Post by caitlen on Sept 7, 2009 0:42:44 GMT -5
Fall TV downsizes
'Glee,' 'Good Wife' among new shows worth checking, but recession taking toll
By Rich Heldenfels
Beacon Journal popular culture writer
Sunday, Sep 06, 2009
In just about any recent year, there have been two ways to look at the new broadcast TV season.
One is to consider, as viewers do every year, whether there is anything worth watching. Are old shows still good? Are new shows worth a tryout?
I will be checking in with some of my mainstays from last year, including Bones, House, How I Met Your Mother, The Amazing Race, Survivor, CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, The Office, 30 Rock, Grey's Anatomy. And there are new shows I think are worth a first and second look, including Glee (effective across the three episodes I have seen), FlashForward, Community, The Good Wife and The Middle.
Finding those shows may not be easy amid the stunts and the time shifts: Ugly Betty is now on Friday, The Mentalist on Thursday, Dollhouse on Friday. Medium is also on Friday, and on a new network: CBS, after leaving NBC. Community, a new NBC comedy, will start its season at 9:30 p.m. Thursday, then move to 8 p.m. Thursday after Saturday Night Weekend Update Thursday ends a brief run and 30 Rock returns.
But in making choices, viewers will have fewer options than they did a year ago. NBC has decided to turn the 10 p.m. hour each weeknight over to a talk-variety show hosted by Jay Leno. And that makes for five fewer hours that the network of ER, Hill Street Blues and Homicide: Life on the Street might have used for scripted dramas and comedies, or even a good reality show.
Yes, there are good reality shows.
And the Leno move illustrates the other way of looking at fall prime time, as a place where the broadcast networks continue to struggle in their search for profitable programming models.
Five prime-time hours of Leno has been rationalized not only by the low cost compared to scripted shows, but also by the potential for more new telecasts (and fewer harder-to-sell reruns) than scripted programming provides.
Saturday nights are the domain of reruns and reality, whether it's Cops or college football, on four networks. Two others do not bother to program the night.
MyNetworkTV, which sprang up to feed the programming needs of stations abandoned when UPN and The WB merged into The CW, uses only two of its five nights for what might be considered original programming. It has WWE Smackdown on Fridays, new installments of Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader? and a mix of old and new Deal or No Deals on Tuesdays, a movie night and two nights devoted to repeats of The Unit and Law & Order: Criminal Intent.
Chuck, due back on NBC in 2010, survives only because of a deal with the Subway sandwich chain. Friday Night Lights goes on because its costs are shared by DirecTV, which then gets to air new episodes first. And neither Chuck nor FNL will make a traditional 22-episode season; instead, they will have shorter runs — which are less expensive for their networks.
But not every strategy has worked. A year ago, The CW tried to maintain a Sunday presence without actually having to program it by leasing the hours to another company to fill. But that company proved no better at programming than many network attempts, and the experiment was disastrously brief.
Still, the economic woes plaguing the nation have hit TV as well. It also faces more and more aggressive competition from cable, and — like print entities — is still trying to figure how to compete with online services and how to make money from offering its products online.
Now and in the future, the business of TV affects what you get to see.
In just about any recent year, there have been two ways to look at the new broadcast TV season.
One is to consider, as viewers do every year, whether there is anything worth watching. Are old shows still good? Are new shows worth a tryout?
I will be checking in with some of my mainstays from last year, including Bones, House, How I Met Your Mother, The Amazing Race, Survivor, CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, The Office, 30 Rock, Grey's Anatomy. And there are new shows I think are worth a first and second look, including Glee (effective across the three episodes I have seen), FlashForward, Community, The Good Wife and The Middle.
Finding those shows may not be easy amid the stunts and the time shifts: Ugly Betty is now on Friday, The Mentalist on Thursday, Dollhouse on Friday. Medium is also on Friday, and on a new network: CBS, after leaving NBC. Community, a new NBC comedy, will start its season at 9:30 p.m. Thursday, then move to 8 p.m. Thursday after Saturday Night Weekend Update Thursday ends a brief run and 30 Rock returns.
