Lisa de Moraes, the TV writer for the Washington Post has an interesting story up where one of the items referenced was that Heroes producer Tim Kring spent a lot of time deflecting flack about lower ratings at a recent conference:
Writing a serialized drama is “an absolute bear.” It is also a “very flawed way of telling stories on network television,” because of the advent of DVR and online streaming, for example, Kring said, according to the report.
Serialized dramas work only if people sit in front of their TV sets on the night and at the hour the network broadcasts each episode. But now, you can watch a serialized drama whenever and wherever you want and almost all of those other means of watching episodes “are superior to watching it on the air.” Sooooo, the only people watching a show — “Heroes” perhaps — at the time it’s being broadcast by a network — say NBC — are the “saps and [expletives] who can’t figure out how to watch it in a superior way.”
The key to convincing BS is to have at least a grain of truth to what you’re saying. And there’s way more than a grain or two of truth in what Kring says. It’s so convincing I’m sure he believes it. The problem is, if you took Heroes total viewing from two years ago, and its total viewing from today (and include DVR, Internet streaming etc) the total viewing is still down. A lot.
There’s a problem, and not one I’m sure can be fixed. I confess to mostly agreeing with him, though not as harshly about the “saps and [expletives]” who remain chained to the networks scheduling.
I’ll concede that there are just many people who enjoy watching TV when they get home, but personally, If I wasn’t doing this blog there’s no way I’d ever watch any scripted TV on the network’s schedule. This blog is the only reason I do, and mostly that’s to avoid spoilers. Otherwise, I’d be saving it up for a rainy day!
That’s exactly how I watched about the first 20 episodes of Heroes season one. We had a period where it seemed like it rained every freaking day for two weeks. My viewing wouldn’t have counted anywhere, even if I was a Nielsen family. I was able to catch up in less than two weeks, but it wasn’t live+seven day viewing, it was more like live+90 to 180 days viewing. Nielsen doesn’t measure that and never will. Advertisers aren’t going to pay for ads viewed six months after the fact, and besides, I didn’t view the ads anyway.
Still, for a show like Heroes, if you’re of the mind and/or have the technology available, it’s often easier to say, “screw it” and buy the DVD, download them or stack them up on the DVR. All of that impairs measurement and ratings, and it is a real issue, but I absolutely dispute the notion that Heroes hasn’t lost viewers since season one and two (and three). It has, and those viewers will be difficult to ever recapture. These lost viewers aren’t watching on the DVR, aren’t streaming video or downloading the shows — they just no longer watch. Sure, some might ultimately buy the DVDs but comparing season 3 DVD sales to season one’s is something we won’t be able to do for quite some time.
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The same story linked above also notes that Rosie O’Donnell’s Thanksgiving eve variety show is really a backdoor pilot, that may get picked up for six more episodes depending on the ratings.
I agree with you Robert. There is no way that apparently 10 million people stopped watching Heroes live and switched to DVR, internet, and DVDs. Serial dramas will drop in viewers over time. LOST has lost (pardon the pun) viewers from its first and second season, but it certainly hasn’t dumped over half of them like Heroes has. More people DVR it than Heroes anyway. Kring is not ever going take the blame for poor writing/plot decisions and is hoping maybe if he ignores the low numbers or makes excuses for them, they will go away.
Heroes lost ME as a viewer this season, for one. I tried to watch the season premiere but it was so awful, I couldn’t bring myself to tune in again. Haven’t missed the show, either. BTW, I prefer to watch “live” because I like to discuss shows with online friends afterwards. Also, it’s just more fun for me. It feels like more of an event, something to anticipate each week, whereas a stack of DVDs makes me shrug and feel like I can watch the contents any old time. Generally I never get around to it.
Kring’s comments make him sound like a real winner. Now I’m particularly glad that I stopped watching Heroes.
So he hates the style of his own show, and insults anyone still traditionally watching it? That bodes well.
Well maybe Heroes needs to be canned if the creator is that stupid as to insult the fans that watch it through other means. I mean, maybe we shouldn’t even buy the DVDs or buy the show off itunes anymore. And if he stops serializing the show, what’s the point in watching it? The whole show is a serial. It’s not some procedural where all they have to do is focus on the murder of the week and stop getting so involved in character’s lives. On heroes, the characters are the show! I think that maybe Kring needs to be fired and Brian Fuller take the reigns on this baby.
