Review: TV Station Manager
April 14th, 2007
In this tycoon game, you’ll take the role of a new manager, which is appointed by an almost bankrupt TV Station. Your goal is to fix the situation and maybe even raise the TV Channel popularity with some wise decisions!
The game has lot of options and screen but is based on a really simple mechanism: every day you must decide your TV schedule. That is, which shows and ads you’ll be airing. You’ll earn money based on the ads, and you’ll be able to buy new show (replacing old ones if you want) and get new advertising deals. Once you have a lot of money, if you play the fullversion of the game you can also use your own Production Studio to make your own shows.
It is a very original game, never seen before in the Mac market. On pc there are similar titles, but on Mac it’s the first attempt to catch the wonderful and mysterious world of movies and TV broadcasting.
When you start a new game, you’ll see a new screen in which you’ll have to select a few things:
Your start up schedule – this selection will change the default programs you’ll start with
Your gender – this choice will influence the gender of your TV Station boss.
Starting money – this will influence how much money you have at the start of the game
Studio quality – the starting Production Studio quality.
The initial startup schedule reflect only the starting programs but even if you choose a wrong one don’t worry, you can always change the shows later.
The day starts at 5:00 pm and ends at midnight. You don’t have to necessarily fill all the slots: by default the TV management will put some minor show/ads, you need to decide only the most important ones.
Each show has a particular target audience. Some are very clear (Kids Show or Animation for younger people for example) but other require a bit of thinking. Also, the hour of the day plays an important role. Airing a big Action Movie in the afternoon, when usually the adults are at work, will bring much less result than if it was shown in prime time (usually at 8-9 pm).
So each show (be it movie, series or daily) has a “potential audience”. If you’ll be able to obtain the max audience, or just a part of it, depends maily at which hour you decided to show it. Once you have an audience, you need to sell something to them. That’s where the commercials come into play. Placing them next to the proper show, matching all the requirements, will earn you money, so you’ll be able to buy better shows and repeat the cycle. Or to finance new productions with your own Production Studio.
I reccommend to use the tutorial which explains the basics of the game without being too boring. It takes just 10 minutes to read it all, and in practice it covers almost all aspects of the game. Plus Patty the assistant is hot! 
All in all it is an excellent game. Hard enough to keep the “tycoon expert” busy for a while, but at the same time easy to get into it, so even someone who never played such kind of games before can easily start his own career as… TV Station Manager!
