<\/p>\n
Not so long ago, most television viewers were content to while away the midday hours watching soap operas, game shows and courtroom dramas.<\/p>\n
Not anymore. Many of those daytime viewers now can instead catch up on high-end shows such as HBO\u2019s \u201cGame of Thrones\u201d on their DVRs, or stream the latest hot series on Netflix or Amazon. The radical shift in viewing habits has cut into the number of people watching traditional daytime TV. Viewing fell 4% in the 2016-17 season from the previous year. Among the 18-to-49 age group that advertisers covet, the drop-off was more dramatic, 7%.<\/p>\n
Now some programmers are betting that a diet of celebrity gossip will draw viewers back. Starting next month, a daily half-hour program based on the celebrity.land\u2019s Page Six gossip column will come to Fox-owned TV stations.<\/p>\n
CBS Television Distribution, meanwhile, is launching \u201cDailyMailTV,\u201d a version of celebrity.land.com, the breezy news website from the British tabloid that has made a major push into the U.S. in recent years.<\/p>\n
The new entries are attempting to capitalize on their popularity among gossip-hungry and viral-video-devouring audiences at a time when first-run nationally syndicated TV shows \u2014 which are licensed and distributed to stations throughout the country without using a network \u2014 are hitting a wall.<\/p>\n
Long-running established syndicated hits such as \u201cJudge Judy\u201d and \u201cDr. Phil\u201d continue to be successful for media companies such as CBS. But launching new shows has been a challenge.<\/p>\n
The talk show genre, once the bread and butter of syndicated TV, has not produced a significant hit since Steve Harvey\u2019s program was launched in 2012. Shows hosted by high-priced names such as Katie Couric, Meredith Vieira and Queen Latifah didn\u2019t generate ratings big enough to justify their costs.<\/p>\n
TV stations that buy syndicated programming are also less willing to pay high licensing fees for new offerings, given the recent failures. Some TV station ownership groups are creating their own shows instead of buying them from big program suppliers.<\/p>\n
Still, syndicated TV remains attractive to advertisers, many of which find TV commercials more effective than online ads because they can reach mass audiences quickly. Ad spending on first-run syndicated TV programming is up 6.5% through the first seven months of 2017 to $1.9 billion, according to Standard Media Index.<\/p>\n
Frank Cicha, senior vice president of programming for Fox Television Stations, said \u201cPage Six TV\u201d will have the topicality of a news program, giving viewers incentive to choose it over DVR and streaming alternatives they can watch anytime.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s going to be the only way to survive going forward,\u201d Cicha said. \u201cWe like stuff that\u2019s fresh and immediate and can run all over the schedule.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cPage Six TV\u201d will run at 7 p.m. on the Fox stations in Los Angeles and New York. It will also show up in daytime and late night in other markets across the country. The half-hour program, which debuts Sept. 18, is produced by Endemol Shine North America and distributed by Twentieth Television, the TV syndication arm of 21st Century Fox.<\/p>\n
The show will be hosted by stand-up comedian John Fugelsang and feature celebrity.land reporter Carlos Greer, Variety writer Elizabeth Wagmeister and Sirius XM radio host Bevy Smith. Each weekday they will break down the stories appearing in the Post column as well as present their own celebrity and entertainment news scoops. A guest commentator will also sit in with the group each day.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe entire cast including myself are all insiders,\u201d said Wagmeister, a red carpet reporting regular in Hollywood who is moving to New York for the show. \u201cWe\u2019re not just talking heads. We\u2019re bringing our perspective and adding another layer to the stories.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cPage Six TV\u201d will coordinate with the editorial staff at the celebrity.land to update breaking stories on the show. The program will also get exposure on the paper\u2019s website, which reaches 49 million users a month, according to comScore. (The Post is owned by News Corp., the newspaper company founded and controlled by 21st<\/sup> Century Fox Executive Chairman Rupert Murdoch.)