It only takes one bad episode to turn people away from a seralized show. Look at the T:SCC pilot. It had over 18 million viewers, but half the people hated it, and never came back. The show has gotten way better since then, but that one episode has left a bitter taste in everyones mouth.
Seralized shows are like a home run derby. If every at bat(episode)is not a home run, than it’s a failure.
Tim knows he’s close to being axed or his show is. This is his response. There is nothing really surprising here. Last year he took the blame and said he’d fix it. This year he’s saying it’s technology. He has to say something, because he’s so close to being fired. Getting rid of Loeb, etc. is not going to make things better.
DVD sales aren’t that great anyway. In terms of revenue the numbers are great. In terms of total units sold it’s something close to 2.5 million units (too lazy to look it up) for season one and not yet 1 million units for season 2.
If anything DVD sales mirror the loss of viewers. Right now HEROES is at 50% of the viewers it had in Season 1. DVD sales will likely catch up to 50% at some point (need to give Season 2 some time on the market, and holiday sales, etc.)
Corey, I’d say with serialized shows you need a base hit at least every other episode and a home run every 4 or 5 episodes with some doubles and triples mixed in. Some shows turn their misses into walks instead of strikeouts (have I done well with this baseball analogy?).
The problem with HEROES is that since the episode HOME COMING the show quality has spiraled downward. I’d say since that point it has only had one home run, a lot of doubles and singles, but mostly misses. The show has just crashed.
Serialized shows can’t start with a bad episode. That is generally one huge rule, you need an amazing pilot to hook them. I’ve always thought that was the sole reason FOX screwed over FIREFLY. Not only did they not air the pilot which was good with some amazing effects they aired a mediocre episode that aired out of place was a miss (seen in order it’s decent). The TERMINATOR show had a poor pilot in my mind. So it blew it right from the start.
I disagree Nick: but i have to say that it sounds like Tim is in denial about the failure of veiwership. People do watch DVR and others but no the missing 6 million from season 1: its sad really.
fin, I believe there are 9 million missing viewers from the most watched to the least watched. Remember after last season he was saying “this is my fault,” and was promising season 3 would be better. Now he’s talking about DVR and downloads.
DVD isn’t hurting other shows? How is it “superior,” to watching it on the air? The only way I can think of is skipping commercials. I really can’t believe he said that.
Also if it is only TECH then why fire the people he fired?
In fairness to Kring, I didn’t see the full contents of everything he said. it’s unfortunate he got caught insulting the people who actually still watch via television.
Personally, I think the alternate methods (not just DVD) are superior in several ways:
1. time crunching/viewing flexibility
- no commercials
- you can watch whenever you want to watch
- pause for breaks whenever you want
- you can skip over all the “previously on..”
2. you can watch multiple episodes at the same time
I prefer the alternate methods for those reasons.
but as Lisa mentioned above, going that route vs. live viewing (or at least watching on DVR the same night) precludes any “water cooler” talk the next day.
Robert, but lets be honest the thing that makes it so superior is no commercials. I can’t believe he stated it was superior. That has to be something that NBC wishes he hadn’t said.
I am being honest and I honestly disagree with you as far as what makes it superior. I find the alternatives to watching live television superior in many dimensions — no commercials being one of them. Watching whenever I feel like it? That’s a bigger deal to me. Also I really like that I don’t have to “wait until next week” to watch the next episode.
I agree NBC wishes he hadn’t said it, but then again, he is in some ways just parroting the Ben Silverman company line: “Our viewers don’t watch TV…”
“LOST has lost (pardon the pun) viewers from its first and second season, but it certainly hasn’t dumped over half of them like Heroes has.”
Actually it has. Lost peaked with 23 million viewers, the lowest hour got 11 million. In terms of season averages it’s tough to tell since the first 2 seasons aired repeats therefore skewing the ratings. Needless to say it had alot more room for error and room for viewer loss than Heroes did.
In fact Heroes isn’t even the show to lose the most viewers this season. House and Grey’s Anatomy have both lost more, but they had many more to begin with.
Robert, I agree all are big points, but Kring is implying everyone who doesn’t at least DVR is an idiot. That to me is a career train wreck mistake.
‘These lost viewers aren’t watching on the DVR, aren’t streaming video or downloading the shows — they just no longer watch.’
