which caused additional stress among the staff. The news and sports divisions were two areas that were consistently singled out for criticism in the press and among industry analysts, and potentially strong revenue was lost when the National Football League opted to sign with the rival Fox network for broadcasting rights.
Television broadcasting is a highly competitive market that caters to a highly fickle public. The typical retailer purchases an item from a wholesaler or manufacturer and markets it to an end user. Television operates in a wholly different type of environment. Networks broadcast shows to end users, but the revenue comes not from the viewer, but from advertisers. The more viewers who watch a show, the higher the advertising revenue. Viewers have little brand loyalty in regard to networks, but they can be very loyal to their favorite shows. Advertisers similarly are not loyal to a network per se, but are interested in maintaining relationships with networks whose shows draw the appropriate demographics and numbers for the advertiser's products.
It is a complicated relationship made the more difficult because there are not only the three networks who put programming on the air, but also cable channels which are nationwide, and a variety of local stations competing with syndicated shows. Warner Brothers and Paramount have both begun to mount assaults on the four national networks with their own entries into prime time "network" capabilities. Most often, these shows are on a fifth channel in the local market.
The network must also compete with an increasing number of cable channels, several of which are owned by the same company. Turner Broadcasting, for example, owns the highly successful and influential CNN, CNN Headline News, TNT and Turner cable channels, and competes on an international basis in this area. In addition to cable competition, NBC must also compete with video sales and rentals, which...