Due mostly to comments on this blog, I’ve thought a lot more than I otherwise would’ve about why some shows appeal to a broad audience and some shows don’t.
For purposes of this discussion, I am making no commentary regarding the quality of shows. Quality is a very subjective metric. There are many factors at play beyond quality anyway. There’s a show’s time slot, what it’s competition is, and yes, how much money the network spent promoting a show.
Networks are often derided for the same old same old. Whether it be crime procedurals or unscripted reality contests. But who can blame the networks for sticking with formulas that generally work? What some fans want to know it seems is “why” it works out the way it does.
At a general level, it’s pretty simple. The easier the buy-in, the better the chances of success. Here’s something we buy into easily: competition and contests. So whether it’s American Idol or Survivor, if you can make it entertaining and interesting a relatively large portion of the audience already buys into the premise. This buy-in is a very critical factor.
This is why many law, crime and medical procedurals succeed with broader audiences. The premises are bought into easily. Good guys, bad guys and cunning and cool forensic technology to solve a crime? People saving lives and falling for the people they work with? We buy into this easily, because it does happen (even if it probably happens with a much higher frequency on television than in real life).
A guy who can briefly bring someone back to life simply by touching them? But must touch them again quickly or *someone else* will die? Much, much harder to buy into. And it’s easy to understand why that’s harder to buy into: we aren’t aware of anyone who can do this in real life. Not one, single, solitary person. And so, under the *best* of circumstances (and I’m not suggesting in any way that the best of circumstances existed), a show like Pushing Daisies has an uphill climb. No matter how much *you* may enjoy the show, the multitudes will have difficulty buying into this premise.
A future where robots kill off humanity? That’s hard to buy into for a couple of reasons. One, it’s fantastical and even if you can suspend disbelief, for many people an apocalyptic future spelling doom for humanity is not their idea of entertainment. That’s pretty easy to understand. So under the best of circumstances the odds of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles (or , for that matter, Battlestar Galactica) resonating with a relatively large audience were not good.
What’s more surprising, are the exceptions that prove the rule. It’s not 100%. There are some pretty fantastical shows like Heroes, LOST and Fringe, and these shows perform relatively very well. Though Heroes is way down off of its freshman glow, it was still a top 10 show among 18-49 year olds the week before last and will certainly be in the top 20 for some time to come. Fringe isn’t generating huge viewer numbers, but among the 18-49 year old crowd that advertisers tend to focus on, Fringe has performed very well early on. Fringe takes an interesting approach, the premise (overall, and each week) is typically fantastical, but the main characters are archetypes we are familiar with and relative to the fantastical premise, the interpersonal relationships are fairly normal.
Heroes and Lost are fantastical in every way, but are serial shows rather than procedural. Their success may be hard to pinpoint and bottle up, but due to such success the networks will at least try (try, try again) to replicate their success. Fringe and Pushing Daisies are more procedural – they can (have, and will) have weekly installments that don’t focus much on the back story and can stand alone. My sense is Fringe, as a procedural, works better than Pushing Daisies because though the premise is generally something on the fringe (duh, the show is called Fringe!), the main characters themselves do not require as much buy-in as Pushing Daisies.
So what about a show like NBC’s Life? Life doesn’t really have a fantastical premise. It’s not quite a typical premise in that the central character was a cop, who spent a fair bit of time in jail for a crime he didn’t commit, winds up being exonerated, receives a huge ($50 million-ish) settlement from the city of Los Angeles and, rejoins the LA police force. You have to buy into the premise that a guy who has spent years in jail and is now free with $50 million plus in the bank, wants to go back to work as a cop. Okay, perhaps that is a fantastical premise.
Life in my purely subjective opinion has improved this year. I think the problem with Life is that it has been too much of a hybrid between a serial and a procedural. Last year the back story was long, intricate and often with a plodding pace. It seems this year they’ve tried to move to more of a procedural bias, and I think that’s smart. The problem is there is still a fair bit of focus on the back story and it would be hard, for example for people to tune into last Friday’s episode and understand the intricacies of the relationship between Crews and Jack Reese. Fortunately for me and the rest of the fans of the shows, the show has been snatched out of the Friday night ghetto. While it will have very stiff competition at 9pm Wednesdays beginning November 5, 2008, I like its prospects on Wednesday better than Friday.