I never watched Heroes. I could tell you what my favorite episode of the Justice League Unlimited series is, I could tell you I favor DC comic characters over marvel, I could tell you the next character I hope will eventually get her own theatrical saga on the big screen, but I know she never will because they only made minis for her in the first place. I could also tell you I hate the fact that Jubilie is missing from this sect of X-men evolution. And what I can tell you is that I don’t watch heroes.
That is what is wrong with heroes, it is not attracting new viewers, and not keeping the ones it has. I don’t look out for it on TV, I don’t dl it off the internet. When true blood came out I had to outsource somebody to get it for me, I don’t care to do that for heroes. Don’t you think that it is weird a person like me who never missed a premier of Justice League Unlimited is simply not caring about the outcome of heroes? Especially when I gave Smallville a chance and never missed and episode of The Flash years back. Or Lois and Clark? I was one of the few people that knew who Iron Man was when people were questioning why in the world would Marvel do a movie about Iron Man. I nearly had a heart attack when Green Arrow’s sidekick showed up for less than a minute in an episode of JLU.
And lets face it, his snide remark about the people who do take the time to view it only shows what little respect he has for his fans in the first place. Just like Nina Tassler, no wonder they are loosing viewers. I think Tim Krig has simply lost touch as to what his viewers want. I love the x-men, I hated x-men evolution. I still watched it.
Tim Krig needs to look at himself in the mirror and ask himself the question “What am I doing wrong?”
Well, I think we just found out exactly why Heroes blows so badly: Kring is either a moron or on heavy medication. Or maybe I’m the only viewer who doesn’t watch Heroes any longer in any form.
The show stinks. That’s why I dumped it. And it wasn’t S2 or S3 that did it to me. The show started stinking during Season 1. The finale was so lame as to be laughable. Partway through 2, I was gone for good. Came back for the premier of S3, and made it through about half of it, then I was gone again. They have fired writers and producers, and they have announced BIG PLANS to do this or that, but the only constant during all the sucking is a man named Kring. Now we find out that he’s spinning his ass off behind the scenes, blaming the viewers of all things. And to top it off, he’s actually insulting the only people that should really matter to him: THOSE THAT WATCH THE SHOW IN A WAY THAT COUNTS IN THE RATINGS!!!!
Talk about a sap and a [expletives]! I give you Tim Kring.
What a fricking dope. Of course, the constant stream of comments to the effect of, “You can’t say our show is bad until you see where we are going with it nine hundred episodes down the road,” had already clued me in to that fact that Kring is a bonehead. Good shows are good every week. Period. I don’t watch Lost to find out where it is going (I don’t care where it is going). I watch it for the great stories that pop up more weeks than not, and for the great, well defined characters that are always there every week. In fact, the only reason I almost quit Lost was because they got too mythology crazy in Season 3.
The problem with serials isn’t inherent in the form. The problem with serials is usually inherent in the producers. They get so caught up in their own bullshit mythology that they forget to tell a story each week. They also forget that characters need to be interesting, well developed, and consistent, rather than simply avatars that shift weekly in order to push plot along.
PLOT. PLOT. PLOT. These idiots actually think we are tuning in to see them plot. It screams, “Look at me. Look at how smart I am.” But while that is what they are saying, the finished product actually screams, “Don’t watch me. Look at how dumb my producer is.”
Heroes was never ever a great show. That’s the problem. It was good, but that’s it. And when you are only good, you can’t slip a even bit. Lost wasn’t just good when it started. It was amazing. Its worst day was ten feet taller than Heroes best day. Company Man, Heroes’ only truly great episode, was like a run of the mill Lost episode. When they could not only not sustain that quality, but actually went way, way downhill, they lost (no pun intended) everyone but the geeks who will watch anything comic book related just in the hopes that 22 hours of viewing will provide a 15 minutes of actual quality, and the mentally infirm who won’t stop watching anything once they’ve started it, no matter whether it’s good, bad, or upside down. Those crazies aren’t enough to sustain a show with a Pentagon sized production budget.
One day the producers of seralized shows will realize that the serial part is just the icing. Icing makes the cake, but you actually have to have a cake to put it on, because just eating icing makes you really sick really fast. The characters are the cake. The story each week is the cake. Mythology itself just does not make a show. And every idiot who thought it did has always ended up ruining the show he/she was running.
Serialized shows do have a strike against them from the start, but if you make your show all about your mythology and nothing else, then you are an idiot. If you then blame the audience for all your mistakes and ineptitude, then you are a jackass as well.
Heroes is never known to have lost 9-10 million viewers. It lost a MUCH smaller sample size of measured viewers that Nielsen says represents 9-10 million viewers.
