NBC’s 2012-13 Season

NBC broke with precedent this year and presented their new shows on Sunday afternoon rather than on Monday morning. The network which was in trouble for the past few years announced seven new comedies, five new dramas and four “alternative” programs. The network will have at least an hour of sitcoms on four of the six nights that the network programs. Thirteen shows were renewed, but only six of last season’s fourteen entertainment programs are coming back. I don’t have much hope that this year will be the start of a comeback for the one time “must see TV” network.

Cancelled: Chuck, Prime Suspect, The Playboy Club, Free Agents, Harry's Law, Are You There Chelsea?, Best Friends Forever, The Firm, Bent, Awake, Who Do You Think You Are?, The Sing-Off

Moved: Community, Up All Night, Whitney,

Renewed: Grimm, 30 Rock, Law & Order: SVU, Parenthood, Parks and Recreation, The Voice, Dateline NBC, The Office, Rock Center with Brian Williams

New: Go On, The New Normal, Animal Practice, Guys With Kids, Revolution, Chicago Fire

Held until mid-season: Smash, Fashion Star, The Biggest Loser, Celebrity Apprentice, 1600 Penn, Save Me, Next Caller, Do No Harm, Infamous, Hannibal, Stars Earn Stripes, Howie Mandel’s White Elephant, Surprise With Jenny McCarthy, Ready For Love

Complete Schedule (All times Eastern, New Shows in capitals)

Monday
8:00-10:00 p.m.: The Voice
10:00-11:00 p.m.: REVOLUTION

Tuesday
8:00-9:00 p.m.: The Voice
9:00-9:30 p.m.: GO ON
9:30-10:00 p.m.: THE NEW NORMAL
10:00-11:00 p.m.: Parenthood

Wednesday
8:00-8:30 p.m.: ANIMAL PRACTICE
8:30-9:00 p.m.: GUYS WITH KIDS
9:00-10:00 p.m.: Law & Order: SVU
10:00-11:00 p.m.: CHICAGO FIRE

Thursday
8:00-8:30 p.m.: 30 Rock
8:30-9:00  p.m.: Up All Night (moved)
9:00-9:30 p.m.: The Office
9:30-10:00 p.m.: Parks & Recreation
10:00-11:00 p.m.: Rock Center with Brian Williams

Friday
8:00-8:30 p.m.: Whitney (moved)
8:30-9:00 p.m.: Community (moved)
9:00-10:00 p.m.: Grimm
10:00-11:00 p.m.: Dateline NBC

Sunday
7:00-8:15 p.m.: Football Night In America
8:15-11:00 p.m.: Sunday Night Football

Sunday (after the end of the Football season)
7:00-8:00 p.m.: Dateline NBC
8:00-9:00 p.m.: Fashion Star (moved)
9:00-10:00 p.m.: Celebrity Apprentice
10:00-11:00 p.m.: DO NO HARM


Revolution asks the question of what would happen if the lights went out – permanently. Fifteen years after all electrical power suddenly stopped  people are living what appear to be quieter and simpler lives lit by candles and lanterns. All is not what it seems though. When a young woman’s father, who seems to have had something to do with the blackout, is murdered it leads to an unlikely alliance between two young people to find answers to what happened in the past and in hopes of reclaiming the future. From producer J.J. Abrams and Eric Kripke, and starring Billy Burke, Tracy Spiridakos, Anna Lise Phillips, Zak Orth, Graham Rogers, J.D. Pardo, Giancarlo Esposito, David Lyons, Maria Howell, Tim Guinee and Andrea Roth.

Go On is a comedy starring Matthew Perry as Ryan King, a sportscaster who recently lost his wife in an auto accident. He’s ready to go back to work but his boss insists that he go to counselling. He wants to get back to work as quickly as possible and sets about disrupting his therapy group. He has no interest in healing and his irreverent attitude to “healing” might be exactly what the group needs. Also stars Laura Benanti, Julie White, Suzy Nakamura, Khary Payton, and Allison Miller.