What about Life on Mars? I think sadly, this was a show that needed to be on cable and was never going to appeal to a broad audience for two reasons:
- The buy-in isn’t easy. The central character just winds up in 1973. Buy in would be hard even with a time-travel device of some sort, but this requires a high suspension of disbelief
- Even if you can get over number one above (and I can) then what you’re looking at is a cop procedural set in 1973.
Since I like science fiction and also really like the premise of a cop procedural set in 1973, but seen from the eyes of 2008, I really hope Life on Mars can catch on with a wider audience. But I think the wider audience is going to basically say, “Hey, if I want to see crime drama from 1970s, I’ll just watch the Dirty Harry movies from the 1970s, and use my own 2008 eyes to observe the differences!”
It’s hard to find fault with such an approach.
I agree with many of the points. And i think myself as a perfect example. I never liked and i’ll probably never like shows with SF/fantasy elements . I can’t really explain why but that’s a fact. The only show with SF elements i’ve watched and enjoyed was X-Files, but other than that nothing. I suppose i’m in a majority, SF (or shows with SF elements) are rarely succesfull
While quality is definitely subjective one must also notice that Pushing Daisies is essentially pitched as a mystery procedural with a twist. If the show was more serious or aimed more for male viewers the show’s premise isn’t a bad one. The real problem with Pushing Daisies is it’s “too cute.” You also are asked to buy a premise where two people can’t touch but “fall in love.” That to me is much harder to believe than the ability to “re-animate,” the dead.
In fact the whole “Chuck,” character to me is the weakest link. One I don’t find her personality attractive at all (and I’m not alone on this with guys). Two I don’t find her physically all that attractive (but that could be from the horrible wardrobe choices). Three every person the Pie Maker touches comes to life as a re-animated corpse. They all look nasty, etc. “Chuck,” on the otherhand seems to be implied she is “alive again,” vs re-animated like every other corpse the Pie Maker touches. That’s just a major story design flaw.
So they’ve gone out of their way with that show to make it hard to connect with a large audience. In addition it’s harder to “grow,” a show like that, and all the show seems to be doing is crumbling. They’ve paid for 13 episodes, and the production continues on the show and likely will even if canceled for DVD purposes. So I say cancel it, and let the show’s writers write a series finale.
Nick, I agree with you on Chuck. While I love the show, mostly for the look (I’ve been threatened with bodily harm by certain people if I don’t shut up about the mis en scene), I find the not being able to touch thing something that it won’t be able to get passed and likely would’ve done better without it. And the end of this week’s episode was a complete WTF? with Chuck showing up naked in Ned’s apartment. Seemed almost just plain mean.
I like fantasy/sci-fi shows, if those shows (Pushing Daisies/Life on Mars) are a movie it will be a hit.
I think the audience watch shows that shows that people don’t have to watch all of the episodes just to catch up and has a new storyline every week like crime shows and medical shows.
I think drama/crime/comedies/medical shows are big in TV and rare to be a hit in movies, while action/sci-fi/fantasy are big in movies and rare to be a hit in TV.
You know, I think what is going to end up being a bit problem for LOM if it picks up steam and doesn’t get canceled too quickly is that the concept does not belong in a long serial. If they manage to keep it fresh for even one whole (22 episode) season, they’ll be lucky. It’s not a concept that can last much longer than that.
Bit=big
Life On Mars on the other hand isn’t a hard to believe scenario. The man is NOT in 1973 but in a coma. 1973 is entirely how his mind is dealing with being hit by a car. The only question really is what the producers plan to do with the show. In England the show ended after its second season with the character killing himself after waking up from the coma and deciding his life was better in the coma. The original series was incredibly interesting and fun.
The series does have a “sequel,” in England where another person ends up in a coma and this time in 1980 or something. The thing is that 1980 is the same 1980 as the coma inflicted original character. In other words the original character’s actions in 1973 are remembered in the 1980 coma.
That made the original series even more interesting. If they shake things up and have it involving multiple “patients,” over multiple seasons they may have something interesting.
Sorry, but your information about UK’s sequel isn’t completely accurate. I’m only half-way through watching it myself, but as far as I understood, sequel’s premise was how that female lead character worked and/or researched Sam’s notes (in present day) that he recorded after waking up. That knowledge gave her the “how-to” for dealing with the exact same situation herself – there wasn’t any sort of mentality transmission going on.
Sorry for going off-topic here but I really wanted to clarify.