But in making choices, viewers will have fewer options than they did a year ago. NBC has decided to turn the 10 p.m. hour each weeknight over to a talk-variety show hosted by Jay Leno. And that makes for five fewer hours that the network of ER, Hill Street Blues and Homicide: Life on the Street might have used for scripted dramas and comedies, or even a good reality show.
Yes, there are good reality shows.
And the Leno move illustrates the other way of looking at fall prime time, as a place where the broadcast networks continue to struggle in their search for profitable programming models.
Five prime-time hours of Leno has been rationalized not only by the low cost compared to scripted shows, but also by the potential for more new telecasts (and fewer harder-to-sell reruns) than scripted programming provides.
Saturday nights are the domain of reruns and reality, whether it's Cops or college football, on four networks. Two others do not bother to program the night.
MyNetworkTV, which sprang up to feed the programming needs of stations abandoned when UPN and The WB merged into The CW, uses only two of its five nights for what might be considered original programming. It has WWE Smackdown on Fridays, new installments of Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader? and a mix of old and new Deal or No Deals on Tuesdays, a movie night and two nights devoted to repeats of The Unit and Law & Order: Criminal Intent.
Chuck, due back on NBC in 2010, survives only because of a deal with the Subway sandwich chain. Friday Night Lights goes on because its costs are shared by DirecTV, which then gets to air new episodes first. And neither Chuck nor FNL will make a traditional 22-episode season; instead, they will have shorter runs — which are less expensive for their networks.
But not every strategy has worked. A year ago, The CW tried to maintain a Sunday presence without actually having to program it by leasing the hours to another company to fill. But that company proved no better at programming than many network attempts, and the experiment was disastrously brief.
Still, the economic woes plaguing the nation have hit TV as well. It also faces more and more aggressive competition from cable, and — like print entities — is still trying to figure how to compete with online services and how to make money from offering its products online.
Now and in the future, the business of TV affects what you get to see.
www.ohio.com/entertainment/57595457.html
'Glee,' 'Good Wife' among new shows worth checking, but recession taking toll
By Rich Heldenfels
Beacon Journal popular culture writer
Sunday, Sep 06, 2009
In just about any recent year, there have been two ways to look at the new broadcast TV season.
One is to consider, as viewers do every year, whether there is anything worth watching. Are old shows still good? Are new shows worth a tryout?
I will be checking in with some of my mainstays from last year, including Bones, House, How I Met Your Mother, The Amazing Race, Survivor, CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, The Office, 30 Rock, Grey's Anatomy. And there are new shows I think are worth a first and second look, including Glee (effective across the three episodes I have seen), FlashForward, Community, The Good Wife and The Middle.
Finding those shows may not be easy amid the stunts and the time shifts: Ugly Betty is now on Friday, The Mentalist on Thursday, Dollhouse on Friday. Medium is also on Friday, and on a new network: CBS, after leaving NBC. Community, a new NBC comedy, will start its season at 9:30 p.m. Thursday, then move to 8 p.m. Thursday after Saturday Night Weekend Update Thursday ends a brief run and 30 Rock returns.
But in making choices, viewers will have fewer options than they did a year ago. NBC has decided to turn the 10 p.m. hour each weeknight over to a talk-variety show hosted by Jay Leno. And that makes for five fewer hours that the network of ER, Hill Street Blues and Homicide: Life on the Street might have used for scripted dramas and comedies, or even a good reality show.
Yes, there are good reality shows.
And the Leno move illustrates the other way of looking at fall prime time, as a place where the broadcast networks continue to struggle in their search for profitable programming models.
Five prime-time hours of Leno has been rationalized not only by the low cost compared to scripted shows, but also by the potential for more new telecasts (and fewer harder-to-sell reruns) than scripted programming provides.
Saturday nights are the domain of reruns and reality, whether it's Cops or college football, on four networks. Two others do not bother to program the night.
