SPOT: Scheduling Programs Optimally for Television
ABSTRACT
This paper introduces SPOT (Scheduling Programs Optimally for Television), an analytical model for optimal prime-time TV program scheduling. Due in part to the advent of new cable TV channels, the competition for viewer ratings has intensified substantially in recent years,and the revenues of the major networks have not kept pace with the costs of the programs. As profit margins decrease, the networks seek to improve their viewer ratings with innovative scheduling strategies. Our SPOT models for scheduling network programs combine predicted ratings for different combinations of prime-time schedules with a novel, mixed-integer, generalized network-based flow, mathematical programming model, which, when solved, provides an optimal schedule. In addition to historical performance, subjective inputs from actual network managers were used as input to the network flow optimization model. The optimization model is flexible.