I always find it amazing that when there is a mass exodus of “viewers” at the same time, people actually believe it. What are the odds that that many people all decided not to watch a show they previously watched every week AT THE SAME TIME? Anytime I see a gigantic jump like that with all else (like time slot/day) remaining constant, I become extremely skeptical of how Nielsen does things. I’ve suspected something like Nielsen turnover (a change in the people being measured) would be more of an explanation for a sudden loss of viewers than that many people abandoning a show at the same time.
Almost all the shows are down from previous seasons, this is worst for bad shows, where heroes is included.
i love heroes but the stories are bads, they are all recicled for others shows, films, cartoons, etc. and then they are very confused, they go back and go to future all the time. this happens when they don’t have antyhing else to tell.
so change this and i believe the ratings improved almost immeddiatly!
Wow, nice guy. Although seeing that the quotes come via Lisa de Moraes, I’m inclined to take at least some of this with a grain of salt. The “Post” is my hometown paper, so I’ve seen a lot of her columns, and let’s just say I wouldn’t put it past her to twist things for the sake of a good snark. (That’s not to say that this isn’t true — only that I can’t tell for sure unless I’ve seen further reports of the conversation.)
Robert and Nick,
I agree that there are serious advantages to alternate viewing methods. No commercials, watching on your own time, etc., BUT a mass exodus of people to alternate methods does indicate a serious problem: a lack of excitement about the show. Think about it. If you’re excited about a show, you want to watch it as soon as possible. You’re not going to wait two or three weeks for it, you’re going to watch it live or the next day. If people are waiting weeks to watch several episodes at a time or a full year to get the DVDs, they aren’t excited about the show, they aren’t talking about the show, and they aren’t encouraging others to watch the show. It’s no longer event viewing, which, especially for a serialized show, means it’s one step away from the grave. While a procedural like NCIS can wait six years to get any buzz, a highly serialized show can’t. They need more “watercooler” buzz to keep people watching (what is the last successful serialized show no one talked about?).
On Kring’s claim: Heroes Season 2 premiere had nearly 4 million DVR viewers in the first 7 days (giving it over 18 million viewers). Season 3 premiere had just under 3 million (giving it only 11 million viewers). Since the premiere, it has lost an additional 1 million DVR viewers. Given that there is absolutely no evidence that 2 million people started watching online or decided to wait for the DVDs, even the people who aren’t “saps” that watch it live have stopped watching.
Grrr…I looked at the wrong number to compare for the DVR numbers since the premiere. It’s only dropped a few 100,000. Sorry.
I thought that maybe this show would have a chance to conclude in Season 4… but my god, this dude is actually bashing his own shows FANS. Heroes might be gone at the end of this season…. AMAZING.
Lindeloff and Cuse, the show runners of LOST, would NEVER.. EVER say what he just said.
Brandon: then why don’t shows ever sudddenly GAIN millions of viewers?
Uh where is this columnist getting this quote from? I had a friend that attended this screenwriting expo and Kring didn’t say anything to the nature of the last night.
This is sorry excuse for a columnist.
sorry “of the last quote”
Many shows have gained millions of viewers over time. Everyone likes to talk about Seinfeld, Cheers, etc., but closer to home just look at NCIS, which has gained viewers every season it’s been on. Now NCIS is millions over where it started six years ago, and it’s done it even with viewing habits splintering like crazy. House gained millions of viewers between S1 and S3. The Office has gone from a niche show in serious danger of cancelation to an actual hit, at least in the demo, and it has gained millions from its debut. 30 Rock has gained a ton of viewers this season over last. HIMYM was inches from cancelation two years ago, now it’s a Top 20 show and a Top 10 in the demo. It’s gained millions.
It happens all the time, and in the past there have been shows that have premiered to actually poor ratings that have then gone on to become actual #1 shows (Cheers, Seinfeld), or shows that have premiered to just decent ratings and gone on to become #1 shows (Friends, Raymond).
What has never happened, to my memory, is for a show to lose millions of viewers and then ever get them back. That hasn’t ever happened. You can start poor and build, but if you start huge and then drop off the table, you’ll never get back to where you were.
Of course, I never remember a show ever having as large a drop off in viewers as quickly as Heroes has had. It’s a quality issue, not a DVR or internet issue. When Heroes was drawing 15-17 million two years ago, it’s not like there were 50% fewer DVR’s in home back then, or 50% fewer people using the internet. Yet ratings are down 50% now, and Kring is blaming DVRs and the Net to cover his ass.
