If only urban legend were true, things wouldn't be so bad. But,
contrary to gossip, when Fred Silverman was in charge at NBC, there was
never a season where he took an axe to every one of the network's shows
that had debuted that fall.
The CW gutted their net-lette. Only one show that debuted last fall will return this fall --
Hart of Dixie. And that's actually the least of their problems. Last week,
we did an overview of ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox and left out the CW -- intentionally as Jim noted in his "
A note to our readers." The reason we did that is you can't group the CW with the others.
Not
because it's a net-lette and not an actual network -- or not just
because of that. When NBC was saying publicly that they would stick
with
The Jay Leno Show, we told you they wouldn't (while news
outlets were saying they would) and we told you why. That's because
we're apparently the only ones in the world aware that NBC may own a
few stations but the bulk of its programming airs on affiliates.
Unlike, for example,
The New York Times, we spoke to affiliates
and that's how we found out that the Leno show would be pulled. The
affiliates couldn't take the bad ratings hit every night and were
letting NBC know that they would lose that hour on the affiliate
stations. With Leno tanking nightly, they had no lead-in for their
local nightly news, where they make money on commercials, and the
affiliates weren't going to stand for it.
While we
were telling you about those realities, news outlets were quoting NBC
execs stating things like the show was so cheap to make the ratings
didn't matter. The ratings did matter to the affiliates. More than
any other network or net-lette, the CW is a story of affiliates.
The only reason the CW has remained on the air the
last three years was due to affiliate contracts. Those were long term
contracts and many will be up for renewal in the coming years. We
spoke to affiliates that are part of the Tribune Company and we spoke
to affiliates that weren't. No one is happy with the ratings. If things don't improve quickly and dramatically, many plan to walk.
It wasn't supposed to have been turned out this way. The CW was
born from the ruins of The WB and UPN. It was to replace them both and
had its pick of the shows airing on both. But it made choices that
telegraphed it had no clue what it was doing. It chose not to pick
either
Eve or
Charmed.
Eve would have fit in with the Sunday comedy block they were going for. And maybe it wouldn't have failed with
Eve as opposed to, for example,
The Game? Regarldess,
Charmed delivered a Sunday audience for the WB. Without
Charmed, The CW couldn't deliver Sunday ratings and, eventually, just stopped trying.
The scheduling choices themselves telegraphed that this wasn't going to be a network for women in scripted shows.
Gilmore Girls was wrapping up its final season and it was paired with the UPN's chronically low-rated
Veronica Mars which, even with a
Gilmore lead-in, still couldn't get better ratings than it had on UPN.
This time last year, the net-lette was convinced it had figured out how to bring back the
Charmed audience:
The Secret Circle.
But the Kevin Williamson show started off shaky and got much, much
worse. There's a campaign to bring the show back and we wish it well
but the claiming of "millions" of fans is a bit hard for a show that
failed to deliver "millions" in the ratings. Among the biggest
problems was the prudish drip Cassie who, sadly, was the show's
centerpiece.
The Secret Circle wasn't the new
Charmed, it was a
Dawson's Creek
update but the show lacked even one appealing male lead and all the
actresses were more gifted than the series lead Brittany Robertson and
each time the show went back to her and away from a subplot, the energy
was sucked out of the room.
The Secret Circle was a weekly train-wreck and it's surprising it lasted as long as it did. They still don't understand the
Charmed vibe as evidenced by the new programs offered this fall:
Emily Owens, M.D.,
Arrow and
Beauty and the Beast. In January, they'll begin airing the most likely to bomb
The Carrie Diaries.
We'll start with the last one. This hour long show will replace
Gossip Girl and follow the adventures of Carrie Bradshaw. "Great," you may think, "I loved
Sex in the City!"
Grasp that this show doesn't pick up where the series or the films left
off. No, it wants to go back in time. Because what do kids love more
-- teen girls are the target audience -- than the 80s?
If you found Carrie shallow -- and many did -- after 'insight' and 'realizations' from several seasons of
Sex in the City,
grasp that you're now going to see her without even that. In what
world is a character popular with women in their 30s and 40s nearly 15
years ago, the ideal for a new series attempting to lure teens in?
Now
it might work. And, if it does, who knows, maybe The CW can build a
show around Dorothy Zbornak and Blanche Devereaux in the 1940s?
