Gol Tv Schedule

Viewers judge Court TV's success

By LYNNE TUOHY

Hartford Courant

Thursday, August 2, 2001

New York -- Court TV began broadcasting 10 years ago with the notion that courtroom dramas would make good television.

Real courtrooms. Real trials. Gavel-to-gavel coverage. And replays of the day's courtroom highlights throughout the night. Court 24/7.

More than a few lawyers thought the new network's founders -- among them law-media mogul Steve Brill -- needed a competency exam. Mickey Sherman, a lawyer in Stamford, Conn., who brainstormed with Court TV producers before the first broadcast and whose defense of a Vietnam veteran based on post-traumatic stress disorder was one of the network's pilot programs, was among the skeptics.

"I left thinking, `No one's going to watch this stuff,' " Sherman said. "To me, it was too much like going to work. I couldn't believe the public would just want to sit in the courtroom and watch cases."

But Court TV debuted July 1, 1991, with several trials in progress. Robert Scott Hill was being tried in Florida, charged with killing his mother-in-law 25 years earlier, a case in which Hill's son, now a detective, was the star witness against him.

Teacher Pamela Smart was on trial in New Hampshire for persuading her 17-year-old student/lover to murder her husband.

Hill was acquitted, Smart was convicted, and a growing audience of courtroom junkies was riveted. Within months they watched the William Kennedy Smith rape trial. Smith's acquittal barely had been logged when the network began broadcasting the sanity hearings of confessed serial murderer and cannibal Jeffrey Dahmer.

Syndicated columnist Joe Bob Briggs honed in on the network within weeks.

"They show the same gol' dang trials over and over again, all day long, like MTV for lawyers," Briggs wrote, proceeding to highlight the Christian Brando sentencing and the trials of Hill and Smart. "This stuff is great. I can't believe these trials won't bump soap operas off the air inside of three years. And if you think these trials are bloody, wait till they start doing divorce trials."

Luring prime-time viewers

Court TV had to evolve to survive. Viewers were drawn to the drama of cases being televised live, but they switched to other channels at night for entertainment and sports programming. Taped trials, rebroadcast at night, had little allure.

So in 1999, Court TV revamped its prime-time schedule, replacing trials with crime and police dramas.

The network's new slogan is "Judgment days. Sleepless nights." Its logo is a red fingerprint. And its success is remarkable.

In June, Nielsen rated Court TV the fastest-growing cable network in the country, with subscribers up 40% over the previous year. The number hovers near 65 million. On July 8, Court TV achieved its best evening rating when 742,000 households watched its Sunday prime-time shows.

Those aren't Super Bowl numbers, but demographics are everything, and Court TV boasts the sixth-highest concentration of viewers ages 25 to 54 of the 40 cable networks monitored by Nielsen. Advertising revenue last year rose to $50 million.

The network's Web site has established itself as a legal research portal, with links to crimelibrary.com and thesmokinggun.com -- sites it acquired in January."We have taken the foundation of trials and expert commentary and analysis, and overlaid an element of entertainment, especially in prime time," Henry S. Schleiff, chief executive officer of Court TV, said in an interview last month.

"What we have to do is make sure we continue to walk the tightrope and make it clear when we do things for information and when we do things for entertainment."

Adapting to change

Court TV navigates between information and offense. In 1999 the network broadcast "Confessions" -- videotaped interrogations of murderers and rapists in police custody. Crime victims and the families of murder victims strenuously objected, and the network pulled the series after two segments.

"We dealt with that quickly and in a fairly classy way," Schleiff said.

Victims groups also oppose Court TV's marketing, at its online store, of a beach towel bearing its logo and the crime-scene trademark chalk outline of a corpse advertising its reruns of "Homicide: Life on the Streets." Court TV didn't throw in the towel; it's still on the market for $24.95.

Emmy-award winning TV reporter Fred Graham, who has been managing editor and chief anchor at Court TV since before its first broadcast, said he's satisfied with the mix of live trials and entertainment since the network's re-launch in January 1999.

"You have to survive," Graham said. "If you recall, about four or five years ago, Court TV was about to go under and be sold to the Discovery Channel. Now we're a bifurcated channel, and I'm very comfortable with that."

Brill was bought out by the network in 1997 for an undisclosed amount that, he said recently, brought him "the financial independence anyone prizes." The buyout came at point when the network was stagnant and, Brill said, at a crossroads. Controlling partners Time Warner Entertainment, Liberty Media and NBC (the latter was bought out a year later) were heading toward an entertainment network. Brill wanted to broaden Court TV to local cable stations that would broadcast local trials.

"When I thought of (creating) Court TV, I had been in lots of courtrooms and had always been struck by the gap in what the public thought the process was all about, and what those of us who watched it up-close knew it was all about," he said. "People thought trials were like Clint Eastwood or Perry Mason movies."

Court TV CEO Schleiff has his sights set on gaining access to federal courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court, which currently ban cameras.

"I think the opportunity we have with federal trials is huge," he said.

Copyright 2001 Journal Sentinel Inc. Note: This notice does not apply to those news items already copyrighted and received through wire services or other media
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