The New Normal looks at the new American family. Brian (Andrew Rannells) and David (Justin Bartha) are a happy and committed couple. The only thing missing is a baby and it seems like that’s something that won’t happen. That is until Midwestern waitress Goldie (Georgia King) and her eight year-old daughter come into their lives. Goldie is broke but fertile and is willing to serve as a surrogate for Brian and David. Ellen Barkin also appears as Goldie’s small-minded mother.

In Animal Practice Justin Kirk stars as top New York veterinarian Dr. George Coleman. George has a way with most kinds of animals…except the human kind. George used to be involved with Dorothy Crane (no actress named for the part) who is the new manager of the Crane Animal Hospital. Dorothy is smart and ambitious but her romantic past with George and her total lack of experience with animals threaten to cramp his style, which includes playing poker with the clinic’s resident capuchin monkey. Also stars Tyler Labine, Bobby Lee and Betsy Sodaro.

They say it’s easier to become a father than to be one. Guys With Kids from Executive Producer Jimmy Fallon looks at three men in their 30s who are determined to hold onto their youth despite their new responsibilities as fathers. Chris (Jesse Bradford), Nick (Zach Cregger) and Gary (Anthony Anderson) undertake the daily challenge of taking care of their babies while maintaining a social life. Tempest Bledsoe and Jamie Lynn Sigler also star.

Chicago Fire from Law & Order producer Dick Wolf looks at the high intensity life of the firefighters at Chicago’s Firehouse 51. The men and women of the station’s Engine Squad, Rescue Team and Paramedics are under pressure to perform and make split second decisions in deadly situations. When the station loses one of their own tensions boil over between the leader of the Rescue Squad, Lt. Kelly Severide (Taylor Kinney) and Lt. Matthew Casey. But when a call comes in, personal rivalries are set aside to get the job done. Also stars Eamonn Walker, Charlie Barnett, David Eigenberg, Monica Raymund, Lauren German, Teri Reeves, and Merle Dandridge

NBC’s midseason comedy 1600 Penn is about an ordinary family with an extraordinary home – The White House. They have all the problems of most families – a son who moves back  with the family, kids who are smarter than their teachers, and a stepmom trying to win over the kids. The President’s eldest son (Josh Gad), code named “Meatball” by the Secret Service is the Gilchrist Administration’s greatest liability, and also the glue that holds his family together. Bill Pullman plays President Pullman while Jenna Elfman plays his wife. Also stars Martha MacIsaac, Andre Holland, Amara Miller, and Benjamin Stockham.

In Save Me Midwestern housewife Beth (Anne Heche) has a near death experience after choking on a hero sandwich. She soon discovers that this event left her with a special gift: she has a direct line to God. Her husband Tom (Michael Landes) is dismissive and his mistress (Alexandra Breckinridge) is stunned to learn that her lover’s wife is a prophet. It’s an odd choice to use a desperate housewife as God’s messenger on Earth, but they do say that He moves in mysterious ways. Also stars Heather Burns and Madison Davenport.

Next Caller pairs Dane Cook as foul-mouthed satellite radio DJ Cam Dunne who is partnered with a young, former NPR host. New co-host Stella Hoobler (Collette Wolf) is 26 and ready to take on the world. In this case that means trying to elevate “Booty Call with Cam Dunne” from the sort of locker room humour that Cam has always done. Jeffrey Tambor, Joy Osmanski, and Wolé Parks co-star.

Do No Harm is a modern take on the Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde story. Dr. Jason Cole (Steven Pasquale) is a highly respected neurosurgeon who has it all. He also has a deep dark secret that has suddenly re-emerged, an alternate personality. Every night at the same time Jason Cole changes into “Ian Price”, a seductive devious borderline sociopath. Jason has been able to keep “Ian” from reappearing for many years thanks to a powerful experimental sedative, but now the serum has stopped working. Not only is “Ian” back but he’s out for revenge…on Jason. To protect everything he holds dear, including his patients, friends, coworkers and even the woman he loves, Jason has to find a way to stop Ian once and for all. Alana De La Garza, Mousa Kraish, Michael Esper, Ruta Gedmintas, and Phylicia Rashad co-star.

