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Thoughts on the Coming TV Season |
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Friday, 18 May 2007 |
By D. W. O’Dell
Anyone
who can predict which TV shows will be successful in any given season
stands to make a lot of money in Hollywood. Every year dozens of very
well paid TV executives roll the dice, and in a good year 3/4 of the new shows bite the dust. Ambitious, high profile shows flop (Studio 60) and run of the mill shows go on seemingly forever (According to Jim). Throw in the seismic shifts going on in the TV landscape, and picking winners is an even chancier endeavor.
To cite some recent examples, I thought Lost sounded like the worst idea for a TV show ever – Gilligan’s Island meets Survivor. 24
was almost as dopey: you mean this super-duper government agent is
going to drive from one end of LA to the other at rush hour in 15
minutes? Come on! And if anyone had told me that a show featuring out
of work actors and washed up athletes competing in a ballroom dancing
competition would be watched by, well, anyone, I would have called the
authorities and had him or her locked up.
The factors as to
what makes a hit show are changing. Scheduling used to be critical:
finding shows that were complementary, placing promising shows in
desirable time slots, building themes for certain nights. But with
video tape, TiVo and the like, network plans to force people to watch
certain shows at certain times have become undone. Lost may be watched by 14 million people, but if half those people are “TiVo-ing” it, the show following Lost
just lost 7 million potential viewers…and the advertisers lost 7
million potential customers. Heck, the invention of the remote control
enabled people to change channels easier, making it less likely that
people will watch a show merely because it follows a hit show.
Scheduling
is also complicated by the fact that, for some reason, networks assume
people don’t like reruns. Reruns used to be a fact of life because the
TV season was 36 weeks long and most shows produced 22 episodes. Of
course reruns always got lower ratings than first run shows, but on
programs as rich as Lost I welcomed a second chance to watch the old episodes while new ones were being filmed (hey, ABC, why did I buy Lost on DVD – to see the shows again!).
Also, reruns make shows cheaper to produce; financing an hour long
episode fills up not one hour of programming but three hours, if the
show is repeated twice.
But some people whined about the Lost
reruns, and so ABC and other networks with “serial” shows responded by
not showing reruns and putting shows on long ‘hiatuses,’ filling their
time slots with shows that were not deemed good enough to earn a
regular place on the schedule. The result was predictable: the filler
shows all failed (bye-bye, Daybreak), and the serial shows were weakened. Lost, Jericho and even Heroes all lost significant portions of their audiences once they returned from hiatus. 24 solved the problem early by switching to a January debut - but creating a gap in FOX’s Fall schedule - which Lost will adopt for its last three seasons. Jericho, which started out as one of the biggest hits of the Fall, had so much audience erosion that it is now toast. Next season Heroes will apparently fill in for itself during its break, producing stand alone episodes called Heroes: Origins.
Placement in a schedule can still affect a show’s success; House was limping along until it started following American Idol,
and now it’s a 20-million-viewers–a-week juggernaut. On the other hand,
weak shows are often used as cannon fodder opposite hit shows or on
nights with low viewership, dooming them from the start; alas, poor Raines - I really liked that show, but the Friday time slot killed it. Remember the hubbub last year when ABC moved Grey’s Anatomy to Thursday’s, declaring open war on CSI?
Scheduling matters, but no longer can a network pencil a show in as a
hit because it happens to follow a popular series with similar themes.
So,
which of the new series for the 2007-08 TV season look promising? Let’s
take the easier road first and pick out what’s doomed. Moonlight is a CBS
show about a vampire detective. Gee, there hasn’t been a show about a
vampire detective in what, two years? The show is not keyed in to CBS’
usual demographic (i.e. anyone over 70) and is on Friday nights, when
anyone who might watch a show about a vampire detective will not be at
home watching TV. Even if they capture 100% of all disaffected Angel fans, the show is still doomed.
I also predict an early death for another Friday night show, Women’s Murder Club
(ABC). Okay, it’s based on book by James Patterson, but the quality of
the novels will be completely lost if the screenplays aren’t as good,
and I can’t recall a successful adaptation of a novel into a TV series
since Spenser: For Hire. Four women friends fighting crime? With a title like Women’s Murder Club it might work if it was cute like Murder, She Wrote, but not when they’re all professionals (cops, DAs, forensics specialists).
CBS has a certain loser in Swingtown,
about the sexual revolution in the 1970’s. I guess CBS is hoping their
target audience (again, anyone over 70) will have nostalgic memories of
the sexual revolution in the 70’s. It will be a mid-season replacement
that I’m guessing will need a mid-season replacement after a couple of
episodes. Another dubious mid-season offering will be Eli Stone,
an ABC show about a lawyer who hallucinates and decides he’s a prophet.
Crazy lawyers seeking the meaning of life probably won’t appeal to a
wide demographic.
I also have doubts about NBC’s ‘re-imagining’ of the old Lindsey Wagner vehicle Bionic Woman. The last ‘re-imagined’ old series, The Night Stalker, sucked, and the Wednesday at 9 time slot is competitive with the inexplicably popular Criminal Minds on CBS, and Bones then American Idol, on FOX.
The possible winners? Maybe NBC can parlay Heroes’ success with a follow up show better than Studio 60; NBC has scheduled a time travel show called Journeyman into the post-Heroes
time slot. The premise is that a time-traveling reporter can go back in
time, helping people and striving to put right what once went wrong . .
.oops, sorry, I lapsed into a description of Quantum Leap there. The premise of a helpful time traveler was successful with Leap, although that was an admittedly quirky show, and a show about time travel might do better after Heroes than a show about whiny, overpaid entertainers whining about . . .I forget.
I’ll go out on a very wobbly limb and also predict success for Viva Laughlin, an Americanized version of the British show Viva Blackpool. On Sundays at 8 it is up against some venerable (meaning increasingly wheezing and stale) shows like The Simpsons (19 seasons), Law & Order(18 seasons), and Extreme Makeover (a mere five seasons). Yeah, the last musical TV show, Cop Rock,
was an unmitigated disaster, but supposedly the musical numbers are
lip-synced to old songs and not originals, and using the British
version as a blueprint might smooth over any rough patches.
I should predict one successful new comedy. I will pass on Caveman
(yes, the Geico commercials are cute; no, I don’t think they will be
cuter if they are 22 minutes longer) and take a shot that Kelsey
Grammer and Patricia Heaton’s star power will make Back To You a success. I mean, if drek like Til Death
can survive on FOX, how can these two immensely talented actors fail?
Of course equally talented actors have failed in sitcoms - remember Ted
Danson in Ink, or Help Me Help You? And it is being yoked to the desperately unfunny Til Death following it. But the Wednesday at 8 time slot looks soft with new series opposite it on ABC and CBS, and having Bones and American Idol in the 9 o’clock slot might help. James Burrows is also attached to the project; enough said.
The show with the biggest pre-season buzz is Pushing Daisies, a show about a man who can raise the dead. But buzz-worthy shows have sunk like rocks (Studio 60)
before, and until I see how they handle the premise, I’ll remain
skeptical. I can’t wait to hear the reaction of Christian groups to a
show about someone raising the dead.
Will I do better at
picking hits and flops than network executives? We’ll know come next
May, or probably by next October in most cases. If I am right, any of
the networks can hire me as a consultant for next season. All I’ll need
is a huge wad of cash, and, if ABC, dinner with Ugly Betty producer Salma Hayek. |
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