Abstract
The specific objective of the present study is to develop and test an early-stage, empirical model for predicting the audience of new television series. We test our model on a sample of 107 new dramatic television series that debuted on one of the four major US television networks during the 2010-2014 seasons. In particular we examine the role of three previously untested predictors of the performance of new television shows, all of which can be known prior to the decision to greenlight the pilot script. Those three are the originality of the concept of the show, the track record of success of the show’s creative team, and the size of the conceptual network created from the teleplay of the pilot episode.
Highlights
In the spring of 2007 an article appeared in the New York Daily News entitled “Writers Can’t Predict Success of Network Pilots” (Littlejohn, 2007)
Those three are the originality of the concept of the show, the track record of success of the show’s creative team, and the size of the conceptual network created from the teleplay of the pilot episode
We test our model on a sample of 107 new dramatic television series that debuted on one of the four major US television networks—American Broadcasting Company (ABC), National Broadcasting Company (NBC), CBS, and Fox—during the 2010 through 2014 seasons
Summary
In the spring of 2007 an article appeared in the New York Daily News entitled “Writers Can’t Predict Success of Network Pilots” (Littlejohn, 2007). The article related that Berlanti was waiting to learn from the American Broadcasting Company (ABC) whether two new pilots that he had produced—one entitled Eli Stone (2008) and the other Dirty Sexy Money (2007)—would be included among the approximately 40 new series that would make it onto the major network’s fall 2007 schedule. Both did and went on to have modestly successful first season ratings—averaging 8.3 and 7.7 million viewers per week, respectively. After all, been well-documented that cancellation rates for new TV shows routinely exceed 60% in their first year, with most of the surviving shows cancelled after the second season (Nathanson, 2013; Stelter, 2012; Konda, 2014; Ocasio, 2012; Schwab, 2013)
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