Media Rights Capitol, a content company backed by WPP, Goldman Sachs and AT&T has purchased the Sunday night slot from ailing CW network, which is jointly owned by CBS Corp. and Time Warner.
The Wall Street Journal says, it’s “unusual” to sell a stake in a block of prime-time programming to an outside entity.
Prime-time viewership on major English-language broadcast networks is down 9.6%, to an average of 8.3 million viewers this season, according to Nielsen Media Research. The CW is having a particularly hard time. The network’s season-to-date viewership is down 22%. It has attracted an average of only 1.1 million prime-time viewers on Sunday nights, according to Nielsen.
By buying into the broadcast-TV business, MRC is betting it can profit in a world where two-thirds of new shows don’t survive. MRC and the CW are planning to book two comedies and two dramas in the Sunday slot but declined to say what they would be. MRC says it plans to shift the CW’s target audience on that night from 18-to-34-year-olds to an 18-to-49 focus.
For more on MRC, see this New York Times article from over a year ago.
