By Jamie Ruby

Today Fox Executives talked to the digital media about the upcoming programming schedule changes, including the new upcoming shows.

FOX Conference Call
2013 Upfront Programming Presentation with Network Executives:

Kevin Reilly, Chairman, Entertainment
Joe Earley, Chief Operating Officer
Toby Byrne, President, Sales
Shannon Ryan, Executive Vice President, Marketing & Communications
Dan Harrison, Executive Vice President, Strategic Program Planning

May 13, 2013
9:00 a.m. ET

KEVIN REILLY: Good morning, guys. I’m very excited to give our presentation this afternoon. I think we’ve got a lot of great things to talk about. There’s a lot to get through, I know many of you are on deadlines, so let’s get into it.

We had some challenges -- it was well documented -- particularly in the fall this season, but next season, we’ve got the Super Bowl and the NFC Championship Game in prime. And as we’ll confirm this afternoon, we’re making the biggest investment in entertainment programming that we’ve ever made in the history of FOX. That’s going to include a very strong depth of development for next season with five new live-action comedies and four new dramas, as well as our new event series franchise – in fact, today we’re going to confirm the first two that will be going into production for 2014.

The competitive landscape has changed dramatically. We’re all talking about that, and you’re writing about that. Because of the way people are watching TV these days -- on multiple platforms at a time -- FOX has continually experimented in many different novel scheduling techniques. This season, we take one step forward and really try to break out of the confines of the traditional broadcast season.

Our goal as a network is virtually year-round original programming, and we’re going to get pretty close to that this year with the way we’re scheduling the network. We’re going to be playing with order patterns. We’re not going to be confined to the traditional 22 episodes. There will certainly be 22 and 24 episode-ordered series, but like we did with The Following this year at 15, there will be shows that play at 13, 15, 17 -- there’s no magic number. Shows will premiere and stagger throughout the year. They may premiere into the late spring and arc into the summer, premiere in the summer and arc into the fall.

So let’s quickly go through the schedule. I think you already have it in front of you. On Mondays, we kick off with Bones into Sleepy Hollow, a wildly inventive show, from our friends [Alex] Kurtzman and [Roberto] Orci, and Len Wiseman, who directed this. It’s great.

The first little unconventional move here; once we get rolling in September and October, we will, in November -- after post-season baseball concludes -- move Bones over into Friday where I think it’s the perfect piece of the puzzle. It will over-perform on Friday and hopefully stay there for quite some time as part of an all- new scripted Friday for us later in the fall.

What will then roll in on Mondays is Almost Human. It is from J.J. Abrams’ company, but it’s really driven by our Fringe team -- Joel Wyman who ran a number of great seasons of Fringe for us, and all of their key players in production up in Vancouver. The show looks like a movie. What we’ll have on Monday [with Sleepy Hollow and Almost Human] is the partner dynamics that work really well in Bones coming alive in both of these shows with really big, different packages around them. So I think that’s an exciting Monday.

Over on Tuesday -- continuing our quality, appointment, smart comedy block -- we’re keeping Mindy and New Girl in their time periods, and we’ve got a couple of new series that I think can fit perfectly with those shows and broaden out our night. We hit a bulls-eye with a number of audiences on the night, and we want to broaden it out next year.

We open the night with a multi-camera series. This was Seth’s show, and Sulkin and Wild -- I think two of the sharpest writers in the marketplace today -- had worked with us on Family Guy for years. We have wanted to find that multi-camera comedy that is the next ’70s Show or Married with Children for us. We fully want to get back in that business, and we’re hoping this is the foundation of that for us. Either way, it’s a great way to kick off the night.

Other networks have experimented over the last couple of years with multi-cam, and there’s more this year. And there’s been a lot of experimentation with comedy overall. But frankly, we’re bringing back three of the four [we put on this year]. The other guys canceled almost all of theirs. So, I like what’s happening with this one.

It’s paired with Brooklyn Nine-Nine. This project was on rails from minute one, not only because of the auspices with [Michael] Schur and [Dan] Goor -- who are as good as it gets – but also Andy Samberg’s signing on, and then Andre Braugher. We could have quit right there, but you’ll see this has an unbelievable ensemble and feels like a classic office comedy. It kind of reminds me when I saw The Office pilot, frankly. I think that’s going to be the perfect fit leading into New Girl, which I think will benefit both New Girl and Mindy this year. Many of you noted how Mindy really found itself creatively in the second half of the season, in particular.

