Why TMZ Will Fail In Syndication

My Sad Prediction Of The Week...
In the spirit of full disclosure, I must say that I am an avid fan (and occasional contributor) to TMZ.com. Love the site, love the factualness of its content and love the guerrilla-warfare style of it all. It takes no prisoners and makes no apologies.
BUT... that will not translate to syndicated television, never has and never will.

Case-in-point; Dr Laura. She has a very successful talk radio show that has blazed a cutting edge through radio for many years. But when TV syndicators tried to capture that style, atmosphere and "rebel" style on the TV screen, it bombed. There are some properties which can only survive in certain mediums.

Let me say that again for all of the people in the syndication business who still dont get it (following this wisdom will save your job someday soon) Not ALL concepts translate successfully to all mediums!!

Dr. Laura only works in talk radio and to a lesser extent, books. Same goes for Rush Limbaugh, Howard Stern and Man Cow. Websites have tried and failed as well. Classmates.com tried to transfer from the web medium to the TV screen- NOPE. EBay tried it, NOPE. Many other major web brands have talked about it, but after much research, opted to stay with what works.

TMZ- The I.E.D. Of TV
Ken Werner, president of Warner Bros. Domestic TV Distribution, is going to have a lot of upset people and millions in make-goods to hand out as this attempt to translate a website into a TV show is going to explode like an IED. I am not suggesting that there will never be a website that can make the successful transition from web to TV, but TMZ is NOT the one. There is already too much celeb tabloid TV in the marketplace, there are already brands that have earned the lions share of the market-share and viewers are not unhappy with the current offerings. That is a recipe for massive failure for TMZ TV.

Harvey Levin should have Asked Me First
Telepictures, ParaMedia, Harvey Levin and Jim Paratore- you ALL should have said, "before we make this decision, lets ask Tara Hawkins what she would do- the answer would have been this;
Gentlemen, what happened to the foreplay? (Typical men- always trying to rush a good thing) Before you are so bold as to think TMZ web viewers will follow you offline to the old school world of broadcast TV, you should have first asked them, "will you even follow us in a TV format 5 days a week?" How do you ask that? By streaming a TMZ TV-styled show ONLINE. You already have them at your website in droves. Start the tv concept with a little foreplay! Let TMZ fans watch streaming show-length video for a few months and see how that goes over. IF (and I do mean IF) your site visitors love that format of TMZ, (more on why I predict they wont in a second) then and only then do you suggest to the TV world that you think TMZ can support a syndicated show! Not a second before! Foreplay boys, foreplay!

TMZ fans are accustom to getting TMZ in bite-size portions, ala carte, if you will. Having it served up in a four course style is NOT what sophisticated web surfers want, need or have time for. This was a huge error in judgement which likely had all of the wrong study groups, if it was studied at all. I suspect it was just a desperate attempt by Levin and Paratore to get something big on TV. (Or worse, just the continued milking of the TMZ brand, thereby diluting it to the point of "no longer cool".

The Death Of TMZ.com
The almost immediate failure of the TMZ TV show will also be the death of what was a very cool website- TMZ.com fans will turn their backs almost immediately when the show launches and will find a new, fresher website to get their celeb dish from, in the format they preferred- un polished, unedited and un-apologetic. The corporate white-wash which is being done to TMZ is brand suicide. (You should have asked me first!)

Syndication is NOT a bad idea
Syndication is getting such a bad rap in TV world, but it shouldn't! Syndication is NOT a high risk gamble, despite what it looks like on today's landscape. It has been made to appear that way because of idiot execs who are NOT making decisions based on what middle America wants- they are attempting to force-feed programs to middle America, thinking that viewers are dumb and, like sheep, will follow the herd. If you are in the syndication business and have any execs who think this way, stop reading this blog- call all of those execs into the room, read this blog to them out loud, then announce confidently, "You are all fired." (Do it now.)

Syndication is a proven system for rolling out good ideas to good people. Period. It starts with a good idea. Who defines what a good idea is? The Viewers you idiot! Not you- not Los Angeles based focus groups, not web stats from Internet traffic patterns (Duh, TMZ!) The Viewers!
The viewers never wanted Keith Ablow, Greg Behrendt, or Megan Mullally- but some arrogant exec tried to force feed it to the American public. What happened? It was spit right back in their faces! Execs of the syndie world- wise up! Its not that difficult to spot a successful syndie show idea and SO EASY to see the bad ones.

Not that anybody is asking, but I am aware of three home run shows (I have NOTHING to do with them on any level) for future syndication that nobody in syndication is even aware of because they are looking in all of the wrong places! (If anyone ever asks, I'll gladly point them in the right direction. But I don't hold my breathe waiting for wisdom to suddenly arrive here in Los Angeles.)

GOODBYE & CONGRATULATIONS
To TMZ.com, I bid a sad farewell. I loved your site and am sorry to see its demise on the horizon. To the up and coming celebrity gossip entrepreneurs I say, CONGRATULATIONS! Opportunity is knocking. Fans of TMZ.com will begin abandoning ship in the millions and their search for a new, fresh celeb dish site may lead them to you- roll out the crazy new ideas as your turn is next- don't screw it up!