MyNetworkTV, which sprang up to feed the programming needs of stations abandoned when UPN and The WB merged into The CW, uses only two of its five nights for what might be considered original programming. It has WWE Smackdown on Fridays, new installments of Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader? and a mix of old and new Deal or No Deals on Tuesdays, a movie night and two nights devoted to repeats of The Unit and Law & Order: Criminal Intent.
Chuck, due back on NBC in 2010, survives only because of a deal with the Subway sandwich chain. Friday Night Lights goes on because its costs are shared by DirecTV, which then gets to air new episodes first. And neither Chuck nor FNL will make a traditional 22-episode season; instead, they will have shorter runs — which are less expensive for their networks.
But not every strategy has worked. A year ago, The CW tried to maintain a Sunday presence without actually having to program it by leasing the hours to another company to fill. But that company proved no better at programming than many network attempts, and the experiment was disastrously brief.
Still, the economic woes plaguing the nation have hit TV as well. It also faces more and more aggressive competition from cable, and — like print entities — is still trying to figure how to compete with online services and how to make money from offering its products online.
Now and in the future, the business of TV affects what you get to see.
In just about any recent year, there have been two ways to look at the new broadcast TV season.
One is to consider, as viewers do every year, whether there is anything worth watching. Are old shows still good? Are new shows worth a tryout?
I will be checking in with some of my mainstays from last year, including Bones, House, How I Met Your Mother, The Amazing Race, Survivor, CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, The Office, 30 Rock, Grey's Anatomy. And there are new shows I think are worth a first and second look, including Glee (effective across the three episodes I have seen), FlashForward, Community, The Good Wife and The Middle.
Finding those shows may not be easy amid the stunts and the time shifts: Ugly Betty is now on Friday, The Mentalist on Thursday, Dollhouse on Friday. Medium is also on Friday, and on a new network: CBS, after leaving NBC. Community, a new NBC comedy, will start its season at 9:30 p.m. Thursday, then move to 8 p.m. Thursday after Saturday Night Weekend Update Thursday ends a brief run and 30 Rock returns.
But in making choices, viewers will have fewer options than they did a year ago. NBC has decided to turn the 10 p.m. hour each weeknight over to a talk-variety show hosted by Jay Leno. And that makes for five fewer hours that the network of ER, Hill Street Blues and Homicide: Life on the Street might have used for scripted dramas and comedies, or even a good reality show.
Yes, there are good reality shows.
And the Leno move illustrates the other way of looking at fall prime time, as a place where the broadcast networks continue to struggle in their search for profitable programming models.
Five prime-time hours of Leno has been rationalized not only by the low cost compared to scripted shows, but also by the potential for more new telecasts (and fewer harder-to-sell reruns) than scripted programming provides.
Saturday nights are the domain of reruns and reality, whether it's Cops or college football, on four networks. Two others do not bother to program the night.
MyNetworkTV, which sprang up to feed the programming needs of stations abandoned when UPN and The WB merged into The CW, uses only two of its five nights for what might be considered original programming. It has WWE Smackdown on Fridays, new installments of Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader? and a mix of old and new Deal or No Deals on Tuesdays, a movie night and two nights devoted to repeats of The Unit and Law & Order: Criminal Intent.
Chuck, due back on NBC in 2010, survives only because of a deal with the Subway sandwich chain. Friday Night Lights goes on because its costs are shared by DirecTV, which then gets to air new episodes first. And neither Chuck nor FNL will make a traditional 22-episode season; instead, they will have shorter runs — which are less expensive for their networks.
But not every strategy has worked. A year ago, The CW tried to maintain a Sunday presence without actually having to program it by leasing the hours to another company to fill. But that company proved no better at programming than many network attempts, and the experiment was disastrously brief.
Still, the economic woes plaguing the nation have hit TV as well. It also faces more and more aggressive competition from cable, and — like print entities — is still trying to figure how to compete with online services and how to make money from offering its products online.
Now and in the future, the business of TV affects what you get to see.
www.ohio.com/entertainment/57595457.html