In Infamous Detective Joanna Locasto (Megan Good) goes undercover to investigate the Bowers family. When Joanna’s childhood best friend Vivian Bowers dies of an apparent drug overdose, everyone accepts that it was the end result of her hard partying lifestyle. Everyone that is except FBI agent Will Moreno (Laz Alonso). He sends Joanna back to Vivian’s home where her family worked as servants. Joanna is quickly re-embraced by the Bowers family and rediscovers the allure of the family’s wealthy an luxurious lifestyle, as well as reigniting a romantic relationship. She also uncovers the family’s dark secrets, secrets which put Vivian’s life in danger. Victor Garber, Tate Donovan, Katherine La Nasa, Neil Jackson and Ella Rae Peck co-star.

Hannibal takes characters from Thomas Harris’s novels and puts a new twist on them. William Graham (Hugh Dancy) is a gifted criminal profiler with the ability to empathize with anyone, including psychopaths. However when the mind of the criminal he’s pursuing is too complex for him, he turns to one of the most highly regarded psychiatric minds in the country: Dr. Hannibal Lecter. What the audience knows (and not just from our previous exposure to the character) and Graham doesn’t is that Lecter is a serial killer. The NBC press release does not name an actor for the role of Lecter. Bryan Fuller is the writer and one of the Executive Producers.

Stars Earn Stripes takes stars from various fields and exposes them to different forms of pressure. In this new reality-competition series from Dick Wolf and Mark Burnett, nine celebrities are brought together at a secret training facility where they will be challenged to execute missions inspired by real military training exercises. Money raised through the competition will be donated to various veterans charities. According to the NBC press release, “these stars will be tested physically, mentally and emotionally – and emerge in awe of the men and women who do such tasks on behalf of our country every day.”

Howie Mandel’s White Elephant is a version of the popular party game. One player will pick an unmarked box from a studio full of prizes. The next player has to decide whether or not to steal the box from the first player or pick another box and hope that  it is worth more. When the contest gets down to the final two competitors, they each face a choice of whether to share or steal. If both select “Share” they share the prizes that the have won. If one chooses “Share” and the other choses “Steal”, the one who chose “Steal” gets all of the prizes. But if both choose “Steal” they both win…nothing.

Eva Longoria is the Producer of Ready For Love, a unique approach to dating shows because every eligible woman in America is a potential participant. Longoria has personally selected three impossibly handsome “Grooms.” Three of the best Matchmakers in the world will then screen women who appear at mass auditions. Those selected by the Matchmakers will then participate in a journey that, “will combine the best elements of in-studio competition and story-based reality.” Each episode will see some of the women eliminated by the Matchmakers until the three “grooms” and the final three “brides” will decide if they’ll get engaged, get married or just live “happily ever after.” Bill and Gulianna Rancic are the hosts.

Surprise With Jenny McCarthy has McCarthy springing “the surprise of a lifetime” on ordinary people. As each episode develops, the audience gets to know the story of the people involved, making the pay-off all the more emotionally satisfying.

Comments:
NBC seems to be putting a lot of product out there, presumably hoping that at least some of it will stick, and I’m not convinced that much will stick. The network appears to be relying a lot on their comedy line-up, with comedies on four of the six nights that they are programming. This may be a mistake. NBC’s Thursday night comedies – The Office, Community, Parks & Recreation, and 30 Rock – are critical successes, but the fact the fact is that for the most part the shows have poor ratings. And of the new comedies introduced in the 2011-12 season only two – Whitney and Up All Night – have survived to get a second season. I’m not sure – based on the descriptions provided by the network (I haven’t looked at most of the clips from the shows yet) – how many of the new comedies will survive more than a few episodes. I have watched the clip of 1600 Penn and quite frankly it looks dismal.

