Major networks reconfigure themselves as hot-ticket concert venues
Associated Press
NEW YORK — Television sets are beginning to rival local civic centers as concert venues.
ABC gives Mick Jagger a prime-time hour on Thanksgiving — part biography, part performance.
NBC presents Jennifer Lopez on Tuesday.
'N Sync is on CBS a week from today. CBS also recently aired a two-hour Michael Jackson concert and began a run of three weekly Garth Brooks shows.
Largely ignored by network television for many years, pop concerts have become a programming genre.
"The mainstream, middle American television audience in the year 2001 are people who grew up going to concerts and for whom concerts remain a regular part of their entertainment," said Bill Flanagan, a VH1 executive.
The concert specials have filled the niche that variety programs like "The Ed Sullivan Show" had in the 1960s, Flanagan said.
They don't necessarily get big ratings. A one-hour condensed version of the "United We Stand" concert on ABC Nov. 1 drew 6.2 million viewers, a fraction of the 27 million who saw "Friends" the same night. CBS ran highlights of the "Concert for New York City" the night before and attracted 5.6 million viewers.
But the concerts generally bring in a younger audience than typical prime-time network fare, enabling the networks to sell time to different advertisers, said Jeff Gaspin, head of alternative programming at NBC. That's particularly important at CBS, which traditionally has the oldest audience on network TV. Celine Dion, Shania Twain and Ricky Martin have all done CBS specials. Since CBS' parent company, Viacom, also owns MTV, VH1 and Country Music Television, musicians are eager to do business with the network.
The three Brooks concerts this month will surely draw a bigger audience for CBS than "Wolf Lake," the struggling drama whose time slot is being filled. In a ratings "sweeps" month, that's money in the bank.
Brooks had announced that he wouldn't be doing any more concert tours.
"CBS has given me the opportunity to take the music to the people in a new way, to have the fun of performing it live, and do it in such a way that I don't have to be away from home for long periods of time," he said.
He'll do one show from the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise and another at The Forum in Los Angeles. The third show, on Nov. 28, is at a site yet to be announced.
For the most part, seeing a concert on television is a lot like watching fireworks on TV — it's just not the same as being there, Gaspin conceded. Network executives say they try to create something that can't be duplicated at the local civic center. Since Lopez, Jackson and Brooks aren't out on the road, TV is the only option for their fans.
