Transcript: Upfronts, Auspices & Half-Truths

What to learn from how the TV game used to be played

This is Rob Long with Martini Shot for The Ankler.

There's an old story about a legendary studio president who came back from a meeting with a network after selling a television series. It was back when there was such a thing as “pilot season” — when television studios would compete in a frenzy for time slots on a broadcast network schedule. It was like a really nasty gang fight — when there’s only one place for your television shows — the broadcast airwaves of three or four big networks — the stakes are high and you fight dirty.

The universe of the television business would gather in New York for a weeks-long series of presentations each network gives to the advertising community about their exciting lineup of fall television shows. It was called Upfronts, because this was when the networks would get money “upfront” from advertisers. The business was so fat and rich that they didn’t even bother coming up with a more elegant or discrete name for it.

They still sort of do it, sort of around May, but the business is so different now that I think it must be a little like when the flight attendant gives the safety talk on an airplane — nobody is listening, nobody cares, everyone knows that the information will not save you.