Turning to the network’s new drama’s they seem to be a very mixed bag. Revolution is reminiscent of so many shows that we’ve seen in the not too distant past, from Jericho to Flash Forward to The Event that it’s hard to think that it will work. After the failure of Awake I’m not sure that the audience will be too accepting of the premise of Do No Harm. As for Hannibal I think the concept of a profiler working with someone that we know – and he doesn’t know – is a serial killer. The question is whether we have been exposed too much to Hannibal Lecter (and Anthony Hopkin’s portrayal of the character) to accept the TV version of the characters. They might have been better off starting with a new character without the baggage. The two dramas that interest me the most are Chicago Fire and Infamous. I think there’s a lot of potential in a series built around firefighters, and Chicago is an ideal setting , maybe partially because of the movie Backdraft. As for Infamous, it’s success may be more problematic. It’s obviously a show with a long story arc, which is always a risk. Done right it could work; done wrong it could be this year’s Ringer.

Some miscellaneous thoughts on the schedule: NBC won’t be running two cycles of Biggest Loser this year. Based on the ratings this past year it might be a good idea to reduce it to one cycle in a season just to give it a rest. They’re also reducing Celebrity Apprentice to one hour from the current two. If you’re going to have Celebrity Apprentice on the schedule cutting it to an hour – at least for as long as Do No Harm and/or Fashion Star lasts – is a great idea. At two hours the show seems terribly bloated. NBC’s decision to run the low rated Rock Center With Brian Williams in the third hour of Thursday basically abdicates the time slot to ABC and CBS. They are giving up on Thursday night after the comedies just the way they gave up on the third hour when they put Jay Leno on in primetime. Finally, I think I’m going to miss Who Do You Think You Are? which I couldn’t have imagined when the show debuted. It’s a damned sight better than the reality drek – Stars Earn Stripes, Howie Mandel’s White Elephant, Ready For Love and worst of all Surprise With Jenny McCarthy – that NBC has available instead.

On the whole I am unimpressed with this line-up.

Polls Closed - NBC Cancels Free Agents

The second – or maybe the third – series cancelled this year and the first comedy is…

Free Agents

NBC has cancelled Free Agents after four episodes. The American remake of the frankly profane (not to mention nudity filled) series from Britain’s Channel Four lasted four episodes in the United States despite the presence of Anthony Stewart Head who appeared in the original. Just as a matter of interest, the American series lasted 2/3s as long as the British version. For the foreseeable future, Free Agents will be replaced by reruns of NBC`s new comedy Whitney.

Also cancelled today (and the reason why I can’t really decide whether Free Agents was the second or third new series cancelled this year) was The CW`s reality series H8R created and hosted by Mario Lopez. Apparently The CW`s viewer (and given the ratings the network as a whole has been pulling this year the lack of an ‘s’ there is only barely an exaggeration) didn’t care to see “celebrities” confront the people who claim to hate them and convert them into fans.

I didn’t poll on reality shows, but the voting on the comedies was quite lively, with 25 votes being cast. All but two of the shows got votes. FOX`s New Girl and ABC`s Last Man Standing (which debuts next week) had no votes. Suburgatory from ABC, Up All Night from NBC and FOX animated comedy Allen Gregory (which has not yet debuted) had one vote each. CBS`s How To Be A Gentleman had two votes while the network’s 2 Broke Girls and Free Agents both had three votes. FOX live action sitcom I Hate My Teenaged Daughter got four votes and NBC’s Whitney and ABC’s Man Up had five votes each. Last Man Standing, Allen Gregory, I Hate My Teenaged Daughter and Man Up are all yet to debut. Additionally Up All Night and Whitney have been given full season orders from NBC, 2 Broke Girls has received a full season order from CBS, and New Girl has a full season order from FOX.