“Heroes and Lost are fantastical in every way”
Heroes is fantastically bad and Lost is actually fantastic. Not the same thing.
I like Life because it is a exploration of what life and freedom mean. What is the meaning of life if you aren’t free from addictions or problems. Charlie’s Zen made him free in prison because his mind wasn’t imprisoned. Now that he is out he wants to gain back what he lost – his wife, friends and job. These tangents that are explored add a lot of depth to the show. Plus the acting is superb – Damian Lewis could read the phone book and be riveting.
Good points, but you forot to mention that most people working network TV have ADD when it comes to programing. If the crime/relationship/contest/quirk is not resolved in 42 minutes they lose interest.
Nick, there was no decisive answer as to whether 1976 was a coma or whether the present day was imagined. It was very much left to your own interpretation. (See: Cutting himself and not feeling anything when in the meeting in present day.)
RE: Chuck on Pushing Daisies.
I actually find her character “normal” compared to the others, which I think grounds the show a little bit or else the other much more quirkier characters would get grating. I find her more attractive and less annoying than the Olive character.
But I think the problem with the show that I have heard from many people is that it is too “gag worthy cute.” That’s mostly due to the romance, but at the same time, I find the procedural element of the show the weakest part. The murders/mysteries are often very painfully obvious or just too out there to grab my attention. I watch for the characters, dialogue and visuals. But I can see why many would be turned off by the show
Julia: Ned mentioned contraptions, there are ways around such things.
Sadly, I’m afraid that your assessment of TV audiences is largely on target. The masses lack imagination and are intolerant of anything that requires them to stretch their minds too much, even if the writing, acting, etc are exceptional.
That said, I think a show like Pushing Daises is ridiculous, not because it is too imaginative, but rather its premise does not make for enjoyable storytelling. A show like this is more like showing off (”look how out-of-the-box we can think”) than trying to tell a story that is thoughtful, meaningful, and something you want to spend time with week after week.
Shows like Heroes, Lost, Fringe, and Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles find an audience not just by being creative but by making a serious attempt at good storytelling. Unfortunately, not everyone in TV production understands this, which is why poor, superficial attempts at whimsical escapism like Pushing Daises appear on the scene. Hopefully we continue to get more of the former shows and less of the latter.
Do TV production executives understand this distinction? I’m not sure they do; it may be beyond the cognitive abilities of the kind of shallow, superficial ladder-climbers that Corporate America seems to favor.
Joel,
I understand your point but I think you are limiting the range of programs that others may finding charming that you find ridiculous. Programmers should try to appeal to a broad audience that encompasses a variety of tastes. I do not like comedies or soap opera (Grey’s, Desperate Housewives) but obviously many do. I do enjoy procedurals and Science fiction so Fringe, Chuck, Stargate, Supernatural, Life, NCIS are more my type of shows. So if Pushing Daisies is not your type don’t ruin it for the many that enjoy something unique.
Y’know I think this question is almost, like asking why do people like to eat certain food over other ones…there are so many different reasons why people watch certain shows and pass on other programmes. It can be a difference between actors/actresses (charisma factor), type of story, genre (I don’t think it matters as much people make it out to be), network, promotions and marketing(not all shows get the same kind of hype), time slot, state of (American) culture, and general time (time period…era).
For example, a show, like the A-Team as is, could it last more than one seasons, if you took the same show (actors, writers, scripts, plots, and etc.) from circa 1984 and placed in modern day 2008…probably not. Same with Miami Vice, Cheers, and The Cosby Show…if those shows are made a few years later or earlier. Do you think you could expect to see the same results? Hard to conclude.
At the same time, shows, like Grey’s Anatomy or ER could very well flop in vice versa, if it both suddenly sent to the 1980s and forced to compete against the shows of the time in the same time slot. While, audience could find the actors of the shows totally uninspiring and not as likeable as other medical shows, like St. Elsewhere. You never know what audience will, like…I was shock to see a movie, like Beverly Hills Chihuahua do, really well at the box office and make it close $100 million worldwide.
I don’t agree with most of your points. I mean, why a show has to be “real” to have a good audience? And second, why a good audience means that a show is really good? “Star Trek – The Next Generation” was one of the hit shows of its time, and we never saw a single person being teleported to any place, or people in spaceships flying throughout the space as if they were driving a car. I don’t think that shows like PD (which is one of my favorites) don’t get a lot of audience because they’re way too surreal. I think that most of people just don’t get the show’s idea, which doesn’t mean that the show is not good (on the contrary, in my opinion, is one of the best nowadays). I think this is only your biased opinion about some shows you personally don’t like, like PD. Too bad.