The show blows, and Kring knows he is going down as the guy who made the biggest F-up in modern TV history. He’ll get work again, because there are dumb people out there who will hire him just in the hope he can catch the magic again, but his career trajectory in general has been shortened considerably. And he’ll always be on a short leash from now on. Plus, his name is mud now with millions of genre fans. I wouldn’t even bother to check out a new Kring show now unless it had been on for at least a year and still had the greatest buzz in the world.
I’d say to keep him away from sharp instruments and clock towers.
Okay, please move back while I rant.
I still like Heroes, it’s going somewhere. I think people who don’t are getting lazy and want an excuse to stop watching so they say “it just suck sucks sucks sucks sucks!”. I’m going to watch Heroes to the end and I hope it doesn’t end on a cliffhanger.
About Mr. Kring, nice going, now the show will die even faster.
But people forget that it’s not Kring that’s writing it. He just created it. Oh, and LOST is a lame excuse for a serial that will go on until people get tired of never having anything answered and quit the show. Hopefully that will be soon.
“Writing a serialized drama is “an absolute bear.””
No it is not. It’s easy. Create your characters and figure out what stories you want to tell. IN THEIR ENTIRETY, START TO FINISH. DON’T MAKE IT UP AS YOU GO ALONG. Figure out what parts of what stories you’re going to tell in what episodes. Not in detail, just a two page summary will suffice. Again, DO THIS FOR ALL STORIES AND ALL EPISODES OVER THE LIFE OF THE SERIES. Then write the scripts for the episodes and film episodes over the course of several seasons.
His comments about DVRs and superior versus non-superior viewing don’t make any sense. It seems like Tim is a [expletive] [expletive] who wouldn’t know how to write an [expletive] [expletive] [expletive] if an [expletive] came along and [expletive] him in his [expletive].
This week’s show was the last one for me. I tried watching it on Hulu and only got halfway through. The show is just so boring now, and the time travel thing is really really old. At least season 1 was great, and that’s all I’ll remember from this show.
“Oh, and LOST is a lame excuse for a serial that will go on until people get tired of never having anything answered and quit the show. Hopefully that will be soon.”
LOST is GUARANTEED to end after Season 6. That got the end date, so they’re starting to conclude the show.
*They got the end date…
heh…wow…bet Kring wishes he could go back in time and wipe everybody’s minds that heard that! Man where’s a hapless band of angst-ridden soap opera superheroes with way too many powers to come along and almost but not quite save the day when you need them?
David, It’s really not that easy. When you create the show, you don’t know if it will last for 13 episodes or 5 years. That’s why you see a lot of serialized shows suffer from “sophomore slumps.” The writers map out the first season, but have only sketchy, vague ideas about following seasons that may or may not happen.
But where is it written that a serialized drama must keep one single storyline running the entire length of a show? Somehow these producers have decided that is the case. That turns these shows into exposition heavy bores. By season three, 80% of your dialogue is devoted to explaining what’s come before. Seralization doesn’t mean never ending story.
Serial dramas with a supernatural element, on any level, are challenging to maintain past the first couple seasons. I think Kring’s problem is denial! He seems to deny that there’s any problem with the rather disjointed storytelling in the show. It’s not the format…it’s the story (or many stories!)that has become the problem!
I agree with previous commenter Lisa – this year’s pilot was my last Heroes episode. I’ve stopped watching “Lost” too, except to catch a glimpse of Desmond once in a while. It just got too convoluted to care anymore. I’m too lazy to devote that much mental energy into my TV escapism
.
“Fringe” runs a similar risk of disjointed storytelling, although they err to the side of procedural and less serial, so thay may help pull it together.
All this talk about a great show that lost its way has been making me reminisce about “Twin Peaks” lately. That show was brilliant for a season and a half or so – then it just went berserk. If Kring had been at the helm of “Twin Peaks,” perhaps he would have said “The story isn’t bad…people are just too dumb to understand where it’s going now!”
Heroes problems are not technology, it’s the writing. Tim sounds he will be asking congress for his own bail-out soon: it isn’t his fault it is the viewers’.
I work in I/T where you have a group of guys more likely to watch shows like Heroes. Of the 5 of us who started with the very first episode, one dropped the show after the first episode this season, and another dropped it two weeks ago–and by “dropped” I mean deleting the “season pass” on the DVR.