Update: CBS has announced that production on How To Be A Gentleman will be moving to Saturday nights effective immediately while Rules Of Engagement, which had been scheduled to air on Saturdays will be moving back to the time slot following The Big Bang Theory on October 20th. Production on How To Be A Gentleman will halt after the completion of the show`s ninth episode. According to Deadline Hollywood, "That is effectively a cancellation for the sitcom with the Saturday run qualifying as a burn-off, though CBS never officially cancels a series before the upfronts." For our purposes, while the series has aired only two episodes, the fact that the remaining seven episodes will in fact air, even if it is in the Saturday "death slot," still qualifies as airing more than the four episodes that Free Agents got.

Second Update: CBS has pulled the episodes of How To Be A Gentleman from Saturday nights after a single episode. While the network still has six episodes in the can and won't announce the final fate of any of its shows until the May upfronts this amounts to the cancellation of How To Be A Gentleman with three episodes having been aired, one fewer than Free Agents.

And We Have Winner….Er Loser

The first show and the first drama to be cancelled this season is…

The Playboy Club

The show was cancelled after three episodes, so it is possible that  another show from this fall season will be cancelled in two. Nothing currently airing really screams out for a two episode cancellation however. In terms of the poll, four of you got it right, saying that The Playboy Club would be the show cancelled earliest. However it was tied with Charlie’s Angels (and anecdotally, it seems to me that most of the votes for Charlie’s Angels came after the show started airing), a show which could tie with The Playboy Club. Five other shows each got one vote: Revenge, Unforgettable, Prime Suspect, Grimm, and Hart Of Dixie.

The Playboy Club, which was the first series picked up by NBC Entertainment President Bob Greenblatt for the 2011-12 season will be replaced temporarily by reruns of NBC’s Thursday series Prime Suspect (which is also not setting the ratings on fire) until October 31st when NBC new newsmagazine Rock Center With Brian Williams on October 31st. Since the original plan was to replace The Playboy Club with the new musical based series Smash in the winter, it is likely that Rock Center’s time in the Monday third hour time slot will itself be temporary.

New Polls (2 of ‘em) Up

I couldn’t set them up as one this time around, and I couldn’t use my usual polling service but these are a pair of polls that I really like running. As always with these polls the premise is simple (like their author!). Simply choose the name of the show that you think will be cancelled after the fewest number of episodes. Note, I didn’t say which show would be cancelled first. The reason is that since some shows debut a week or two (or more) after everything else it is possible for a show to be cancelled after which airs fewer episodes than the first show to be cancelled chronologically. For example, lets say that Show A debuts on September 19th is cancelled three weeks after it debuts. It is possible that Show B, which debuts on October 3rd to be cancelled on October 18th, fifteen days after it debuted. Show A was cancelled first, but Show B aired fewer episodes.

This poll will run until October 16th OR until the first show in each category is cancelled, whichever comes first. As always, feel free to post comments on why you voted the way you did with this post.

Double Header Poll Results – What Will Be The First New Comedy Cancelled In the New Season... Plus!

We have a couple of results to post. First up we know know the identity of the first drama to be cancelled this season. And the winner...for being the first loser... is FOX`s Lonestar. The series, which received a grand total of one vote in our previous poll was cancelled after two episodes and will be replaced by FOX`s Lie To Me, which held down the Monday second hour slot for most of the summer. Bye-bye Lonestar; you were hailed by the critics as one of the best new shows of the year but the public didn`t bother to watch.

Moving to the current poll, despite the fact that I don`t normally write much about comedies in this blog, the category of the first Comedy to be cancelled in the new TV season has turned out to be one of the most popular that we`ve had. Seventeen votes were cast and with one exception, CBS`s Mike & Molly, all of the series got at least one vote. In fifth place with one vote (6%) was $#*! My Dad Says, from CBS. In fourth place with two votes (12%) was NBC`s Outsourced, while in third place with three votes (18%) was FOX`s Running Wilde. In second place with four votes (24%) was the other new FOX sitcom, Raising Hope. But the winner that you think is going to be a loser, with seven votes (41%) is ABC`s Better with You.