Anva, that’s just dumb. I *loved* Star Trek TNG, but it ran on UPN, and for it’s day, it was NOWHERE near a hit. It was just, like say, Battlestar Galactica, a hit among SciFi fans.
What *you* personally like has no bearing on what happens in the aggregate. Me either.
@ Anya
Sci fi shows just seems more popular on the internet, because sci fi and technology go hand and hand. Supernatural and moonlight are perfect examples of this, you read tons blogs and posts about how great it is or people discussing it, but in reality on a segment of the population actually watches it
seem*
Hey Rob,
Star Trek TNG was syndicated. UPN wasn’t created until 1995.
Anya, you seem to be taking Robert’s statements about what is popular and why as his opinions on quality or what he personally likes. I don’t see that in this post at all.
marenamoo: didn’t realize someone having an opinion that runs counter to yours was tantamount to ‘ruining it for you.’ You say you don’t like comedies. I do like comedies, so by your logic you just ruined them for me. Waah.
Anva: So it’s really not possible that we understand exactly what PD is about, and we still don’t like it?
Its an interesting article, Robert. I think it goes beyond the ‘buy-in,’ although that can surely make or break a show. Its not only the premise — its the characters. I’ve watched Pushing Daisies a few times. Its pretty visually, and yes the premise is an interesting twist on a procedural, but the characters leave me cold. I’d rather watch Bones where I find the characters more engaging.
And meant to add, I like Charlie Crews a lot, but was getting a little bored with the surroundings. I’m glad they’ve stepped away from the ‘mytharc’ and gone to more stand-alones.
I disagree:
Severus of Naples apparently brought someone back to life for a minute to solve a crime.
Some things work and others don’t. It’s a bit of TV magic or something. I guess it’s a matter of so many things really. Time slots, content, actors involved..the list can go on. Sometimes one show has enough of what you like to grab you…then again…
There are many shows out there that have what I commonly like but still I don’t watch. Like Heroes for example. I like sci-fi things; people with special powers and all that, but oddly from the very first time I saw the commercials for that show I knew I would never watch it but so many other people obviously did. Why? And almost the same thing happened with Fringe (which is so often compared to The X Files which I love) too. I’d call it the worst of the new season. I gave it a chance but nothing. Just 15 minutes into the second episode and I had to click off. It just didn’t work for me personally.
Finally on the other side of all this there are shows like Brothers & Sisters and Gossip Girl that never in a million years would I have thought of watching but yet I do sometimes, and I enjoy them. It doesn’t make any sense.
You could probably pick any reason you want and it would apply to why or why not a show works or does not. It’s hit or mis..err…cancelled
I don’t understand how anyone could like Life’s increased focus on crimes of the week when they range from the inane and dull to the insane and unbelievable (guy frozen into an iceblock from inhaling liquid nitrogen, who Crews then shatters by touching) to the unnecessarily convoluted and mysterious just for the sake of bulking simple cases out to 42 minutes. The arc stuff is what’s good about the show and the crimes very much are not.
And I think part of Lost’s success is (or was) its lack of obvious fantasy/scifi elements for quite a while. There was a little with the monster I guess, but things were mainly just alluded to, but because the mystery was so central you never really knew.
Gojou- Some shows would do good no matter when released. A show like Cheers for instance is just solid gold. It took time for it to hit its stride, but that show was well written, well acted, and is timeless. I do get your point, most shows from then wouldn’t do well.
Robert- ST:TNG was a huge hit. It was watched by more people than anything the CW has on it right now. In fact at its high point one season AVERAGED nearly 12 million viewers an episode. It also killed in the 18-49 demo.
The “fall,” of Star Trek has been documented by many others before. The quality dropped, the new ST series dropped in quality, and the end result was it dwindled in numbers when they were regulated to UPN.
ST:TNG was the first mainstream syndicated TV series. It killed in the ratings.
Sad no many people watch Heroes any more; its superb.
Shocked:
‘Heroes is fantastically bad and Lost is actually fantastic. Not the same thing.’
Personally i find Lost repetative and really the storyline annoying; and i can see why people can get bored of it; but just because i don’t like the style or even the genre of Lost that doesn’t mean its bad; i just don’t like it. Heroes is magnificant and i do see the reasons why people don’t watch it (NBC basically over advertised it) but i wish people at least tuned in to watch.
