SCHEDULING A TV MEMORIAM

When it was announced back in June that Kevin Levy would be leaving his longtime post as EVP of Scheduling, Planning, and Acquisitions at The CW network, it seemed to make for just the latest headline in the daily evolving television business. These things happen. People come and go. Change begets change. But it was the word Scheduling that made the headline stand out in bolder print. For some anyway. For TV longtimers of a certain stripe, say. Much like how it stood out in the handful of other recent headlines connected to the departures of other broadcast-TV execs leaving the same kind of role Levy held*.Because for TV longtimers of a certain stripe, it’s the word that intrigued them about it as tube-tuning kids, well before they even knew it was a thing. It’s the word that lured them to their media careers as adults, having come to know it was.Based on, or at least strongly suggested by, these headlines, it’s the word that’s slowly becoming irrelevant to the medium, having less and less meaning as television itself comes to mean more and more. Broadcast television revenues still pivot on the whens and wheres of a primetime grid, but in this our streaming world they’re connected to so much more now. As evidenced by Levy’s full former title, it’s about content strategy and acquisitions, too. In an era of digital windowing, Mondays at 9 is so last century. After all, who needs a meal to be scheduled when all the food is self-serve? As a new TV season unfolds (or at least as what passes for one in 2023), it all makes those of a certain stripe … reflect. On just another change begotten of change that to them feels like a tiny bit more.

Click