My 60 year old parents called me after the first episode and said they couldn’t understand what was happening — who is good who is bad. They may not fit the prime demographics, but they do represent typical American viewers.
Heroes needs a make-over and it no longer sounds like Tim Kring is the guy to handle it.
I also thought about Twin Peaks, but the difference there was that David Lynch never seemed interested in keeping his show going for multiple seasons. I won’t go so far as to say he wanted to be cancelled, but I do think he had no interest in doing the same show for years on end. I think he was more interested in just seeing how far he could push the envelope for as long as they would let him stay on the air, then he would just go on to the next thing.
I hate it when a creator is removed from their own show, but I’ve been thinking for awhile that Kring needs to be canned, this article only supports my theory. I really liked his last show Crossing Jordan, but it’s obvious he just can’t do a serialized show like Heroes.
The only good thing about the demise of PD is that Bryan Fuller will go back to Heroes. I know he may not be able to fix it, but I have faith in him. He’s a fantastic writer.
I was actually at the Screenwriting Expo where Tim Kring gave this interview. The “[expltetive]” is “dipshits”.
Nice…REALLY nice, Tim. Let’s alienate what fans of the show you actually have left. Guess what buddy? I dl when necessary and have the previous seasons on DVD. But, hubby and I actually ENJOYED watching your show together…WHEN IT AIRED. Thank you SO much for insulting us. But, worry not. You won’t have much longer to do so. Whether I can or can’t figure out how to watch it any other way is hardly the point. Your attitude clearly outlines your desperation at the thought that you…like many of us in America…are about to lose your job. I was confused through some of this season’s eps and I stood behind your decision to let Loeb and Co. go earlier in the year. But, this is pretty much the last straw. The show has tanked. Sadly, it never even located the shark in order to make the jump. If it did, though, I’m sure it would’ve jumped forward…then backward…then forward again…then grabbed onto a buddy shark and jumped backward again…then blinked hard and jumped forward again…well…you get my drift…
Joann Vara( Art director of the Rachel Ray show on ABC) and many others have been blogging for months to try and inform the public that tim Kring is not the sharpest knife in the drawer. everyone in the NYC art and film world have been talking for months of the heinous theft of The Twins art and story lines used on Heroes. Google JOANN VARA to read more about this lawsuit.
Here in NYC we’re all waiting for the court date in the NYC Appellate court to bring this truth to the public’s attention.
Tim Kring is a thief and he pretended that the Heroes concept was his original idea, it wasn’t.
My heart goes out to those poor artists as they had to sit and watch this fool degrade their art form and story lines for 3 seasons.
Tim Kring got away with his theft because he’s white, the judge was white and everyone at NBC/GE is white. and that’s the truth.
Racism killed Heroes and now Tim Kring told all of you to your faces that you’re a dipshit for even watching the show and he’s right!!!
the joke is on you.
but soon the con will be over.
I am a fan of super heroes, comic books, sci-fi/fantasy and serialized drama. Heroes is not a good show, and thats why people have stopped watching.(me included) Hiro is a great character, but since the show has about 40 story lines at any given time, he gets about a minute airtime an episode. A pretty cast will only get you so far.
WOW!! Did he just call a good majority of the fans “saps”. What an idiotic move!
Heroes was compelling early on in season one and maybe has only one truly great episode to date (‘The Company’). Other than that, the series has been mediocre and at times laughable.
NBC needs to can the show after this season because it is not that good of a show to begin with and not profitable.
Hey Schmokey, I get your point about the differences with Twin Peaks – good observation! Maybe Lynch is just nuts because he feels like being nuts; whereas Kring is nuts but thinks he’s brilliant
! That’s why Lynch can just move on doing whatever he wants, and he doesn’t much care if people flock to his work or not. Kring, on the other hand, seems enraged that nobody is “smart” enough to understand him!
FYI
Lost
Season 1 Ave: 18.38
Season 2 Ave: 18.91 up 2.87%
Season 3 Ave: 13.74 down 27.31%
Season 4 Ave: 14.62 up 6.39%
From season 1 to season 3: down 25.22%
From Season 1 to Season 4: down 20.45%
Heroes
Season 1 Ave: 13.93
Season 2 Ave: 11.32 down 18.75%
Season 3 Ave: 8.67 down 23.43%
From season 1 to season 3: down 37.79%
I used wikipedia numbers, so this might not be accurate.