We had one real comment on the shows mentioned in the poll (there was a second comment that didn't make a whole lot of sense in light of the shows that were mentioned). Ben wrote: "I'm gonna guess Raising Hope. The premise of a guy raising a child after the baby's mother gets executed is just begging to get cancelled." Was it executed or just incarcerated? Either way, for reasons that I get into, I'm inclined to agree with you.

Now the first thing that you have to know is that the only one of these sshows that I`ve actually seen is the first episode of $#*! My Dad Says so as always I'm not on top of the comedy line-up. That said, I don't really think that this is a particularly good year for comedies. Mike & Molly is a standard "couple getting together" show with a gimmick – in this case the gimmick is that the couple are overweight. This could be good or a disaster depending oon how they deal with the weight issue. $#*! My Dad Says is following the sort of formula that was made most famous by The Odd Couple – two basically incompatible guys living under the same roof – combined with an "old guy who is free to say anything he wants because he's old" element. It works but it's hardly original. Better With You is another show that is hardly going to set the world on fire with originality. But that doesn't make it a bad show. In fact I like the two lead actresses, Jennifer Finnegan and Joanna Garcia, quite a bit. Even Outsourced isn't that innovative. Think of it as The Office with a fish out of water quality added. It is, dare I say it, reasonably innocuous.

That leaves us with the two FOX comedies. Strike one on these shows is that they're on FOX. How long has it been since there's been a really successful live action comedy on FOX? I'm thinking back to Married With Children. And no, I don't count Arrested Development. It may have been artistically brilliant but it stayed on the air despite ratings that would have had most shows cancelled in under thirteen weeks. There've been other shows that stayed on FOX for more than a single season, but those have also had people scratching their heads. Of the two shows, Running Wilde seems the more attractive show to me. It does have some ties to shows that have gone before in that you've got a basically unsympathetic protagonist, but the concept is reasonably fresh. With the right lead-in and the right nurturing I think it could do well enough, or at least become a show that the network would want to keep around despite less than strong ratings. The problem is that the show has Raising Hope as a lead-in, and everything that I've heard about that show has me wanting to run the other way hard and fast, starting with the presence of Cloris Leachman. I didn't like Leachman in Mary Tyler Moore, I didn't like her in Phyllis and I didn't like her in Dancing With The Stars. The premise of the show makes me cringe and some of the things that I've heard about the show (the vomiting scene) are just too gross. In a battle between unoriginal and gross-out people tend to watch unoriginal. I think the first comedy to be cancelled is going to be Raising Hope. The real question may be whether or not it takes Running Wilde with it.

New Poll - Which Of These Shows Will Be The First Comedy Cancelled In The New TV Season

Better late than never on this I guess. At least nothing's been cancelled yet, so I might as well poll on which new Comedy will be the first to be cancelled. As I mentioned in the last poll, unless a comedy really really doesn't work they tend to get a fairly good chance to prove themselves. The problem of course is that it is almost inevitable that a network will put out a comedy that someone at the network must think is funny but which the great American public doesn't get, or doesn't want to try to get, and they die a fast and spectacular death. Does anyone remember Kelsey Grammer's last show, Hank for any reason other than the way it died a quick and well deserved death? I don't think so.

What I want to know is what you think will be the first drama to disappear from the line-up (and for the purpose of this poll I'm likely to count "indefinite hiatus" as a cancellation, at least if it comes from FOX). In this case you should probably pay attention to previews that you've seen – a lot easier to do if you're an American – and online "buzz" about the shows. And as always please feel free to comment on why you think a show is going get the Viking funeral (with the unaired episodes being loaded aboard a boat and burned).

Deadline for this poll will be September 28^th.

(Apologies for not getting this poll up as quickly as I had hoped for. There was a bit of a crisis in something else that I do online, and I had to help in my own little way in restoring something resembling equilibrium. It took some time and there were a lot of semi-angry words. I will be stepping back from my involvement in this for a while after the 25^th of this month, but until then I can't tell how much I'll be accomplishing in this coming week.)