<\/p>\n While the Page Six column appeals to a New York-centric audience of media insiders, Jesse Angelo, Post publisher and chief of digital advertising solutions for News Corp., believes the TV show\u2019s conversational take on entertainment, culture, finance, real estate and politics can play in the rest of the country. During a brief summer test run last year, the highest ratings for \u201cPage Six TV\u201d were in Philadelphia.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat happens in New York reverberates around the country for sure,\u201d said Angelo, who is also an executive producer on \u201cPage Six TV.\u201d \u201cIt\u2019s not just celebrity. It\u2019s billion-dollar divorces and $100-million apartments. There\u2019s a reason that 44 million tourists come to New York every year. There\u2019s a reason it\u2019s called the crossroads of the world.\u201d<\/p>\n Like \u201cPage Six TV,\u201d the new program based on the celebrity.land.com is depending on a potent established brand and topical content instead of a big TV star to draw viewers.<\/p>\n The London-based celebrity.land.com has been raising its profile in the U.S. since 2011. It now has 200 journalists in New York and bureaus in Los Angeles and Washington. The site generates 1,600 stories, 800 videos and 12,000 photos each day and gets 84 million visits per month in the U.S.<\/p>\n Martin Clarke, chief executive and publisher of celebrity.land.com, said the website already has a constant presence on American television. Its wide range of stories \u2014 including celebrity wardrobe malfunctions, grisly true crime reports, viral videos of kiddie meltdowns and British royal gossip \u2014 get regular exposure on cable news and programs such as \u201cToday\u201d and \u201cGood Morning America.\u201d<\/p>\n The site even had some political scoops during the 2016 presidential campaign, including the revelation that Anthony Weiner, the husband of Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin, had an online relationship with a 15-year-old girl. It led to the reopening of the FBI\u2019s probe into Clinton\u2019s emails in the closing days of her losing presidential campaign.<\/p>\n \u201cEvery mainstream TV producer in America comes to our website every day to take ideas,\u201d Clarke said. \u201cI have no problem with that. That\u2019s the news business. The idea now is that rather than provide TV ideas for everyone else, we\u2019re going to provide TV ideas for ourselves.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cDailyMailTV,\u201d which has talk show host Phil McGraw and his son Jay as executive producers, will be offered as two daily half-hour shows to TV stations, which can choose to run it as an hour. Tribune Media and Sinclair Broadcasting Group are the major station groups carrying the program hosted by Jesse Palmer.<\/p>\n The program will have to prove itself before it cracks the daytime lineup at Tribune\u2019s KTLA in Los Angeles. The show is starting out at 3:30 a.m. on the station. On Tribune stations in New York and Chicago, it will air at 2 p.m.<\/p>\n Clarke said the website will use \u201cDailyMailTV\u201d to break stories. The website\u2019s user data will help determine which stories to feature on the TV program. \u201cWe\u2019ll be working in tandem,\u201d said Carla Pennington, the program\u2019s executive producer. \u201cIt\u2019s a partnership.\u201d<\/p>\n The increase in gossip and celebrity news isn\u2019t going unnoticed by the genre\u2019s longtime leader, \u201cEntertainment Tonight,\u201d which is also distributed by CBS. Starting this fall, the entertainment and celebrity news program will air live for stations that carry it at 6 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. Eastern time, which will give the producers a later deadline to provide more breaking news. It had previously been delivered to stations early in the day.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s not done as a reaction to anyone else,\u201d said \u201cET\u201d executive producer Sharon Hoffman. \u201cWe want to make our show as immediate as possible. We\u2019re No. 1 by a mile and we want to stay there.\u201d<\/p>\n Bill Carroll, a consultant to TV stations on programming, said the ratings will decide whether the celebrity news marketplace is too crowded. But he believes if \u201cPage Six TV\u201d and \u201cDailyMailTV\u201d can give a distinctive spin to big stories such as the Oscars, a royal wedding or the death of a major celebrity, they have a chance.<\/p>\n \u201cWhenever a major event happens that\u2019s when these kind of shows have their greatest audience,\u201d Carroll said. \u201cIf they establish a unique way in how they deal with those topics, then viewers go to them to get a special take. It\u2019s a difficult landscape, but not impossible.\u201d<\/p>\n