Anyone who has not spent the last couple of years on Pluto knows that the original Survivor series has changed television.
You cannot flip through channels without coming across some "reality-based" program. It has certainly changed the thinking of those who program television schedules.
Just ask Pat Vanderburg. He is the program coordinator for a television station.
He and the rest of the staff responsible for putting together the schedule were faced with a difficult decision. Should the station replace a popular sitcom that runs at 8 p.m. Thursday with the followup to Survivor?
"That was something we had to mull over," he says. Indeed.
The sitcom, one of the most successful ever, had been running in that time-slot for years. Replacing it with a new show might be a bit of a gamble. It could cause a drop in viewership and advertising dollars.
On the other hand, the new show could turn out to be a success, perhaps even more successful and profitable than the show it would replace.
"As it turns out, one of the other stations that comes into our market was faced with the same decisions," says Vanderburg. "And once we discovered what their plans were, we were still able to air the displaced programs, but an hour earlier."
So the station got the best of both worlds. It was able to air both shows, while other stations could air only one or the other since the shows originate from competing networks. But this only became possible when the sales department found the option of moving the sitcom in the schedule acceptable.
TV programmers have to consider many different opinions and factors when they put together a schedule. They have to consider several questions: how much money can the station or network afford to spend on different kinds of shows? Do the shows fit the mandate and audience of the station?
A food and cooking channel has a different audience than a channel that runs cartoons 24 hours a day. And public television has a different mandate than commercial television.
Above all, can the schedule and the shows on it attract viewers, and in the case of commercial television, advertisers who buy commercials?
Commercial television programmers should never lose sight of this, says Isme Bennie. She is director of programming and acquisitions for two cable specialty channels.
"It is not just sitting there and making a pretty schedule and buying nice programs," she says. "You are running a business. They have got to be programs that will attract an audience and attract advertisers and get ratings."
Picking shows that generate ratings and revenues is not an exact science. It's not something for which one can take a course. And television programmers should put their own tastes aside when they pick shows.
Bennie says you can learn some of the necessary skills over time through experience. But you either have the ability to pick shows that will be successful or you don't. It's that simple. "And if you don't have it, you are never going to be a good programmer," says Bennie.
Programmers in public television do not face the same commercial pressures as their counterparts in private television. They do not have to make money through commercials. But they, too, face fiscal frontiers.
"The pressure in the public television world, quite often, has less to do with commercial questions and more to do with how do we get the best bang from our budget," says Michele Paris. She is the program manager of a public television station.
So programming a television station can be rather stressful. It can also be time-consuming. Eric Maki is the programmer for a public television station. He says he often has to take work home on weekends. And he thinks about the schedule even when he is not working.
"It is always in the background of your mind," says Maki.