Days after top executive moves at NBCUniversal on both the film and TV side, CEO Steve Burke needs to see better performances out of NBCU’s broadcast and cable networks, he told the Bank of America Merrill Lynch 2013 Media, Communications & Entertainment Conference in Beverly Hills on Wednesday.
Burke said that NBC is losing ground to its competition on two fronts: its advertising is selling at a 20% cost-per-thousand (CPM) discount compared to its competitors, something that the network wants to fix as soon as possible. NBC also has fallen behind other networks in terms of securing retransmission consent fees from cable and satellite operators as well.
Burke also sees a problem with NBC’s cable properties. “I think there’s a monetization gap, which is what we call it,” Burke said at the conference, “between how those channels are doing and how they should be doing, measured by how [their] peer cable channels are doing.”
Referencing success stories like NBC’s “The Voice,” “Sunday Night Football” and “Revolution,” he pointed out that NBC’s strategy behind increasing revenue should be to continue to invest in high-quality programming.
Brief Take: As NBC gets ready to premiere its fall lineup, the network clearly (and admittedly) has some work to do to rebuild its once formidable primetime.
Read more at The Hollywood Reporter.
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