Then on the bench, we’ve got two terrific comedies, Us & Them and Surviving Jack. Either one of these could have been on the fall schedule, and they will be rolling out as we stagger our launches. Raising Hope and Enlisted will be part of that scripted Friday when Bones gets in there in November.

Wednesday and Thursdays, [we’ve] got The X Factor in the fall and it’s going to be a very important part of this schedule. It did a 3.6 rating last year, it was a Top 15 show, so I’m looking for that again to help hold [the week] together and perform.

I’ll say right now that I don’t have any new judges to talk about. So you can ask that question, but we won’t be able to confirm it. But, we will [have news] shortly, given that we’re going to be on the road in a couple of weeks to start the next season.

Fridays, we’ve got a new little twist on our MasterChef franchise. MasterChef was one of the growth stories this year. It’s a really good show. It’s performing all over the world. So now we’ve got Junior MasterChef, which is very fun. They’ve done it in a number of other territories. It’s always popped. It’s really a great twist and we’ll air that through the early fall until we get to that scripted Friday in November.

Saturdays, we’ve got our high-octane sports package, anchored by college football in the fall. And Saturday late-night, this July, we premiere our Animation Domination High-Def—“ADHD” is what we call it for short -- at 11:00 p.m. That’s a new business, a new digital studio that’s putting out some very, very cool stuff online, if you’ve seen it. And Sundays continue with our animated powerhouse lineup.

The rest of the year: In January, for 15 in a row, The Following will be back. This was a great story for us. It is officially the No. 1 new show of the season. That was a great accomplishment – we’re really proud of the show.

The Super Bowl is going to platform comedy for us this year. It’s going to boost New Girl and one of the players to be named later from this really good crop of five new comedies. We’re going to use the NFC Championship Game, which is about the biggest platform you can get behind the Super Bowl, to catapult Rake before it moves over to Thursdays.

Historically, on Glee, we’ve split up the order and launched it twice in a season. So, what we’re going to do is come out with a fall season of Glee, put it on hiatus for a little bit, give Rake a run and then Glee will be back in the spring. We’re going to re-launch it with a creative twist in terms of where we’re going, with the creative evolving, and then that’ll play right into the summer as it’s done once before.

It’ll be part of our slate of robust scripted programming, which will include our new drama, Gang Related. It will premiere in early May and also go into the summer, paired with one of our new event series. We’re confirming two today: The poorly-kept secret of 24, which we are very excited about. I was hoping to make that a little surprise today, but some of you are too good at your jobs. I’ll talk more about that if you want to hear about it. I couldn’t be more excited about it; 24 compressed over 12 weeks. Jack is back.

And then, one of our first originals, with M. Night Shyamalan in his first time to television. Based on the Amazon best-seller called “Pines,” our series is called Wayward Pines. Matt Dillon just signed on to be the lead in that. Those are two really cool [events], that signal the scope and quality of what we’re doing in event series and are also part of our summer strategy.

So, why don’t I shut up now and you can fire away.

QUESTION: Back in midseason, you said you had some regrets about how you launched the Tuesday comedy block and maybe would have put more resources into promoting New Girl. This year, you’re coming back again, four sitcoms, including two new ones. How are you going to approach it differently this year than last?

KEVIN REILLY: Well, I think, first of all, we probably underestimated some of the pressure we were going to have early on. We didn’t know at the time we were going to have eight other new comedies stacked against us. The Voice came out. And frankly, we needed to promote New Girl in and of itself a little bit more.

This year, we have incumbents. Mindy is a returning show with an established audience. New Girl weathered the storm. We were the last man standing after all of that played out [on Tuesdays]. I think we have the pieces of the puzzle right now with Seth Green and Giovanni Ribisi and Andre Braugher and Andy Samberg and the writers who are behind those shows.

Last year, I loved Ben and Kate. It was more fragile. I’ll speak for myself, I think my love for it maybe wasn’t as objective about our ability to launch it. I think [Dads and Brooklyn Nine-Nine], frankly, are going to be a little easier to launch – or at least gives us a little bit more of a handle to launch.

QUESTION: And just quickly, related to that, can you talk about the decision to give New Girl the post-Super Bowl slot?

KEVIN REILLY: Yes. I think that show still has a lot of growth ahead of it. Comedy can go on for a long time. You’d love the show, if you saw—particularly the second half of this season – it was really on fire. We’ll program our night, give New Girl a boost and then give one of our new shows additional sampling or a shot in the arm.

