We warned, before it ever aired, that turning over five hours of prime time to The Jay Leno Show would be a huge, huge mistake. We warned in November that the affiliates were telling NBC that the show gets dropped or they're going with other programming. So we're not surprised that at the start of 2010, the Water Cooler finally caught up with us. Nor were we surprised by the very personal attacks on Jay Leno. Those attacks, please understand, had little to do with Jay. It had more to do with the Water Cooler set being yet again caught with their pants down. They couldn't speak freely -- if they'd wanted to or known what we knew -- because advertising dollars pay their salaries. Though we didn't suffer that hostage syndrome, they did. And it was necessary for them to attack Jay in order to make it appear they were no one's puppets.
So when we say NBC's the loser of the last two years, we're sure the Water Cooler set would immediately point to Leno and nod their head. Leno's not the problem. Leno's show was a disaster. That's not the issue. The issue is NBC doesn't know what the hell it's doing.
Let's talk about CBS because this May may have been CBS' last good month. We know the Sheen family and we honestly do not hate Charlie. So we're going to set him aside and encourage others to engage in that conversation. But he's far from their biggest problem come fall 2010. That's when they unload a lot of shows that a lot of frat boys think other people will like. Aging frat boys, we should say. Do they like them? No, they say, but young men will.
CBS canceled some ratings winners (The New Adventures Of Old Christine most infamously) and it's set to air shows that even they don't like. Do you get why we're saying next fall may not be good for CBS?
That's then, this is now. Right now CBS is doing some very smart things. The Good Wife, for example. Yeah, they renewed, that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about the fact that they're airing it Tuesdays. You'd think after NBC's disasters and the emergence of NCIS as a ratings juggernaut, other networks would have examined how that happened? Excuse us, how the hell that happened?
For one thing, the former Pax aired repeats constantly introducing it to new viewers. But the main reason the show became what it is? CBS kept it on Tuesdays. No, not just in the fall and spring, year round. Wherever you were, you could tune on each Tuesday and there it was. TV ratings have long demonstrated that TV viewing habits are, indeed, habits.
By contrast, NBC destroyed itself each summer. Their hit show was Heroes with Chuck highly promising. Both shows could have increased viewers. But NBC refused to air them in repeats. It was a very stupid decision and one that NBC shareholders should be howling over.
On the most basic cost issue, by only airing Heroes episodes once, NBC was paying far more per episode than they should have. (Repeating them at least once in the summer would have meant NBC was paying for two showings of each episode.) When Heroes was worth watching (year one), it would have benefitted from those strong episodes being available over the summer where new viewers could have seen them and old viewers would have been encouraged to tune in at the same time each Monday for those shows. But NBC took it off each summer.
The effect of that move was most obvious and immediate with Chuck. It would take the start of season three of Heroes for the damage to show but Chuck was showing the damage in season two. A promising and engaging show could have used the summer to grow and garner further word of mouth. NBC didn't give it that and Chuck was benched from it's May episode until its fall premeire. When it returned, viewers didn't really care or were unaware because it took several weeks before Chuck got close to the numbers it closed the first season with.
This slow catch up happened with the start of season three as well. You'd think NBC would have caught on but they've renewed Chuck for season four, have it on the schedule at its same time but they're not airing it once this summer. This despite the fact that Chuck is the sort of show that screams summer (spies, car chases, fight scenes).
Though NBC has repeatedly demonstrated it is unable to learn, it may not have to. CBS may destroy its lead all by itself. They're messing with the Monday night schedule, sending The Big Bang Theory to Thursdays where CBS has offered no comedy prior. And yet CBS has refused to do the needed thing: Show The Big Bang Theory twice a week -- on Mondays where everyone expects it and on Thursdays where they're going to have to go to see it this fall.
With NBC having no clue and CBS losing their marbles, maybe it will be the year for ABC? One smart move they're making currently is airing Happy Town. Were we running ABC, we'd take the remaining episodes and turn them into 'event programming.' Meaning we'd grab them and air them Monday through Friday in the last hour of prime time for one week. Happy Town's highly watchable and a strong show. It could have grabbed viewers if ABC knew how to market it. They saw the ratings for the first episode and gave up hope. What they should have done -- the same thing they should have done with Eastwick -- was given the show a push. Take the first two episodes and turn it into an ABC Saturday night movie. That would have provided a slightly different platform, an audience that would have been mildly curious about a show they previously had no interest in and could have generated some word of mouth.
But the networks really don't know how to do that anymore and, as we've already noted, CBS is proud to be airing shows that they think someone might believe in . . . even if they themselves don't.
Some readers don't believe in the way we (Ava and C.I.) cover TV. They're newer readers and they're furious that, digging through archives, they can't find a review of The Wire or some other overly Water Coolered garbage that we are, frankly, thrilled to have avoided. When this site started, the target audience did not have cable TV. So the decision was made that we would review broadcast television only.
Broadcast television will remain our focus. However, this summer we will include reviews of a number of shows airing on basic cable. Due to pressure from new readers?
Hell no. Due to pressure from friends with Hulu and responses from older readers. The week before last, Ty was on vacation. So we read all the e-mails here and we saw the new readers asking for cable programming. We were already being asked by friends with Hulu to do something and we pitched it to our older readers as a one-summer thing: If Hulu offers the show for streaming (and Hulu has closed captioning option, by the way), would you be okay with us covering non-broadcast shows? All replies indicated that was no problem.
So you'll see some of that this summer. This summer. Not from now on. The death of broadcast TV has been lamented since the first screwball thought The Sopranos was changing his life. (We wish.) The reality is that broadcast TV actually had a resurgence -- little noted -- in the last two years and that it continues to be the most widely viewed platform.
