DEL.ICIO.USPeachtree TV brings Atlantans’ ideas to your screen
Turner Broadcasting’s local arm is incubator for new shows while filling area’s program niche
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Sunday, January 04, 2009
For Jonathan Katz, the tall antenna tower across the highway from his cluttered Turner Broadcasting System office on Techwood Drive is a nice reminder of where it all began.
Thirty years ago the tower aired programming for WTCG, short for Turner Communications Group, which eventually became WTBS.
Edward M. Pio Roda / TBS
Jonathan Katz, Peachtree TV’s general manager: ‘The idea was to create a new, local TV station that provided entertainment for Atlanta consumers and Atlanta movie lovers.’
Peachtree TV
Peachtree TV’s original shows include ‘JJ on Atlanta,’ with community affairs director Jeff Johnson.
For more than a year, however, the tower has broadcast a new TV brand for Turner: Peachtree TV. Anchored by a mix of original shows, reruns of hit sitcoms from other networks, Braves baseball and a nightly movie, Peachtree TV has created a new brand for Turner as an over-the-air station not affiliated with any of the major networks.
“The idea was to create a new, local TV station that provided entertainment for Atlanta consumers and Atlanta movie lovers,” said Katz, the network’s general manager.
Local cable TV subscribers can get both the Peachtree TV and national TBS channels.
Peachtree TV can tout its advantages as a non-network station — lower costs, more flexibility — to reel in advertisers, said Katz, who also oversees program planning and acquisitions for Turner Entertainment Group. But the network also has access to Turner Broadcasting’s assets, including a huge movie vault.
Both attributes have helped make Peachtree TV an incubator for Atlanta’s musicians, actors, producers and others to develop ideas into an original program, movie or series, Katz said. If the show is a success, Katz then tries to “repurpose,” or market, the show to cable networks.
“The driver is not that we want to shop the product. The goal is that we want to serve an underserved market,” he said.
Katz, a veteran of local TV stations as well as Turner’s cable networks, said Peachtree TV can use Atlanta’s talent pool and the city’s demographics to create original programming that people watch. Atlanta is second only to New York in the number of African-American viewers. It’s a market that Katz said is “tremendously underserved.”
Those reasons, along with access to Turner’s studios and other resources, has allowed Peachtree TV to create original series such as “Drumroll SWD,” an offshoot of hip-hop mogul Dallas Austin’s 2002 movie “Drumline,” and Jermaine Dupri’s “Brutha,” a show about five singing brothers from California who come to Atlanta in search of a record deal.
Peachtree TV marketed “Brutha” to national cable networks last year. BET bought the show and renamed it “Brothers to Brutha.”
Katz said to expect more of that.
“This is the new local programming strategy,” he said.
The network is developing a full slate of original shows for 2009, including “Welcome to Dreamland,” a reality show that pits two big-time producers against each other to see which one can find, mold and market the next big music star. The original shows will air mostly on Monday nights, Katz said.
Then, it’s about Braves baseball and movies. Peachtree has 45 Braves games on tap for the 2009 season. The concept of airing a movie every night came from basic research that said Atlanta is full of people who like to watch movies — more so than in other cities.
“We’ve made a promise to our audience that we’ll get them a great movie every night,” Katz said.
Beyond that, the network will freshen its lineup of other shows as well, adding “The Office,” “My Name is Earl” and “Law and Order: SVU.” Katz said the goal is to make Peachtree TV as diverse as possible.
“We want to be a broadcaster, so programming would be equally welcomed,” he said. “We wanted to create an environment that is advertiser friendly.”
Services »