QUESTION: Kevin, I know you said that you’re not going to say anything new about American Idol judges, but is it confirmed that the four current judges will not be coming back? And to what extent do you think the judging panel had anything to do with the ratings this year?

KEVIN REILLY: No, we’ve confirmed that one judge is not coming back, obviously, in Randy, which we—it was not a complete shock. We’ve talked to Randy about things. It feels like it was time to move. We didn’t know the exact timing of it, but he’s been a great partner for 12 years. There’s not an ounce of ill will there either way.

[Re: the declines], I really can’t comment on that. I think there’s a confluence of things that maybe led to the ratings. I think even more so than any other one factor is both the age of the show and maybe the format this year. We expanded some of the middle rounds. We did a boy/girl thing that went over three weeks. That is really where the ratings took their biggest hit.

So really, if I were to point to any one thing, it might have been that format. The only thing I will confirm is next year, without getting in any specifics—our next season begins on Friday morning after our finale. That’s when we’re really going to go to work in earnest, because I think the format more than anything will have a few fresh twists next year that we’ve already identified, that I think will really be a nice little jolt for next season.

QUESTION: Does that mean the other three judges would be welcomed back, or is that still an open decision?

KEVIN REILLY: Welcomed back, absolutely, but everything at this point is on the table, and we’ll talk about it starting Friday.

QUESTION: Hello; a question for Kevin, and Toby as well if you’re on the line. Kevin, you opened your remarks talking about the landscape and how much it’s changed in the way people are watching, of course. That’s one of the big challenges. You’ve got to also go out this week, as all the networks do, and persuade the advertisers in light of ratings declines and more fragmentation, that network TV is still the biggest piece of pie to go after. How much more of a challenge is that now versus, say, five years ago?

KEVIN REILLY: Do you want to take that one?

TOBY BYRNE: Sure. It’s a challenge, but it’s also an opportunity. As the media landscape fragments, I think the value of the broadcast network and our content actually increases. We’re able to capture and provide value to our advertisers across every platform where our content is available.

We’re going to be increasing those platforms, increasing availability of our content, as we move through the coming months - broader distribution deals. We’ll have a FOX NOW app, which will have our entertainment content. We have our online video through Fox.com, as well as Hulu, as well as VOD being a growing platform.

So, we have all these platforms. It’s really compelling for the audience to have that choice. And we’re able to deliver our ad messaging there as well. Particularly on VOD, we’re going to take a big step forward with dynamic ad insertion, which is a technology that will allow us to keep the ads relevant and current in that platform. We’re going to be testing it this summer and then rolling out in a broader way at some point this year, probably in January.

QUESTION: Kevin, if you don’t mind following up or—

KEVIN REILLY: Yes, I do want to follow it up, because I think this is one of the most important things to talk about, to keep things in perspective. I’ve got three points to talk about there. I know it sounds like I’ve got talking points, but these things are actually on the top of my mind.

The first thing is to keep in perspective is that there’s always a tendency to be thinking about Live Same-Day ratings. That is not the universe. We look at all platforms equally, as Toby just mentioned.

We’ve got The Following rolling up to almost 17 million viewers on average over the course of the season. Shows like New Girl, Family Guy, The Following, shifting over 50% quite often. An episode of The Following this year shifted more than 80%. So, that is where television is being watched. That’s not a bad thing for us. We want to capture [viewers] wherever they are. That is the picture we all have to look at.

In regards to the competition out there, we take it very, very seriously. It is a complex universe. The quality of original production going on in basic cable is really noteworthy and is something we’re competing with. But, you also really have to keep that in perspective too.

The vast majority of basic cable audience flow comes from off-network acquisitions; those are our series, or feature films. The small percentage of originals that they do, as qualitative as they may be, when looking in context compared to the broadcast networks…we live by a different standard. We cancel shows that most cable networks would declare a success and live with. That’s the standard we live by. So, when we’re talking about network television having a lot of failure, well, we have the bar set very high.

So, here’s a stat I’m going to point out today. Last season on basic cable, putting premium aside, there were 1,050 basic cable series on the air -- one thousand fifty. Of those, there are only four shows in the Top 50 on TV overall. If you look at The Following this season, there was one [that out-rated it] -- The Walking Dead was the top show of the season and it was amazing -- but The Following rated higher than 1,049 others.

So, a lot of basic cable gets rolled up into sort of one story, but we’ve got to separate it out.

QUESTION: Can you elaborate a little bit more on the 24 pickup, how that all came about? You mentioned it could be a compressed 12 episode cycles, so how that’s going to work in the real time format, and just how it all came about.

