Crosswords. That’s a scripted half hour that runs as a strip both vertically and horizontally. WPIX [New York] does a five-episode block on Sundays. They’re No. 2 in the time period with 44 percent week to week—very, very strong numbers. In LA, we’re on KTLA, the CW affiliate there, a Tribune station. We’re No. 2 in the time period. In Chicago, we’re up 25 percent week to week, doing a 1 rating and a 3 share. They’re very happy with that. It improves what they had in there in October of 2006 by 100 percent, a very dramatic increase. In Philadelphia, we’re up 200 percent week to week. In Dallas we’re No. 1 in the time period, dominant with a 2.9 rating and an 8 share. So DeGrassi is off to a strong start. It’s a very, very good show, qualitatively excellent. We’re very proud of it.

DaVinci, it’s now in its third year. We’re planning on its going into its fourth year. It’s No. 2 in its time slot in L.A. on KCBS, No. 2 in Philly on WPSG, No. 1 in Atlanta, No. 1 in Houston, No. 2 in Seattle, No. 1 in St. Louis, No. 1 in Pittsburgh. It’s proven to be a very strong, venerable series with a lot of staying power.

Then we launched ReGenesis this year. It's another procedural with a twist off of the Movie Network in Canada. It’s a high-gloss series with a budget of about $2 million an episode. It’s No. 2 in New York, it’s No. 2 in Miami, No. 2 in Cleveland, No. 1 in Nashville, No. 1 in Knoxville. So we’re getting a lot of traction in the early days of that series as well. We’ve got a lot of great good fortune with our off-net scripted hours and continue to see that as a good business for us.    

A couple of big picture questions here that we’ve already touched on. It seems that with every passing year the whole first-run syndication business does get dicier and dicier. What’s the future of the business?

There was a period of time where the big guys got bigger and the little guys got sort of squeezed out. What has happened in fact is that the big guys—i.e, the studios—have become so large that they have massive portfolios to churn. In the case of CBS, they have some 70,000 hours of programming. They’re under enormous pressure to meet their year-end projections to satisfy shareholders so just the churning of portfolios of that size keeps them very, very busy.

It actually creates a climate where independents such as us can be more nimble and resourceful in meeting the needs of broadcasters across the board. So we actually are very optimistic about our business going forward and the role that we can play in the syndication marketplace.

In general terms, we see an expansion of channel capacity and opportunity both among analog stations and their digital counterparts, the cable universe and broadband. So the laws of supply and demand prevail and we think they favor businesses of our type. So, we’re bullish on syndication in general, but we would certainly predict and project that the very definition of syndication may change in the coming years.

And what about NATPE? I saw that you did a lively blog for TV Week during NATPE this year. You seemed to enjoy the show. Do you think that it’s going to continue to be the center of the syndication business?

Well, NATPE has not been the center of the syndication universe for a number of years in as much as many programming decisions are made well ahead of that convention. Last year’s NATPE was distinguished for us by the fact that we didn’t introduce Crosswords until the very eve of the convention. So, we enjoyed unusually robust activity and attendance at the convention.

Having said that, we are big supporters of NATPE. All of the station groups are represented there. It gives an opportunity in a relaxed setting to spend time with broadcasters from all over the country. We are able to make a very good productive use of that event and we envision we will continue to do so.

If you’re such a hip guy, how come you still pronounce the “T” in Colbert?

Oh, I don’t know. You have to talk to my mom and dad about that one.

How is your dad?

He’s doing very well, thank you. He just celebrated his 83^rd birthday in July and he travels extensively. I always have a hard time tracking him down because he’s always on the move.