..Gary Dretzka
..Noah Forrest
..Leonard Klady
..R.J. Matson
..David Poland
..Douglas Pratt
..Ray Pride
..Michael Wilmington

Ho, hum. Another week, another slump.

This week, according to both Variety and the Los Angeles Times, it’s the broadcast networks that are in desperate need of tag days. Just as audiences have abandoned the multi-plexes and their daily newspapers, we’re told, television viewers apparently have found other things to do with their eyes than watch all the wonderful new summer-replacement shows and thrice-aired reruns … or read about them in the perpetually in flux Calendar section, for that matter.

No one is willing to hazard a guess as to where those eyes may have gone. Clearly, though, they’re somewhere else, and this troubles the journalists who cover the entertainment media.

How dire are the straits? Studio and network executives actually are openly admitting to reporters -- on the record, no less -- that many of the shows and movies for which their companies are responsible, in fact, are lousy. The Hollywood brain-trust has taken to self-flagellation like so many Shi’a men on Ashoura, and Penitente Christians on Good Friday.

Better that they used real swords, chains and whips, instead of mea culpas in the New York Times.

They needn’t have bothered.

Sure, the movie studios have overestimated the public’s willingness to fork over their hard-earned money for the privilege of watching overexposed stars mail in their performances, and endure assaults on their eardrums by cell phones (is this really a problem?) and sub-woofers. And, yes, this summer’s crop of reality shows is far less compelling than those in years past. Big deal.

"There was too much reality, and most of it sucked," one unnamed TV executive told Variety, adding that a lot of the shows "felt like burnoff. It seemed like it was just sitting around rather than made for summer."

Big surprise, there.

Preston Beckman, a VP at Fox Broadcasting, told the Los Angeles Times, “There were just a lot of mediocre -- at best -- reality shows,” this summer.

No kidding.

If these guys had bothered to mention their qualms to the boys and girls at last month’s TCA critics tour, everyone could have taken the summer off. One is allowed to wonder, though, how “mediocre” the “burnoff” shows would have looked -- in 20/20 hindsight -- had they actually drawn an audience?

While they were at it, the assembled critics might have asked of ABC execs what possessed them to launch a prime-time toga party, Empire, in advance of HBO’s far-more-vigorously marketed Rome, which, at least, holds the promise of period T&A and Latin curse words. Or, pray tell, why anyone at NBC would think the Great Unwashed would take time away from their GameBoys and church socials to watch Paris Hilton’s mom (what, Lionel Richie wasn’t available?) prattle on about etiquette?

But, the self-flagellation wasn’t confined to movers and shakers in the TV industry.

"Part of this (can be blamed on) the fact that the movies may not have lived up to the expectations of the audience, not just in this year, but in years prior," Michael Lynton, chairman of Sony Pictures Entertainment, told the New York Times. "Audiences have gotten smart to the marketing, and they can smell the good ones from the bad ones at a distance."

Smarter, certainly, than the reporters and editors who couldn’t resist the desire to inflict yet another profile of Nicole Kidman (Bewitched) or Jamie Foxx (Stealth) on the literate few who still read newspapers for reasons other than the Horoscope and advice columns. Smarter, too, than the journalists and talk-show bookers who will rise to the bait when Kidman and Foxx make the circuit for their next big-budget picture.

C’mon guys, everyone knows that show business is a crap shoot, and, eventually, the house always wins. If you don’t skin the punters this summer, you will in 2006 or 2007. No one outside of a few postal zones in Los Angeles and Manhattan really cares.

The broadcast networks may whine about decreasing ratings for summer shows, but they’ve already covered their asses by investing in the same cable networks that ostensibly are cutting into their action. It’s easier still for studio executives to blame themselves for under-achieving movies, knowing full well that DVD and other ancillary revenues can turn red ink into black.

Here’s an idea: make everyone in the business, including critics, pay their way into pre-release screenings, including those held in private rooms around town. Cut out the all-media and all-industry screenings, charge a minimum of $10 a ticket for those “charity” premieres, eliminate the exchange of private DVDs (shhh, don’t tell the MPAA), refuse to honor guild and academy cards until after New Year’s Day, and stop handing out free popcorn and soda. Editors shouldn't be allowed to assign feature stories and celebrity profiles based solely on the advice of publicists and industry "buzz."

Kind of takes the fun out of green-lighting obvious pieces of crap, doesn’t it? Think anyone would reflexively approve the next Rob Schneider project if their spouses and kids had to pay to see it? All the money that comes in from those private screenings might just be enough to end the slump!

But, then, these dips in revenue really don't represent a slump, do they. They're lines on a time chart, squiggles on a performance graph, fodder for pundits on a sleepy summer day, opportunities for contrarian investors. Until sales of gas-guzzling SUVs and limos go south, and Wal-Mart is allowed to open a warehouse on Rodeo Drive, let's not forget that starving children in sub-Saharan Africa deserve more of our pity than the Armani-suited legions of Hollywood.

You want to see a slump, look at this year’s edition of the Kansas City Royals baseball team. That’s a slump.

The Royals, once a franchise that consistently lived up to its name, just struggled its way through a 19-game losing streak. When a team sucks that badly, several things happen, none of them good.