KEVIN REILLY: Well, they all were exhausted when they [ended the series], but they always had this idea of maybe someday doing a feature film. And as they got into the feature film, I think they all agreed 24 being compressed into two hours is not 24. And talking about it over the last couple of years, they kind of got their juices flowing again.

When we announced this new [event series] franchise, a little light bulb went off for Howard [Gordon] and said, “Wait a minute. Why are we killing ourselves trying to crack a feature when this is the [perfect] format?” Howard can maybe tell you himself, but as he would design the season, the spine of the 24 episodes was really about 12 hours. Those were where the big events occurred, and then there were little twists and connective tissue in between.

So he just said, “This is so liberating for us, to take what we would see as the best of the 12,” and what we’ll be able to do is go in chronological order of the day, but we’ll skip hours. You may go 7:00 a.m., 8:00 a.m., 10:00 a.m., 11:00, 12:00, 3:00. So it’ll be dictated by the plot. Howard’s really energized over it, and so are we.

It came together very quickly because [our event series] franchise is less than six months old. We’re getting a lot of top people— a “Who’s Who” of Hollywood – coming in the door right now, wanting to participate in this. I think one of the big differentiators of what we’re doing versus what some of the [other networks are doing] is…well, I think that the word “event series” is being slapped on some leftovers or something that they’re kind of rushing to fill on the air. We’re going to do these in a very significant way with big scope and top talent and top marketing budgets.

Most of these will be in production for well over 12 months. So these will be very significant programs. I think rebooting 24 and then kicking off with an M. Night Shyamalan original starring Matt Dillon is a great way to do it.

QUESTION: What’s the time table for 24? When do you think they might have—

KEVIN REILLY: It will likely premiere in early May and it will probably be paired up with one of our original dramas, and it’ll arc from May through the summer, where we will probably then premiere our second event series that will arc into the fall. That’s one of the ways we’re going to be able to link the seasons together and get out of this curtain call in May and begin to even break down this notion of a fall season.

QUESTION: Wait. So 24will air before the M. Night Shyamalan series, or vice versa?

KEVIN REILLY: It will air before…today, I think it will likely air before.

QUESTION: In May?

KEVIN REILLY: Yes, in May.

QUESTION: Toby, a little bit more color I’m hoping to get on the dynamic ad insertion. Will you be able to charge clients similar prices for it? Will we be having a little bit lesser stuff? Do you have any kind of sense of where that is heading? And also...for quite some time. I seem to remember John [Nesvig] before you came onboard was working on something similar.

TOBY BYRNE: With dynamic ad insertion—I think John was working on a lot of things, but I don’t remember him talking about that in any real detail.

QUESTION: But the theory has been around for a while. You finally can actually deploy it.

TOBY BYRNE: The technology to actually pull it off is coming together. In terms of its value, it’s a very valuable spot for advertisers. I think I neglected to mention before with all of our digital platforms, fast forwarding is disabled unlike with the DVR. So naturally, that’s a better value proposition for advertisers, and it has a certain innate engagement because -- and that is the point of television -- because you’re actually launching the episode to watch the episode.

KEVIN REILLY: That has not actually proven to be a barrier at all. In fact, our VOD is growing substantially.

TOBY BYRNE: Absolutely. So it’s got great value for advertisers. It’s going to be an extension of our fluidity model, where it’s one-stop shopping for our clients to buy our content across all of our platforms. There may be an opportunity to buy it digitally as well, depending on the circumstances.

So we’re taking an approach that’s pretty broad with it, but we think it has great value.

QUESTION: I wanted to ask a little bit more about [the] year ‘round idea as it pertains to Glee and Rake specifically. It seemed like this year in particular, Glee got bounced around a little bit not just by outside events like baseball and the election, but also X Factor and Idol doing a lot of oversized episodes on Thursdays. Are you going to keep those Thursday shows at one hour as much as you can to help Glee and Rake have more sustained runs when they’re on?

KEVIN REILLY: Yes, that’s an astute observation and I think that was just some of the particulars of this year that made it really hard when you factor in the election and everything. We will have some baseball preemption once again, but we’re going to get on a little early with it. X Factor and Glee will get out of the gate, what two weeks early, Dan? Yes, two weeks early.

