And What Works

To talk about the flip side of what might be cancelled, I though I’d go over some of the shows that have been successful. I should point out that I don’t watch all these shows.

Dancing With The Stars

We’re really talking about a show that plays upon a long line of celebrity shows ever since Battle of the Network All-Stars. But it’s important to look beyond the celebrities. The people watching this show are generally older people who come from a time when people socialized by going out dancing. And these older viewers are now the primary TV audience, not the 18-49 group that’s popular in the ratings. Although there’s alot of younger viewers watching with their parents, and a show like this is a true "family" show, that is it’s one the who family can watch together. And dancing is particularly popular with female viewers. This also holds true for shows like America’s Got Talent, American Idol and the like.

NCIS and NCIS:LA

Basically, it’s military drama. And for the most part it’s conservative military drama. NCIS:LA is less milary about it’s approach and more designed to appeal to younger viewers, but it still takes a realistic approach to the military. Although far less miliary than it’s predecessor JAG, it still shows military personal behaving as they normally would and not running around shooting everyone all the time. But it’s also the sort of show that’s more male oriented and spends it’s time concetrating on plot rather than using character for filler. And unlike too many dramas, it’s not afraid to show humor and people interacting as they would in real life.

Bones

Like NCIS it manages to mix interesting characters and humor with an intriguing storyline. Each character has a clear and well developed personality. Unlike too many other shows, you can tell each character apart. And because each character is so well developed, character-based humor works well. When dealing with a subject as serious as death all the time, it’s important to be able to lighten up the story.

The Mentalist

Similarly, The Mentalist presents us with characters we like and feel safe with. And unlike Castle, which does fairly well itself, there inclusion of Patrick Jane in the story is reasonably sensible. He’s working as a psychological consultant. Although his antics are ones that should get him fired.

Glee

A huge hit for FOX, it’s basically High School Musical the TV series. But it’s not a very good musical series. It doesn’t have songs, it has song samples. And they don’t try to use original music but depend upon established hits. And they don’t even have all that much music. It’s far more drama than musical. But it attracts teen and pre-teen girls, which I think you would find is it’s largest audience.

CSI, L&O and their spin-offs

Stock police dramas. Both draw audiences because mysteries are interesting. Although don’t expect to see any realistic police behavior or even realistic budgets. Unfortunately, as with many long running shows, some viewers watch just because they use to enjoy the show and feel the need to watch each and every single episode if for no other reason than to brag that they’ve watched each and every single episode. Frankly, it doesn’t matter what the show is called because it’s very generic. It’s just as easy to use an existing name such as CSI and give it a new location than it is to come up with a brand new show with a brand new title. But using stock titles ensures that a certain amount of the audience will watch the show even though it’s a completely different show.

 

It should also be noted that last Friday NBC launched School Pride and it’s already in trouble. Going against Smallville and Medium, it drew less than 3 million viewers and less than 1 percent of the young adult crowd watching. It’s likely that nobody even knew it was on. Whether they even give it another week will require waiting and seeing. They could do just as well, if not better, with a L&O repeat in the same slot. I was sort of interested in seeing this show, although NBC would have been smarter to keep the show for mid-season. It’s almost as if they intentionally buried it.

I’m also inclined to drop Chase and No Ordinary Family, or at least hold off watching them until some time later like the Holidays. Chase becomes dull fast and there’s no need to take an interest in any character, which all seem to be cookie cutter copies of each other. Sure there’s the difference in physical features but any of the lines could come from any of the characters. Although I can’t say that it won’t last long. No Ordinary Family is a show I would like to like, but so far it’s just bored me. It seems to spend more time dealing with the family issues and little time really using their powers effectively or creatively.

Also worth mentioning is that NBC picked up The Event for a full season. While it’s not the greatest hit, it has done better than most new NBC shows. And what’s more important is that it’s been sold to 200 countries, so even if NBC looses money from broadcasts they’ll more than make it up with foreign sales.

 

I also want to mention that Blue Hot Gossip’s 13 Days of Halloween are now up at http://bluehotgossip.blogspot.com .