Poll Results - Which Of These Shows Will Be The First Drama Cancelled In The New TV Season?

All right, we have the results of the first of two polls about which new shows will be the first to be cancelled this season. There were thirteen votes cast for the shows you think will be the first of the sixteen new dramas to be canned. Unlike other polls I won't be listing the shows that didn't receive any votes. There are too many of them. Instead, here are the eight shows that actually got votes (hour indicates the first, second or third hour of prime time since, as the folks at the PTC keep reminding us, prime time is different in different time zones). With one vote (7%) each are Lone Star (FOX, Monday, second hour), Detroit 1-8-7 (ABC, Tuesday, third Hour), and Undercovers (NBC Wednesday, first hour). And in first place, with two votes each (15%) are Chase (NBC, Monday, third hour), No Ordinary Family (ABC, Tuesday, first hour), My Generation (ABC, Thursday, first hour), Nikita (The CW, Thursday, second hour), and Outlaw (NBC, Friday, third Hour).

In other words, gentle readers, there's no real consensus among the thirteen of you who chose to vote. I'm not sure if this is a good thing in that you think that the shows are all reasonably good, or whether it's a bad thing in that you think that these are the worst of a pretty bad lot. I've got to say, I'm not too sure myself. I think that it may very well be that a lot of what we'll be seeing next week, when most of the new dramas debut, is a floodtide of mediocrity. There are two, possibly three shows that might, might, rise above the crowd in terms of quality, but the bitter truth is that quality doesn't always – actually doesn't ever – trump popularity in the world of network TV. For the record, in my opinion those two or three shows are going to be The Event (NBC, Monday, second hour), Detroit 1-8-7 (ABC, Tuesday, third hour) and Blue Bloods (CBS, Friday, third hour). I might have added Lone Star (FOX, Monday, second hour) but there is something about that show that just seems to rub me the wrong way.

Before I weigh in on that I think will be the first drama to be cancelled I want to look at the comments that this poll generated. Ben had this to say:

I'm guessing My Generation. It sounds kind of interesting, but youth-oriented shows fail more often than they succeed. See Life as We Know It, Get Real, etc.

I'll talk about My Generation in a bit, but for the moment let's just say that this show has a ton of problems beyond it being "youth oriented" starting with its opposition in the time slot.

Todd Mason had this to say about his choice, Chase:

Going with historical trends...NBC has had a history of killing whatever they put up against CSI MIAMI in its crib.

At which point I reminded Todd that CBS had moved CSI: Miami to Sunday night and that Chase will be going up against Hawaii Five-0 which really could be worse. Todd responded:

Indeed. I'd forgotten CBS had decided to bury that thing on Sunday. But, yes, being against H50.3 and CASTLE, which is a sleeper with a devoted audience, will probably not help the apparently rather dull CHASE out. A cursed slot for NBC, maybe.

But Ben ain't wrong, either. However, CW or tween cable might try to grab it if ABC decides against it.

I'm trying to think of the last time that NBC had something that lasted more than a season in the Monday third hour time slot. Okay, I wasn't thinking about it, I had to look it up. The answer is Medium(!?) in the 2005-06 season. Still, that's a long dry spell and I don't think that Chase will break the trend. But I don't think it will be the first show cancelled either. In fact I think that it might limp through most of the season before expiring.

Looking over the shows that are in contention - based on your votes - for the dubious honour of being the first drama to be cancelled, the two shows that stand out to me as "vulture bait" in the drama category are My Generation and Outlaw. My Generation has a really tough time slot to try to conquer – the comedy combo of The Big Bang Theory and $#*! My Dad Says on CBS, Community and 30 Rock on NBC, Bones on FOX and even The Vampire Diaries on The CW. That right there gives it a tough hill to climb, but then you have to add on the subject matter. As Ben pointed out, "youth-oriented shows fail more often than they succeed" and while I'm not absolutely convinced that this show is as "youth oriented" as he seems to think I'm really concerned that the subject matter isn't going to click. The ensemble cast isn't going to help, particularly when it seems like you aren't going to get too much overlap between cast members. We've seen plenty of examples where shows with ensemble casts which tell the stories of individual ensemble members have fallen flat fast.