Robert, you realize 5 million of that 23 million didn’t watch the first season and likely tuned in because it won an Emmy for Best Drama? It’s not really a shock that they went away because picking up in the middle is very confusing. Taking one episode when I was using Heroes’ first season is not a valid comparison.
Vader, if you were addressing me, i have no idea what you’re talking about…sorry.
Stacy,
Nice list there. I think that’s live viewers plus DVR watches… actually I’m pretty sure it is.
Give the man a shovel. He’s so full of it, it can’t help but coming out of his mouth. I remember an interview about this time last year where he basically said that he didn’t understand the fan uproar over Season 2. It was great! people just needed to learn how to watch TV correctly. At the time I rmember thingking that I failed at watching TV.
So basically he just called the viewers who are still watching live, who actually count for something, idiots. Wow. Who spit in his oatmeal that morning?
Did he learn that in PR classes – how to be nice to people who keep your show on the air?
Aparently he liks to insult his fans. So when Heroes gets canceled he’s going to rant at the fans for that too? Nothing is his fault? It couldn’t be because the whole show has gotten so convoluted no one can keep any of it straight anymore?
Oh, I guess that’s because, according to him, I probably don’t watch TV correctly. *snerf*
To be fair to Tim Kring he’s obviously pissed off about the show failing about people not supporting the show but watching it on DVR. See if he was a hit in the UK with those numbers on (BBC) they would keep him as the BBC is the goverment funded channels. Though i think its harsh to say the shows shit: when i could say that all the CSI’s are just the same storylines with little and far between character developement, along with just horror (like gladitors in Roman times) as the shows stimuleous. So i think when Heroes is better this season and give it a chance the first seasons all look better for shows like Heroes because they seem so original but then for some people its just the idea that keeps them watching. So i think to call it laughable is a over-statement. Then again thats my opinion.
Although insulting the veiwers was a pretty retarded move: he must be so pissed off.
I know I will be in the minority here, but there are 4 episodes I’ve liked on HEROES this season. The back-to-back premier and the recent two episodes. 3 of them were written by Kring. I understand that by being the creator all the creative (no pun intended) decisions go through him and based on that he has done very poor choices over the recent time (read: since the finale of Season 1). But the fact that I’ve liked the episodes he himself has directly written seems to suggest to me on some level, that perhaps to some regard he’s not so much *directly* at fault here by driving the creative car backwards but it’s his creative crew. Then again, in case he knows they suck, why be so lazy in correcting them? Oh well.
That being said, he really seems being completely pissed because he doesn’t even want to mildly censorize himself in his forthcomings, it seems. It’s almost like he has let go and doesn’t care anymore.
That being said, I can’t help but think that he’d be the most ‘mainstream,’ show-runner. I’d wager that if Fuller (or even the guy behind MIDDLEMAN, who’s been mildly gossiped as one choices for a show-runner for HEROES) would’ve ran it since the very start, it’d have gotten the axe much sooner, and quite ironically *because* of the creative decisions.
Go figure.
Uhh no I wasn’t talking to you Robert, I was talking to Matthew whose name I apparently thought was Robert.
My bad.
Pah— that is horse puckey Tim! People will watch serialized dramas as long as the storytelling is good. The show has lost viewers- a lot of them because it is hard to follow and week after week of too many things with people we don’t care about. Streamline the storytelling and you can bring people back with clean, clear stories.
Alde, from a screen writing perspective Tim Kring’s episodes are some of the worst on the show. He has always been (going back to CROSSING JORDAN) a “Story pushes the characters,” writer vs characters drive the story writer. You may like some of his episodes but I’d say a lot more do not.
People can bash Bryan Fuller all they want, but the man understands story telling. I bash him myself. PD had too many soap opera stories going on. HEROES however is built for that. Each character should have a story going on (some characters may share a story). So since Fuller understands things like character development and continuity (two things Kring does not) he couldn’t be any worse.
Sure my opinion is subjective, but I can point to parts of Kring’s scripts since season one that you’re specifically taught not to do in film school. Kring has some bad habits.
