MovieChat Forums > The Late Shift (1996) Discussion > Question about the 50 million penalty pa...

Question about the 50 million penalty payment

posted 13 years ago by NCC011701
3 replies | jump to latest

Something that I've been wondering about concerning when Ovitz tells Dave about the penalty clause that made NBC choke. The clause was that CBS guarentees you a show that airs before midnight EST or they owe Dave $50 million.

How does that translate down to the affiliate level? In my area, during high school football season, the CBS affiliate here pre-empts Dave with expanded news coverage about all the high school football/college football teams that usually pushes the Late Show back to 12:05am or later. Shouldn't this pre-empting make CBS owe Dave some money? I don't have the knowledge about affiliate relations with the broadcast networks to understand how this works in real life. Even in the movie, Ovitz is telling Dave that CBS would only have about 60% clearence in airing the Late Show but Howard Stringer was promising to get up to 90% a year later at the very latest.

How does the penalty payment work in relationship to the affiliates? I remember reading in the second Bill Carter book about how the Boston NBC affiliate would not run Leno's 10pm show until Jay called and promised to do promos, etc and Jeff Zucker had threatened to pull ALL NBC programming from that affiliate if they refused to air Leno's show. The Boston station relented and aired the show in face of that threat. So, I'm kinda confused about this.

[–] MrBlondNYC 13 years ago

The network can't really force the affiliates. The Boston/Jay Leno thing was a unique case where you had a disaster of a show and an affiliate in one of the largest markets in the US taking a stand. NBC had to put a stop to it because it could have caused a domino effect of affiliates dropping Leno's show. NBC would have lost a ton of money because advertisers would not want to pay full rates for a show that doesn't air in in markets like Boston. Typically, the affiliates follow the network schedule but your CBS affiliate may feel that Letterman doesn't pull enough ratings in your area to warrant giving up that air time. You might live in a smaller market, in a small city or town. So the networks don't mind as much if the smaller affiliates switch the programming around a bit. Because they do want to keep the affiliates happy.

Letterman doesn't receive a penalty payment if some of the affiliates move his show back. His show is 11:35 on the network schedule, on all the owned stations and most of the affiliates. That's what he was promised.

George Carlin: It's all bullsh-t and it's bad for ya.

[–] NCC011701 13 years ago

Ohhh ok, that makes sense to me now. So it was only effective if the network scheduled his show later, not the affilates. Ok, I get it now. I had a friend working for the Fox/ABC affiliate in my area a few years ago and he tried to explain it to me before he moved out of state. However, he was telling me about it when we were sitting around drinking beer all night, so a lot of what he told me didn't stick. Thanks for clearing that up for me.

[–] mcgill_j 11 years ago

Also if you remember.. Its mentioned the first year his show would only have been on about 65% of affiliates, with a promise of 90% within three years. So even if they are showing the show, it seems they were expecting a good deal of holdouts at least for the first three years. Meaning the affiliates were going to take a wait and see approach with the show.