MyNetworkTV will not hold an upfront presentation this year but will instead have sales teams visit the various media agencies to make sales pitches on a one-one-one basis that will stress the network’s new programming direction aimed at drawing a more diverse audience to the network each night.
Greg Meidel, MNTV president, said the network will no longer air any prime-time telenovelas once the two currently airing on Wednesday nights, American Heiress and Saints and Sinners, complete their current cycle at the beginning of the fourth quarter.
Plans to return telenovelas to Tuesday nights in June, following a month of program stunting during the May sweeps, have been scrapped. The network instead plans to begin airing two hours of reality programming on Tuesday nights, and Meidel said he is currently in discussions with producers Mark Burnett, John Langley and Bruce Nash.
Meidel said the decision to not bring the novelas back on Tuesday nights was made because its Monday International Fight League telecasts was not a compatible audience for driving viewers to the more female-skewing novelas the next night.
Bob Cesa, executive vp of advertising sales for Twentieth Television, which is also selling advertising for MNTV, said the overall move away from novelas, which began in March, and will ultimately see the genre eliminated from the network, was made because they just weren’t drawing a large enough audience.
“We were too narrowcast,” he said. “We knew from the start that airing novelas five nights a week was a risky strategy, and as time went on, we recognized that we had made a huge mistake in doing that.”
Beginning June 5, the MNTV schedule will be: IFL from 8-10 p.m. Mondays; two reality shows from 8-10 p.m. Tuesdays; novelas from 8-10 p.m. on Wednesdays, until the beginning of the fourth quarter, when another night of reality programming will be added; an action movie from 8-10 p.m. on Thursday; a classic movie from 8-10 on Friday; and a replay of the IFL on Saturday from 8-10 p.m.
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