Chris, good point about UPN
Nick, I’m not questioning that TNG did well, even in its day as a syndicated show. But for its day it wasn’t a mainstream “hit”, even if it was averaging 12 million viewers. By today’s standards, certainly the PR mavens would declare it a hit, but by the standards of its day Major Dad routinely had more than twice as many viewers (I’m pretty sure DVD sales for TNG are much better than Major Dad’s though!).
It’s 2008 and things are a lot different. CSI, last week’s number one show wouldn’t have made the 1991-1992 broadcast top 20 based on a household ratings basis, so I don’t find much value comparing how something did in 1991 to how things happen today. When you do so you wind up with wacky analogies like TNG in its heyday was to Cheers as BSG in its heyday was to Two and a Half Men.
“@ Anya
Sci fi shows just seems more popular on the internet, because sci fi and technology go hand and hand. Supernatural and moonlight are perfect examples of this, you read tons blogs and posts about how great it is or people discussing it, but in reality on a segment of the population actually watches it”
Yeah…this makes me happy and sad at the same time…Happy because we still can see them on the internet, and that it’s growing. Sad because I would love to see more sci-fi shows on TV… But yes, it’s it great to see that fans are still out there spreading the word somehow.
“Anva: So it’s really not possible that we understand exactly what PD is about, and we still don’t like it?” -
Yes, that’s perfectly possible. What I meant is that many people just watch half episode and don’t give the show a try (and this is not only with PD, but with many other shows).
Some concepts you mention (like audience ratings, for instance) are hard for to understand sometimes. I actually do not live in the US (I live in Brazil), but I pretty much try to follow the news on the internet and through cable TV from where I live. The audience here is completely different, because for most of us down here, we have to get cable TV to be able to follow the trends from the US. The problem here is that most of the shows you guys are talking about are just opening here (like PD and Terminator), and some of them are hits here (such as PD, Heroes, Lost and Terminator), and we’ve just saw the first season, and many of us down here are crossing our fingers hoping that most of them do not get canceled…
@Jack, I understand that you don’t understand it — and I like the arc story in Life better than the crime of the week, too (but personally I would’ve preferred Life as a serial, rather than a procedural). But I like a lot of stuff that doesn’t seem to resonate with the broader audiences though. The procedural stuff “to fill 42 minutes” may be dull to you, but it’s a formula that works with a broad audience, whether it works well for you personally or not.
@Anva, very interesting. If you ever do see any audience ratings data for Brazil, please send it our way. I’d be interested to see how shows like Heroes and Lost imported from the US do against the Brazilian created content.
@Mel, I think good characters, good writing and good story matter *a lot* but those elements get into the quality realm and I wanted to stay away from talking about quality!
Just to clarify, although I tend to find procedurals dull and don’t really watch any others, my point was that I find Life’s are particularly poor.
Terrible example when it was never lower than ~140 on the Nielsen seasonal rankings, but I really think Veronica Mars did an excellent job of balancing weekly mysteries (often two, from memory) with serialised stuff by most often having the weekly A-plot tie in either directly with the overarching story, or provide a parallel to an aspect of the titular character’s life/provide emotional resonance to her. It’s a strategy that really should work in letting casual viewers get on board for a single episodic mystery, and then hopefully get drawn into the deeper machinations of the series. I guess VM was apparently too complex though, and probably marketed all wrong.
It’s where I think (apart from some woefully lame crimes) Life really squanders its potential quality wise, where the best they seem to be able to do is devote a maximum of five minutes (mostly at the very end of episodes) to Crews making progress with his investigation. Disclaimer: I’ve only watched up to the second episode of the season at this point, so maybe things improve (by my measure) in the most recent episodes.
Looking back at what you said originally I guess I’m disagreeing, although I don’t think Life was ever a proper hybrid, and certainly not a cohesive one in the way I described above. So I think that’s its weakness, but CBS’s procedurals’ numbers disagree so I guess that makes me wrong.
But I know what I’m saying makes sense even if I’m not being terribly coherent at this point (which is why I’ll stop typing now). Heh. Wow, long comment.
Jack, while I may personally mostly agree with you, I am trying to observe things as they actually are as opposed to the way I wish they were or think they should be. I may have failed in my attempt.
