The Networks

Have you ever been watching TV and said to yourself; "Hey I can come up with better shows than this crap."  Well The Networks is a game by Gil Hova and published by Formal Ferret Games.

In The Networks you take on the role of the General Manager of a small Public Access television station and over the course of 5 years (game rounds) turn your station into a ratings giant.  You do this by developing the new shows with a variety of celebrities to star in them and attract the most lucrative advertisement deals for these shows.

Gameplay
Each player starts with a Network card.  This card has space for three time slots as well as a green room, a space for reruns, and an archive.  You will also start with three basic TV show cards, one Celebrity card, and one Advertisement card.  Each player's Network and starting cards have different names but are functionally the same.  You will place one of your shows in each time slot and put your star and advertisement in your green room. You will then place a black cube in the season one spot on each show. Every show has five season spots.  You will also get a small amount of money to start. the amount depends on your place in the turn order. You are now ready to begin.

On your turn you will take one of several actions.
1) Develop a Show - to do this you will take one of the available show cards from the center of the table paying it's development cost shown on the upper left side.  You will place it in one of your time slots. Every show has a Genre and a preferred time slot. You want to try and put shows in the right time slot and get multiple shows of the same genre.  Some shows will have symbols for stars and advertisements. If those stars are in color you must attach the appropriate cards to them immediately. If they are grayed out then you can attach them later. Any show previously in the time slot is turned upside down and placed in your reruns area.
2) Land an Ad - To do this you will collect one of the available advertisements and the collect the Landing  Revenue shown on the left side. You will then put the ad in your green room.
3) Take a Network Card - Take one of the available Network Cards. These cards have various affects and are used in several ways. Some are play immediately, some have continuing effects, others are for use in final scoring, and some are use once at the time of your choosing.
4) Sign a Star - Collect on one of the available Star cards. You must pay their signing cost at the upper left of the card and then put them in your green room.
5) Attach a Star or Ad - Take a star or ad card from your green room and attach them to an active show (Not a rerun) that has an open slot for it.
6) Drop and Budget - You move your turn order token to the first available Drop and Budget spot. You then collect money or viewers based on the spot you move into. This will also set the turn order for the next year. Once you Drop and Budget you are done taking actions for the year.

Player continue taking actions until everyone has chosen to Drop and Budget. The game then moves into the end of year phase.  In this phase first everyone will determine how much money their shows made or cost them. Then they will determine how many viewers their network generated for the year based on the season each show is in, the stars attached to them and extra viewers from reruns. Next all of their shows will age by moving the cubes on them to the next season slot. All reruns will move to the archives. Now you set the center of the table with new Show, Star, and Ad, and Network cards and start the next year.  If this was year five then the game ends with a final scoring round and whomever has the most viewers of the the five years wins the game.

There is an additional rule called The Genre Bonus.  This happens whenever you develop your third or fifth show of one genre. At three shows you get five additional viewers and the choice of drawing three stars and keeping one for free or drawing three ads and keeping one for free and collecting the landing revenue for the other two.  At five shows you again get five viewers and either of the two previous choices or a new choice of drawing three Network cards and keeping one of them.  Also at five shows you may buy viewers at the cost of $4M for 3 viewers.  You can do this as many times as you can afford.

Component Quality
I found all of the pieces of this game to be of fairly high quality and worth the $50 retail cost of the game.  The cards are of good stock, the card board pieces are thick and punched well so they will not fray. The cubes and scoring tokens are all wooden.

Final Thoughts
I really love this game. I am an admitted TV addict so playing Network executive appeals to me. A lot of the fun of this game comes from the humor of the cards. The shows are all parodies of real shows with names like NCISICBNGOMG: Scranton and Dr. What. The Stars are not parodies of specific people but stereotypes you may see on TV such as The Late Night Host and the Reality Star. The Ads are all funny things you may see on late night TV.  I would be happy to play this again any time. My only complaint is I would like there to be more shows so I do not see the same ones all the time, but there is an expansion in the works to fix that.