Thoughtnami Classics | Question Entertainment CEOs

Originally Posted 02/12/09 by Jeff Harris

It's fun to watch banking CEOs squirm in their chairs while being bombarded with questions. I'd love to see what would happen if the Big Media types were in the same situation.

Here's what I'd ask my "friend" Jeff Bewkes of Time Warner:

Where the hell did the $24 billion go in the last quarter? And don't say it all went into a lawsuit, which was largely dismissed and cost $300 million. Where did it go?

What's the point of having an animation studio if they're not producing any series for television and you sit on the library, not even airing them on the TWO animation networks currently owned by the company (and don't get me started by the idiotic decision to drop Kids' WB on-air)? Not counting the Cartoon Network-produced animated productions and the DC Comics adaptations (including Batman: The Brave and the Bold, which is both), there are zero productions coming out of Warner Bros. Animation on television. Are you even aware that the original Looney Tunes shorts aired 13 hours on Cartoon Network in 2009? That's more than 2003-2008 COMBINED, and no, movie compilations don't count.

How is it that you're responsible for many of the ill-fated decisions of the company in the last four years (including the CW merger, the virtual shutdown of New Line and Warner Animation, the actual shutdown of Picturehouse and Warner Independent, and the practice of NOT allowing analogous units to work together), and yet, you still have a job and constantly being promoted?

Now for all of those other entertainment execs:

Why is off-network syndication largely limited to cable television while daily broadcast syndication is a lifeless husk dominated by court shows? Law and Order SVU could have been syndicated daily for years now, and yet, USA had them for half the decade (it's just coming to daily syndication in September).

If there's really no money in broadband distribution, then why are you so hellbent on putting everything online?

Why aren't Fox, NBC, ABC, and CBS developing digital subchannels for their affiliates, especially considering all four networks have massive libraries of programming? As I talked about on my other site, the major broadcast networks could create at least a second channel that could showcase their libraries or offer second chances of shows seen on the regular channel. I'd really like to know what NBC will do with their Leno and O'Brien library of repeats, each thousands of episodes strong. Hell, I'd strip SNL nightly on those channels.

Why are niche networks diverting from their original purposes to become "everything for everybody?" There is no reason Extreme Makeover: Home Edition needs to be on TV Land and CMT, What I Like About You needs to be on ABC Family and The N, The Fresh Prince of Bel Air needs to be on ABC Family, The N, Nick At Nite, and BET, Home Improvement on TBS and Nick At Nite, and there's definitely no reason live-action movies and series need to be on Cartoon Network. If every channel airs everything, save one or two originals, then it's nothing more than broadcast television . . . and I could get that for free . . . for now.