I’m not sure if you will like the progress with Life or not. I enjoyed (and it was mostly a procedural, albeit with links to a previous episode) last Friday’s episode. I’m pretty sure it dedicated no more than 5 minutes to the arc, but it did beg an interesting and as yet unanswered question: is Jack Reese really a bad guy?
Actually I think you succeeded but I failed at the same thing. Haha.
I’m with Jack on procedurals, although I know that puts me squarely in the minority. But here we are how many decades after Perry Mason, and is there really anything we haven’t seen before in a procedural? Over and over and over again the same story is retold from one series to another, from one network to another. Unfortunately, it appears only people who remember Perry Mason from their 20’s and 30’s watch TV anymore, and those people love them some procedurals, so they are the most popular shows and TV, and it looks like that is going to continue indefinitely. The success of CBS this season likely means a rash of procedurals from everyone next season.
But this thread is about that crazy premise that you just can’t buy into, and a surprise for me is that the dumbest premise of the season (My Own Worst Enemy) has turned out to be the best new show. I held off and held off and held off watching this show thanks to a premise even I found ri-goddam-diculous, and thanks to the worst reviews of any new show this season.
But then a funny thing happened: I watched it. First episode was OK (which made it much, much better than I expected), and then the second episode was entertaining as hell. Or at least entertaining as hell compared to the vast wasteland that scripted TV has become.
I’m shocked that I feel this way, because the buy-in factor for me on this show was enormous. Maybe my low, low expectation have me overrating it now, but I think its hands down the best new show on the tube. Sure beats the living hell out of Life on Mars and Fringe, which were the two shows I had the most hope for. Both of them turned out to be as dull as dirt, while at least MOWE is entertaining.
The thing about MOWE that makes it work for me is that they seem to be running the Buffy formula over there. Whereas Fringe and LOM play their crazy situations straight up and come off completely ridiculous (especially Fringe), Enemy is using their goofball premise as a metaphor for telling stories about alienation and the two faces we use in private and in public. Obviously the show is nowhere near up to Buffy standards in execution, but at least they are trying, and at least they make me laugh.
It’s a shame. I finally found a good show, and it’s going to be gone in a matter of weeks. I really enjoyed Life last season, but the big shift towards procedural and the watering down of Charlie’s wackiness has started to lose me. I still watch, but I think it’s just been a shadow of the promise it showed last season.
PS – Star Trek: TNG was a MASSIVE hit. It made bazillions for Paramout, which is why it lasted near on a decade, and why they tried to translate it to the big screen.
No idea what the exact numbers were, but it was the top syndicated hour long show for years and years. When it came out, the Star Trek franchise was flagging big time, and before it ended their were four Trek shows on the air.
Maybe you tend to remember the flop that Scott Bakula show was, and how it, along with the final, horrible movie, killed off the Trek franchise. But TNG was a huge success. Obviously not a Cosby Show size success, but it was so much more popular than BSG that there is no comparison. BSG has always been more of a critical than commercial success. It may even be a better show than TNG, but it’s sure not more popular. And TNG definitely made a hell of a lot more money and begat three more shows.
Shmokey,
I am not remembering the “flop” that “Enterprise” was. I never got into Enterprise (I think Bill G, did for at least a season or two though). I was a DS9 guy.
I’m sure TNG made Paramount a TON of money. I have no doubt about that in the slightest. And I’m sure it was, for a syndicated show especially, a “hit” even in its day. But that day is so, so different from this day that I do not find comparing the early 1990s to now valid. By that standard almost every show airing is a failure! I agree with you though comparing TNG to BSG is *wacky* — that’s why I said it was wacky
P.S. comparing Two and a Half Men to Cheers is *also* wacky. But Two and a Half Men is the number one sitcom these days. The times are very different.
I think that basic cable has taken the place of syndication. You’re right, Robert, there is no comparison. Back in TNG days, there really was no basic cable as we know it now, and what there was had no scripted programming. So there was a giant void which sydication could fill back then. Now there is no void. Well, there is no quantity void. There is sure a giant quality void.
It will be interesting to see how Sam Raimi’s new syndicated show does. It’s going to air on the weekends, which is strike one, and it’s going to be going up against the monster that is basic cable, which is strike two. So it’s down 0-2 before it even comes up to bat.
Yes, this is a very different landscape now. Too bad with all these channels there is still almost nothing worth watching from one night to the next when it comes to scripted programming. Thank god for Discovery, History, et al. Were it not for them, I’d be down to maybe an hour or two of TV per week.