Meanwhile
the old Beauty and the Beast fairy tale gets a(nother) modern-day
update. They're putting this on Thursday nights and it's a sign of how
bad things are ratings wise for The CW that most will be noting it's
paired with its hit. Hit?
The Vampire Diaries had its highest
ratings in season one. In fact, this season's finale? Half as many
people watched it as watched the show's series debut back in September
2009. When that's your hit, you've got serious problems. Meanwhile,
Beauty and the Beast
is a a risk but, at least there, if it pays off, it will be worth it.
The Carrie Bradshaw show is going to alienate fans of the original
series (it won't be able to follow the bible for Carrie created by the
previous show).
Arrow's another dumb move.
Arrow's hoping to bring back the
Smallville magic.
Smallville was
about high school Clark Kent learning about his super powers and
eventually becoming Superman. Series star Tom Welling was in his
mid-twenties when he began playing underage Clark. Stephen Amell will
be 31 when
Arrow starts airing this fall and viewers see him playing
Oliver Queen the Green Arrow. So the pre-teen and early teen audience
is in doubt before a single episode airs. Add in that Green Arrow is
not a comic book character that brings a huge following with him. So
this show is really going to need to be smart and inventive. The
creative talent offscreen doesn't make for high hopes. For example, we
loved
Eli Stone and
No Ordinary Family but they didn't make for ratings successes.
Even worse for The CW is the fact that they want to pair this new Wednesday night show with
Supernatural..
See Friday, with networks starting to walk away from the night, was
becoming the CW's best night, most dependable, in terms of competing
with the big three and Fox.
Supernatural teamed with
Nikita
could have made gains this season. Fridays The CW was becoming a real
threat to Fox. Now they're going to kick the night off with a dying
reality show about fashion models and pretend that's compatible with
Nikita which will move into the second hour time slot. In addition to screwing up Friday nights, it's asking a lot to expect
Supernatural to go up against
Modern Family (among others) on a new night.
This
is a big deal to affiliates. They like both shows and they hoped they'd
be kept together next fall so that they could build on the
action-adventure audience they were carving out together. They would
have been happy to stick with
Ringer as well but they're not too crazy
about the renewal of
Hart of Dixie. What The CW has apparently never
learned is that the affiliates will love teen operas provided they
bring in the ratings. When they don't, you're dealing with a ratings
loser and a show that most adults -- including those running the
affiliates -- won't watch.
Not being fond of the lot-of-love-little-medicine mix of
Hart of Dixie, they're already underwhelmed by
Emily Owens, M.D. They're not crazy about the title, question Justin Hartley as a male lead since he couldn't parlay his Green Arrow on
Smallville
into his own superhero TV show and are, frankly, confused as to why
Meryl Streep's daughter (Mamie Gummer) was cast in the lead on a CW
show?
"Any hopes I had for this fall," we were told, "vanished at the upfront."
When
you're at the bottom, you really need to dream big. When you're at the
bottom, you should be shooting the dice and then some.
Affiliates
have ideas for shows and don't feel they're listened to. They wonder
why there's no animated programs? If nothing else, the WB half of the
equation should be able to put together a "Wonderful World of Warners."
Basically, a program utilizing the classic Warner Brothers cartoons.
In other words, no new content at all. That actually does seem like an
easy enough thing to pull off and beneficial to Warner Brothers. Would
Disney be Disney today without
The Wonderful World of Disney
airing on network TV from 1954 to 2008? (The show aired on ABC, CBS
and NBC.) That much talked of CIG film starring Bugs Bunny, Daffy
Duck, Tweety Bird and others doesn't seem to be going anywhere but, if
it ever does, wouldn't airing some of the classics on network TV
had helped build awareness for the film?
There's also a feeling that while everyone else was flirting
with music -- either singing or dancing -- The CW let it all pass by.
Four different people described a program that sounded a lot like what
MTV used to offer with
Unplugged -- a bare bones music show.
When your ratings remain in the tank you really need to please
the affiliates especially when the contracts will be expiring in a few
years. "Instead," said one, "we're getting Meryl Steep's daughter. I
don't think when she was starting out anyone saw her as a potential TV
star so I'm left wondering how her lookalike daughter can be seen as
one?"