Here are some of the ways a baseball slump is different than a Hollywood slump:

** Attendance plummets, taking with it concession and souvenir sales, parking revenues, TV ratings, newspaper circulation, endorsement deals and business at local sports bars;

** Season-ticket holders can’t give away their seats, let alone sell them to scalpers;

** Entire cities and states go into deep depressions, some of which have been known to last for 60 years or more (ask any Cubs fan);

** Movie and TV audiences aren’t photographed on nation television, wearing bags over their heads as the enter the local multiplex or plop down in front of their new HDTV;

** Movie and TV stars aren’t sent down to the minors for rehabilitation, put on the waiver wire or traded for an actor to be named later;

** Their pets aren’t shot by disgruntled fans as they wander around the neighborhood (this, legend has it, was the fate of a dog owned by former Green Bay Packer coach Dan Devine);

** Hollywood executives can still get reservations for their spouses at the Ivy and Spago, even if they’re limited in their choice of prime tables;

** After a disappointing opening weekend, producers and marketing executives need not fear the wrath of parking valets;

** When a show like Rock Star: INXS or I Want to Be a Hilton tanks, the children of TV executives aren’t scorned by their peers at Crossroads and Harvard-Westlake;

** Hardly anyone blames bad ratings or box-office performance on a decades-old curse, involving Babe Ruth or tavern-owner’s pet goat;

** No one will suggest, “This wouldn’t be happening if those bastards in Washington weren’t so worried about steroids”;

** And, finally, while it’s always OK to blame the media for a poor performance, eliminating goodie bags for reporters at future junkets will only piss them off.

Truth is, unless you’re a Cubs fan, all slumps eventually come to an end. Hope springs eternal in Hollywood, just as it does on the North Side of Chicago.

The eternal doom-and-gloom prophesized for the recording industry lifted with the arrival of affordable downloads and the ubiquity of iPods. Instead of killing the exhibition business, the wide acceptance of VHS and DVD appliances has only served to whet the appetite of consumers for Hollywood movies. Huge up-front advertising sales continue to buoy the spirits of programmers, who live in fear of the day when Jerry Bruckheimer and Dick Wolf start their own networks. Despite all the noise about circulation figures, newspaper conglomerates are still raking in obscene profits.

As long as the producers of Growing Up Gotti are allowed to walk freely through the streets of Hollywood, without fear of being beaten with baseball bats, the television industry is in no danger of succumbing to a slump. If a documentary about penguins can capture the hearts and wallets of an entire country, there’s no need to fret about a slump in the movie industry. If the newspapers are reporting that the entertainment industry is in the throes of a slump, it’s probably time to invest.

No one asked me, but, in my opinion, all this talk about a slump in the television industry ignores one very real and conspicuous trend.

As long as the TV-to-DVD business continues to explode (it’s only 5 years old, after all), and TiVo’s household penetration increases, there’s no need to obsess over summer ratings. It’s likely that those eyes didn’t simply disappear or shift to cable. Instead, consumers are creating their own viewing schedules … watching as much as they ever did, but at different times of the day.

Just as the window between the theatrical and DVD release of a movie has narrowed to less than two months (Disney’s Bob Iger is carrying the spear for other studio executives, who also want day-and-date releases), it’s now possible to purchase a year’s worth of TV episodes within weeks of the previous season’s end. The multi-disc packages tend to come with lots of useful extras, and commercials are noticeably.

Why tape re-runs of Desperate Housewives, Lost and House, M.D, when they’ll all be made available in boxed sets in time for the start of Season 2? Why endure repeats of Growing Up Gotti and Joey, when you can be enjoying Moonlighting, The Dick Cavett Show and The Muppet Show (all recent arrivals on DVD). Why pay full freight for cable when you can cherry pick the best shows -- The Sopranos, Nip/Tuck, Deadwood and Entourage, among them -- when they arrive at the local video store?

The $2.3 billion TV-to-DVD industry wasn’t even a glimmer in the beady eyes of network bean-counters a decade ago, when they convinced regulators to knock down Fin-Syn regulations. Instead of being limited in their ability to own interests in the shows they put on their networks, broadcasters were suddenly free to extort sweetheart deals from the creative community and, even, license their products to competitors.

Seven years later, when Fox threw The X-Files into the DVD marketplace, no one imagined how this ability to own an interest in a hit show would positively impact their bottom lines in ancillary revenue streams. The surge in TV-to-DVD sales represented found-money for the networks. Now, they’re even releasing packages of shows they cancelled in mid-run!

The rights to many classic television series are held in trust by the descendents of long-dead stars and producers. It takes a bit longer for these packages to enter the marketplace, but it’s almost always worth the wait.

If such controversial titles as Amos & Andy and The Untouchables ever were to be released in restored DVD editions -- with the same bonus features and background material as the “Seinfeld boxes” -- entire networks could go into hiatus and not be missed. No one would be watching them.

TV-to-DVD sales now account for more than 10 percent of all revenues in the disc trade, with at least 4,000 titles currently available.

No one bothered to mention these numbers in TV-slump stories in Variety and Los Angeles Times. Wonder why?

Moonlighting, The Dick Cavett Show and The Muppet Show -- or, for those without cable, The Sopranos, Nip/Tuck, Deadwood and Entourage -- than the usual summer slop. Why stay home to catch up on series you missed last season, knowing that such water-cooler shows as Desperate Housewives, Lost and House, M.D. will be available in time for their second season to begin.

So much for a slump.

August 26 , 2005
- Gary Dretzka