It's been a very busy day in TV Land.
Yesterday, we learned that Herb Scannell, the force behind Viacom's (NYSE:VIA) dominance of children's television, has departed the network in the wake of its split with CBS (NYSE:CBS). No solid reason has been given for his departure, but the fact that he cited a desire to "move to the next leadership position," yet left without actually having somewhere to go, suggests that perhaps his was not an entirely voluntary exit.
Voluntary or not, the loss of Scannell will certainly be felt both back home at Nickelodeon and in my own home, as well. Mr. Scannell's genius for snagging television programs that are intensely "sticky" with the preschool set is one of two reasons why my DVR is currently loaded with twice as many episodes of his network's Blue's Clues and Dora the Explorer than of, for example, ABC's Lost. (The other reason being my two-year-old in residence.)
Next up
But as important as the Scannell story may be for Viacom's future dominance of Kid TV, and for the future success of whichever network lands him next, it pales in importance to yesterday's other big story: Ted Koppel has moved to Motley Fool Inside Value pick Discovery Holding (NASDAQ:DISCA). In the twelfth hour of negotiations to move to Motley Fool Stock Advisor pick Time Warner's (NYSE:TWX) HBO, Koppel was snatched away by Discovery.
As night owls know, Koppel formerly roosted at Disney's (NYSE:DIS) ABC, but was not at all happy there, having been notably dissed by the network when it tried to replace his show by poaching David Letterman from CBS a few years back. The attempt failed miserably, but Koppel was not amused. So it's safe to say that his departure has been planned for quite some time.
And it makes for an interesting condemnation of the status quo that, when preparing to leave, Koppel didn't even consider the notion of hopping to another broadcast network news show, or to any of the cable networks, either. Rather, he dismissed the lot of them, indicting their way of covering the news as a "desperate race to be first with the obvious." Ouch.
The question now will be: How many of the loyal Koppel-ites will follow their leader to Discovery, and how many stick with ABC and its watered-down version of Nightline without him? If a significant portion of Nightline's old 3.5 million-viewer audience switches to watching Discovery, it could double or triple the average viewership garnered by that network's prime time shows. We might be about to see a reprise of the Stern-goes-to-Sirius (NASDAQ:SIRI) customer exodus.
Discovery is a recommendation of Motley Fool Inside Value , and Time Warner is a Stock Advisor pick. For a 30-day free trial, click here and here, respectively.
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Fool contributor Rich Smith has no position in any of the companies mentioned in this article.