Again, I don’t think the problem can be solved even with writing. I think the biggest problem is NBC forcing 12 episode mini-seasons that must be completely self-contained arcs with beginnings and endings. It creates all kinds of wacky crap that wouldn’t happen if it were allowed to be more open ended. I understand why it is NBC went down that path, but it doesn’t work and they need to abandon that approach.
i use to LOVE heros BUT ITS NOT THE SHOW I FEEL IN LOVE WITH!!!! i miss save the cheerleader save the world!!!!! bring it back to the good times season 3 sucks to many characters abd to much hiro
Robert, actually that 12 episode arc isn’t a bad idea. It’s pretty smart. If you’re telling good stories that is. You can have open ended things with characters but the story be completed in 12 episodes. This is very much like a comic book. Comics generally have a lot of stand alones and some longer story arcs.
I think the problem really is the writing. Coming up with stories for 12 episode arcs isn’t that big of a problem. Give that limit to some great story tellers and they will provide you with great stories.
It however doesn’t work with this crew. I’m not sure anything would work with this crew.
I watch Heros on DVR, but I’m using the fast forward button through most of the shows. Except for the first season, the show is just bad and not worth the viewing time.
Last episode when Hiro rediscovers his power….they are actually trying to tell the same story all over again just to gain viewers. I can’t believe I’m gonna say this but they actually dumbed down Heroes, how is that even possible? I thought it couldn’t get cheesier anymore but Kring proved me wrong.
Wasn’t that the intention of Season 3 to begin with? I recall watching the premier special episode where one of the actors hinted that ‘this time, HEROES is new and everyone can tune in. We start over.,’. That led to completely uncalled African character who ‘worked,’ as the ’season 3 replacement,’ for the painter guy from Season 1. I could draw the same conclusion from the Hiro situation, too.
I found this attitude wrong and alarming to begin with. Who cares about brand new viewers when you’re loosing current ones week by week?
Ando — still my favorite.
I thought last week’s episode actually contained a gliimer of hope –I thought the scene w/ Elle and Sylar was great. I dunno if it meant anything — but it shore was purty.
I swear, Peter needs to grow the emo bangs back. Ever since he cut them, the show has sucked . . . . .
Wanna save Heroes Kring? Then Kill the Cheerleader…and don’t bring her back. It’s like Smallville. The less we saw of Lana Lang the better the show became. Now I hear she’s back.
NBC did not force Tim Kring to use a 12 episode mini arc. Tim Kring decided to tell the strories in “chapters” this chapter just happens to consist of 12 episodes. The first chapter lasted all of season one. So this has nothing to do with why the show is losing it’s audience. Heroes is failing because you feel like your intelligence is insulted every time you watch an episode. The plot is absolutely ridiculous and they have gone so far beyond the original concept of “ordinary people discovering they have extraordinary abilities” that they have no other option than to try to keep stretching the mess that Tim Kring has already made. I mean Kring’s the one who claims to have never read a comic book, so it shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone that the show is already in the toilet. Perhaps Tim Kring should have spent more time concentrating on his own show rather than bragging about how Heroes was so much better than Lost. He was obviously wrong about that. Heroes had about 6 episodes that were intelligent and really well written, episodes that could be considered on par with Lost. But the rest haven’t been anywhere near as interesting. This season has been a joke and last year was awful as well because Kring never had a long term vision of what the story should be. He’s just winging it, that’s why Heroes sucks!!
Pete, that’s not accurate. What happened was this: in season ONE, there was a huge hiatus (months!) and when the show came back off of hiatus, it didn’t have as many viewers. The writer’s strike mucked things up [in the sense that there was no real hiatus for the show, just the one "chapter"], but for whatever reason NBC was still enamored with the idea of the hiatus, and so it wanted self-contained 12 episode arcs.
That doesn’t mean Kring doesn’t prefer the 12 episode approach, but clearly season one was not written that way. season one was better than anything since, though that doesn’t necessarily mean its because of the 12 episode arc approach.
Rob’s (above, not me) slogan would be “Kill the cheerleader, save the show!” if true, that’s pretty humorous irony.
Sadly, this show will die due to the lack of ratings, though it is the best acted, best written, and best produced show on television. Season 2 was widely panned but was superior to Season 1 in many ways. Season 3 may be the best of all yet the viewership is down. I have no idea why, but I would hate to see this show get cancelled.
Robert Seidman must be really stupid or NBC pays him a lot of money to post on this site.
The strike didn’t kill Heroes, the lawsuit and Tim’s theft of two other artists work and his lack of writing talent did.
Awful show. Simply juvenile and asinine writing. Poorly acted in most cases. No originality. No creativity. Besides the stole paintings, I wouldn’t be surprised if the entire concept was not stolen.