Well, actually, that might be a good thing.
I share your intrigue too Schmokey. It will be interesting to see how Legend of the Seeker fares on Saturday, (I read the first book and thought it was great, hopefully they won’t mess it up). That being said, a major problem I have is not having a clue what time or what station it comes on, which is a problem with syndication. The bonus of syndication though is that it’s guaranteed 22 episodes no matter how it does. It should be interesting to see how it turns out.
Robert- you’re right talking quality is a slippery slope. LOL How about investment in the characters? Serials, especially sci fi tend to need the viewer to invest in the characters while procedurals don’t as much? Certainly back in the day when L&O was new, it was fairly refreshing to get away from the personal lives and focus on the case.
Maybe the ‘general audience’ doesn’t want to invest in the characters, and so aren’t interested in shows where its necessary?
I watched Fringe for two weeks and hated it. After the same two weeks loved The Mentalist. Am giving MOWE a third week to see what happens. I bought the premise — now, am I willing to invest in Henry and Edward? Stay tuned.
Robert- I don’t care how you look at it “TNG,” was a hit. It was a subject of one of my RTF classes. It reshaped TV to the point of what we have today. It’s syndication numbers were “mainstream,” and the numbers were good enough that it was a top 40 show. Those numbers were shocking when in comparison to the major network shows it was only on around 40% of the households. So yes, it was considered both “mainstream,” and a hit. The success of TNG lead to other syndicated hit shows like Hercules, Xena, and Babylon 5 just to name a few. The success of those shows lead to cable networks (who picked up reruns of those shows) doing scripted shows of their own.
I’m not even a ST fan, but I do recognize just what that show accomplished.
Nick, it reshaped TV to the point of? ABC holding on to the low-rated According to Jim for syndication purposes?
It was a great show, and I *am* a fan, but in terms of 2008, I don’t see it being meaningful. If you’re saying without TNG, then there’d be no Eureka on SciFi with less than 3 million viewers in 2008, a show that I like but that is decidedly not mainstream, and nowhere near the top 40 (even the cable top 40), I’m not sure I buy that.
Robert, before “ST:TNG,” there was no first run scripted syndicated TV show of any kind of major success. The success of the show was so powerful that many FOX outlets aired the show in place of a FOX series. Without TNG the other scripted syndicated shows would never have been tried.
The first scripted shows on the major cable networks (USA for instance) were direct results of the success they had airing some of those syndicated scripted shows. Would Eureka exist without TNG ever having aired?
I’d say no. It took a name like “Star Trek,” to make syndicated scripted shows even a viable option. Many thought that TNG was a huge gamble. It paid off. In fact the success of TNG was better than the success of FOX. Both came out the same year (87, first year of scripted FOX shows). Both were released primarily on the same stations. TNG was a huge success in comparison to anything FOX had until The Simpsons, and only the Simpsons did better until 93 when the NFL made FOX legit.
The main reason TNG was a success was the ST franchise. That franchise allowed a syndicated scripted show to work and work well. It spawned other franchises and those DID lead to scripted shows on the cable networks.
What’s interesting to me is that a lot of these genre shows are the ones that inspire such a fervent (if small) following. I mean, if Survivor was cancelled, I can’t see Ma and Pa Everyman (or Joe the Plumber) organizing campaigns and fundraising to save their show — they’re just not invested in it to that extent. They might grumble, but they’d soon be grabbing the remote and looking for something equally inane and equally undemanding of their attention/concentration/intelligence. They can watch an episode of House, CSI or ER without needing to think, and without needing any backstory to understand what’s going on — because every damned episode is the same as every other episode. Personally, I think that sort of repetition is comforting to most people, in the same way that Nick Jr. playing the same episode of Blue’s Clues every day for a week is comforting to the people who watch that show.
Lost seems to be the exception, in that I don’t think you can enjoy the show without having watched it from the beginning — yet it still draws huge numbers. I think a lot of that had to do with its outstanding pilot and first season. But could someone who’s never watched the show pick up watching it in January 2009? No way. I watched the first two seasons, and when I tried to watch an ep last season, I was frustrated and confused. I wondered if that’s how most people feel when they tune into a serialized program, compounded by the fantastical elements that must feel uncomfortably different to them. I also wonder if, as economic times take a nosedive, even more people will be looking for those sorts of comfort shows, rather than shows that might unsettle them.