So, we’ll get a run before we have a couple of baseball preemptions, but then we will be uninterrupted in the fall. When we come back, the goal is to be uninterrupted when Glee comes back in, playing straight through the summer because, listen, more than anything, in this day and age, having preemptions, having to go off the air for a batch of repeats, is probably the single biggest challenge—no, one of the top challenges we have because it’s too much bookkeeping for the audience. With a young audience like Glee, that has not been a good thing for the show.

So, that is part of our intention, to try to get it as original as possible.

QUESTION: You’ll try and keep The X Factor in particular. It seemed like it had a ton of—

KEVIN REILLY: Yes. We actually have that—nailed down…

QUESTION: ...two hour Thursday shows.

KEVIN REILLY: Yes. No, that’s going to be clean.

QUESTION: All right, thanks.

QUESTION: Good morning; a question regarding the investment in programming this season. You say it’s the largest investment that FOX has ever made. Can you just quantify in some way, what percentage increase over what you spent last year, and also, what percentage of new programming will we see on the schedule? Do you have a breakdown of how much will be new and how much will be repeat over the course of the season?

KEVIN REILLY: No. I don’t want to get into specifics at this point, but I think a substantial part of that is not only the depth of the bench, of the new shows we’re putting on, but adding in the event series.

The main goal really is to not have fallow times in the year and to change the mix of the summer, where we have dominated for eight summers or the better part of 10 years, really, with unscripted. We were the first network to ever program unscripted in that way. Certainly, Idol really lit it up. [So You Think You Can] Dance and MasterChef ...KITCHEN [NIGHTMARES] has performed.

So we’re going to continue with those shows that have done really well for us, but to change the complexion of it and really add a healthy dose of scripted shows for the summer. And again, to move the parameters of the season and not be bound—I’d like to strike the word “midseason” from our lexicon, frankly, because it makes it seem like there are only two places you can launch shows, like early September and January. That’s not the way we’re going to do it.

We really want to stagger it throughout the year, focus our resources and focus the audience and have a regular wave of exciting events unfolding over a 12-month cycle.

QUESTION: One other question regarding 24; can you refresh us again as to why it was canceled in the first place?

KEVIN REILLY: We all talked about going out strong. It was a miracle that that show was as vital and was and did as well as it did, given the complexity of the concept. There’s a point where—I think everybody was kind of drained creatively and it felt like it was time. We wanted to go out strong. it.

I can tell you, it’s weird. There is literally not a week since I’ve been in this job where someone doesn’t ask me about 24 and say, “Would you ever bring it back?” I mean the outpouring of love we’ve heard since we’ve [been discussing ] this has been unbelievable. I think that speaks to the fact that we didn’t keep this going past its time—limping for two or three more seasons.

It went out creatively vibrant. There was still a lot of love for it and now the fans get to do it in, I think, the perfect way to do it.

QUESTION: So, in success… this could be an annual event again?

KEVIN REILLY: It could. I really do not see this becoming a regular series, but annually, could it come back? Yes. I don’t know, it could be annual. These event series are going to be stand-alone events. The idea is also to give the audience something where they say, “That is an appointment show” and there’s going to be a beginning, middle and an end. I don’t have to be in five years. I don’t have to follow it season-to-season.

But some of these, and this will include 24, could end up franchises. There could be sequels. I don’t know that they would be yearly, but certainly reloading something that comes back 18-24 months later. People are even that much more excited to see it. That would be great.

QUESTION: Just to sneak in an Idol question, back to three judges?

KEVIN REILLY: Likely.

QUESTION: With the two-season pickup for Glee, are you kind of marching towards an end? Do you see those as the final two seasons?

KEVIN REILLY: Well, I don’t want to say “marching towards an end.” I would say we have two more seasons and that speaks to the confidence of the show and how important it is to us and our belief in Ryan. So, we’re going to take it two seasons at a time. But there will be progression in the story. I think that’ll be the fun thing for the fans. It’s not going to be a static two seasons. We’re going to continue with graduation.

I think one of the really good things about this year was—it was funny. I was with my nieces yesterday, three teenage girls, all of whom have been Glee fans all along. And they were talking about how much they really loved this season. And when the show was really at its height, there were crossover fans, but I think we got down to the core fans this season. The show’s been very steady all year and a really solid performer. The core fans were really, really happy with what went on there this year creatively.

So we want to lock those in and keep them engaged with new things. New York was a really great addition to the show this year. So there’s going to be graduations. There’s going to be taking New York to the next step on that adventure, and then some interesting little mini-arcs like we’ve done with some of our guest actors.

QUESTION: Anyone planned already?

KEVIN REILLY: No, we’re not going to announce anybody right now.