Revenge is a real TV show and, as such, a real TV moment. And while it went out reminding us of how TV can thrill, despite the fact that so much of it underwhelms near daily. We thought about that last week as "TV: The Vanishing CW" resulted in calls and e-mails from friends in various capacities at various TV networks. We thought about that as we heard endless whines about how hard it was to program and how cable was stealing the audience and what would the future of TV be?
The same topics from producers, writers, actors or directors would seem to be whining. Because they don't decide what goes on. But the ones whining can influence, can promote and, in two cases, can get something on the air. And yet they do nothing. It's beyond playing it safe, it's playing it stupid.
Of all the programs we followed last week looking for something to cover -- that's public affairs, news, things that aired on TV and radio and summer programs we were given discs of -- the only thing that stood out besides the Revenge finale was a thirty minute broadcast on Catholoicism in Ireland.
"Things are changing here in Ireland," declared Ruth McDonald at the start of "Ireland's Troublesoome Priests." Some people are snitching on various priests to the the Vatican, saying they're too modern or straying from dogma, and the response is the Vatican ordering priests to cease speaking.
Father Brendan Hogan: It's very distubing and I think a lot of us thought that that kind of attitude, silencing people, saying to people, 'You can't talk about women priests, you can't talk about this, you're disloyal if you ask questions.' I mean, most of our members are in their fifties , sixties, seventies -- as most Irish priests are now. We're not crazy radicals. We're at the very heart of the Church. We want to stay at the very heart of the Church. But we need to ask questions about the direction the Church is taking. We need to ask questions about the views and the expectations of the people who are in our churches. And we need to bring lay people into the very center of our churches. That's what they want. That's the appetite that's been expressed here today. And I think that's the way we should go. There's no Plan B. to the reforms of the Second Vactican Council. And we have lost fifty years and so much of it has been rolled back in terms of the last two pontificates unfortuantely. And I think we're paying the price for it now because people are not engaging with the Church that's being presented to them. They want a different Church . We're not tlaking about fundamental teaching or questioning fundametnal teaching. Church governmance and the way we do our business. And silenceing people is not the way for the Catholic Church to do its business.
A continuing problem with pedophile priests -- March saw the Vatican publish [PDF format warning] "Summary of the Findings of the Apostolic Visitation in Ireland" which acknowledged that "those who should have exercised vigilance often failed to do so effectively" -- and a changing world that the Church seems unwilling to acknowlege have resulted in more and more empty pews across the country. In addition, there are worries. One man told McDonald, "It's really driven by the fact that we're not going to have priests in the future." And while that's one opinion, it's also true that from hundreds of men joining the priesthood each year in Ireland, last year Ruth McDonald explained, saw "just 16 men beginning priestly studies here."
It was riveting programming. Sadly Ruth McDonald's report wasn't part produced by American radio or television, it was part of BBC's radio series Heart and Soul (and click here for that episode specifically).
It did not cost an arm and a leg. Any US network could have done the same sort of programming (including NPR which avoids documentaries to instead provide you with endless patter and prattle). They could have done a summer series on faith, for example, each week looking at a new practice. They could have done so much.
Instead they do so little -- and have done so little for so many years -- that cable channels like USA know to program their best offerings with first run episodes in the summer. Nothing, for example, has ever prevented NBC from having an In Plain Sight, a highly praised USA staple that just wrapped its fifth and final season, or a piece of fluff like Covert Affairs which got higher ratings last season than the last 12 new episodes of The Office. (Covert Affairs kicks off season three on USA July 10th.)
CBS may actually be worse than NBC. It had a solid show in Flashpoint, one that delivered respectable ratings for a show moved all over the schedule. But they let it go to Ion Television which begins broadcasting the first new episode of season five this Tuesday. On top of losing a program they really did need, they cut a show with ratings ABC, NBC and Fox would have killed for. When they realized they'd be cutting the hit show Unforgettable (the decision was known in April), they should have instead made it a summer series and asked the show to go into immediate production for those episodes. Over ten million viewers every week is nothing to sneeze at. And a network willing to cut a show with that many viewers is one suffering from hubris and one soon to find the ground kicked out from beneath it. ABC has stood by their summer scripted drama Rookie Blue and they've been rewarded with solid ratings each summer (third season kicked off last Thursday night).
A lot of bad reality programming -- some anchored by a network head's wife -- does not make for a mixture of programming and does not make for ratings to brag about. The CW is whining that episodic TV does not repeat well. That's hilarious because outside of their attempts at failed sitcoms, all The CW has ever offered is episodic tv. That's where ou have elements that continued. The term "episodic" TV was applied early on to Dallas but took off with Hill Street Blues whose viewers didn't want their police soap opera called a soap opera. Continuing elements have always been an audience favorite. By contrast, loyal viewers have been outraged to see weekly shows rewrite history from episode to episode.
The problem is not that episodic TV does not repeat well. The problem is that with a wealth of entertainment choices, few people want to watch the same thing over and over. There is an argument to be made for reruns. CBS' NCIS has been a year-round staple. People wrongly insist that NCIS is a big hit because of syndication. That's wrong. It's a huge show that appeals to a large number of people. But if syndication alone did it, CBS would have seen the limp when USA started syndicated airings (January 2008). It's the year after that the already hit TV show, sees a huge leap in the ratings. USA exposed new people to the show but the reason it's a hit -- and this is true of the CBS Monday night comedies as well -- is because CBS keeps them on at the same time year round. You know you can count on them. When NBC had a Must See TV, it did the same thing. And people take comfort in that. [Related: After 9-11, NBC's Friends went from 4th ranked for the season to the number one show and a great deal of that was due to the comfort of Friends being there, a much enjoyed show, on the schedule, in the same spot on the same day.] The trick is to figure out which shows viewers will watch repeats of in the summer and also to grasp that you really need original summer programming. It's not really until the 1980s that the networks walk away from original summer programmming.
Without summer programming, you never would have had the 1976 variety show The Jacksons (CBS) or The Gladys Knight & the Pips Show (1975, NBC), or The Johnny Cash Show (ABC, 1969) or The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour (CBS, 1971). And The Johnny Cash Show would go on to the regular schedule and air for three years while that last one not only became a huge hit and earned a spot on the regular schedule where it would run through May of 1974, it ended after four seasons only because Cher wanted it to (Sonny and Cher had separated and would soon divorce).
And does anyone remember why Fred Silverman gave Sonny & Cher the 1971 summer slot? He'd caught their night club act, yes. It was obvious there was something there that would translate well to TV but why he needed them and needed them right away was because he needed a show to fill the hour before each installment of The Six Wives of Henry VIII. CBS was airing the BBC mini-series. Can you imagine any broadcast network today airing a historical mini-series?
You really can't.
It's not that they're not able to, it's that they won't. They won't air a mini-series. They won't air documentaries like the BBC's Heart and Soul. They won't put together summer variety shows.
Do you see why we call it whining, those e-mails and phone calls last week? Yes, USA, TBS, HBO, TNT, AMC and even Ion Television are going to be airing new programming this summer. But if you're not doing anything to counterprogram that, if all you're offering is tacky (and cheaply made) reality shows, do you really have a right to compalin or is it just whining?
Beginning in the 80s, the networks gave up on summer audiences (with the exception of burning off pilots they'd passed on). In the 90s, Fox briefly took advantage of that to turn so-so series Beverly Hills 90210 into a blockbuster hit by airing new episodes in the summer (season two kicked off in the summer, as did season three). Entertainment abhors a vaccum. Along came cable. If the networks want to change that, they're going to have to start with changing themselves.
