NBCUniversal boss Steve Burke came out for scrapping the traditional 35-week TV season on Monday, saying it’s high time the industry started acknowledging the new realities of TV viewership.
Burke called for a 52-week season, and said that networks should be judged on how they perform with the advertiser-coveted 18-49 year-old demographic, rather than total viewers.
“If I were a consumer I’d want to know who won the football game, not who got the most yards,” Burke told a reporters’ roundtable at NBC headquarters in New York City on Monday.
Burke joins Fox’s Kevin Reilly, who has already called for a 52-week season—in addition to abandoning pilot season.
And all of the networks have ramped up original summer programmig (see last summer’s “Under the Dome” on CBS, for example).
This season, Fox is launching the highly anticipated return of “24” in May, rather than at the beginning of a season.
Brief Take: Burke is yet another top broadcast executive to call for shaking up the business model to respond to the new realities of television viewership.
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