Cable Networks Try Make-Overs

TNT knows drama. TNN’s got pop.

At least, that’s what executives at each network want you to believe. Both are mounting expensive campaigns to establish new identities in a brutally competitive market where the business model for cable networks has turned on its head.

When Ted Turner was establishing his cable empire 20 years ago, the conventional wisdom was that to succeed, you needed to copy broadcast TV and attract as broad and big an audience as possible.

“Nobody believed you could make money off little audiences,” said Herb Scannell, TNN president. Now the opposite is true. Today’s recipe for success is to go after a specific segment of the public--sports fans, music fans, kids--and become indispensable.

TNT and TNN are case studies of networks following different paths through this new competitive landscape.

Probably for too many years, TNT was locked into the old business model and had no real identity. Its effort to become a destination for fans of dramatic movies or series is coupled with sister station TBS positioning itself as a home for comedy.

TNN, meanwhile, had a clear identity, but one that its new owners at Viacom didn’t like. The former Nashville Network, renamed the National Network, was known for its appeal primarily to Southern and rural viewers.

“At the heart of the TNN dilemma was that we had a regional network with national distribution,” Scannell said.

One of the first steps in establishing a new TNN was acquiring basic cable’s most popular weekly program, the World Wrestling Federation. Reruns of “Star Trek,” “Baywatch” and “Mad TV” begin soon. New original programs include “Star Shots,” in which two filmmakers pick average Americans to star in movie spoofs, and “Lifegame,” in which actors act out people’s life stories.

At first blush, TNN is bucking a trend by turning a specialized network into a general interest one. But not on closer inspection.

Many networks that appear broad are really niche players, Scannell said. Comedy Central appeals mostly to a young male sense of humor. The WB, while a broadcast network, is particularly strong among teenage girls. TNN has its own target viewer: a pop-culture maven 25 to 34.

“They’ve got a major challenge,” said Larry Gerbrandt, a cable television analyst for Paul Kagan & Associates. “The hurdle they’ve set is high because they’ve gone from a Western lifestyle channel to a Viacom version of TNT.

“Ultimately, what they want is a CBS 2,” Gerbrandt said. CBS, like TNN, is a Viacom property.

Surveys show that most people concentrate the bulk of their television viewing on five or six channels, and that hasn’t changed even as the number of networks increased exponentially, he said.

Viewers have a specific reason for going to certain channels: CNN Headline News for a quick brush-up on what’s going on, the Weather Channel for the forecast, Nickelodeon to occupy the kids.

For TNN and TNT, it’s less about what they are than what they air. Some networks depend on their programming for their identity, like HBO with “The Sopranos” and “Sex and the City.” TNN and TNT don’t have enough distinctive original programming that people immediately associate with their names, Gerbrandt said.

Some of TNT’s moves this year have led some people to question its commitment to original programming. Two series made on the network’s order--a newsroom drama called “Breaking News” and another season of “Bull”--were axed before being shown, mystifying their creators.

Jamie Kellner, chairman of Turner Broadcasting, TNT’s parent, said that although TNT has a comparatively young audience, it does well with traditional, even old-fashioned, story forms--Westerns, for example.

“The tendency for most people when you’re picking shows is to try to do something brand new, that’s never been done,” Kellner said. “There’s an attempt to break new ground. And I’m not sure that’s where TNT should be.”

TNT is also likely to be a laboratory for the new buzz word in broadcasting--repurposing. Basically, that means big networks foisting off their reruns on someone else.

Kellner plans to run episodes of the WB series “Charmed” on TNT. Some networks experimenting with repurposing use reruns in the same week the original was on, instead of six months later.

TNT might be a venue for “multiplexing,” which HBO does in running its series a couple of times a week.

“There are some people who resist the idea, some old-fashioned thinkers,” Kellner said. “But the audience is clearly showing us they want to watch things differently and we’ve got to give them these programs with a greater availability.”