The other show that I think will be gone fast is NBC's Outlaw. The show has the advantage of Jimmy Smits as the lead, although we all remember how well Cane did a couple of years back when Smits was the lead. The time slot is a bit of a problem in that it is going up against CBS's Blue Bloods (with Tom Selleck) and ABC's aged news magazine 20/20, and NBC offers a weak lead-in with Dateline NBC while CBS has CSI: New York. But that's not why I think Outlaws will be gone quick. I think that the big problem for Outlaw is that people are going to have a tough time accepting the premise. I don't think they'll believe that a Supreme Court Justice would suddenly give it all up to set up in private practice to work for the downtrodden. And based on the fact that Smits's character is a womanizer and a gambler makes you wonder how he managed the confirmation hearings to get onto the bench – any bench – in the first place. Combine all of these factors – time slot, lead-in, Smits versus Selleck (in terms of actor popularity), the apparent absurdity of the premise, and just the way that CBS "gets" the sort of audience that they're dealing with on Friday evenings and I think that Outlaw is likely to be gone by the end of thirteen weeks.

I hope to have the poll for the comedies up sometime tomorrow … after I get back from the casino.


 

New Poll - Which Of These Shows Will Be The First Drama Cancelled In The New TV Season

I have a new poll up, although because of the number of shows that I'm asking about I can't use my usual polling client which limits me to a maximum of ten answers.

The question this time around is what the first freshman drama to be cancelled this season will be. With the new TV season starting in two weeks – although The CW will be debuting their two new dramas this coming week – the inevitable question is what will survive and what will go down hard and fast. If past performance is any indicator the first shows to be dumped will be dramas because dramas tend to be more expensive to produce than comedies. On the other hand, if a comedy really really doesn`t work it will be out pretty quick too. And that`s at least part of the reason why I`m not asking about all of the new shows. My next poll will focus on the comedies.

It`s another case of wanting to know what you think will be the first drama to disappear from the line-up (and for the purpose of this poll I'm likely to count "indefinite hiatus" as a cancellation, at least if it comes from FOX). In this case you should probably pay attention to previews that you've seen – a lot easier to do if you're an American – and online "buzz" about the shows.

As always, if you feel so inclined, please include an explanation of why exactly you think that a particular series is heading for the chopping block like an unpardoned Thanksgiving turkey. You might even include a date by which you expect the show to be entering TV Tartarus. Deadline for this poll is September 14 at 5:30 p.m.

On The Fourth Day Of Christmas

On the fourth day of Christmas my true love – Television – gave to me... four shows from last season that I wish were still on this season.

Okay, first of all this isn't the "fourth day of Christmas" post that I had originally planned. What I did have planned was a series of gripes about Canadian TV and the difficulties that being a Canadian imposed on people who love TV – like the fact that the best premium cable, and some basic cable, shows don't show up on basic cable here for months or years after they air in the United States. I could have reviewed Deadwood and Rome, but what would be the point; they had already been cancelled. And please don't ask me to subscribe to the premium channels to see these shows unless you are willing to provide me with a guaranteed $28 each and every month to pay for them. And don't even get me started on people who embed HULU clips on their websites that I can't see because I'm not an American. At least HULU tells me up front. Some other sources make me watch a commercial first and then tell me.

I know, this all sounds a bit self-centered. More to the point writing it was increasingly difficult for me, so I dropped it, but what to replace it with. I very nearly wrote "On the fourth day of Christmas my true love – Television – gave to me... nothing at all." I think I could have spun that into a piece about the industry but it kind of loses the numerical flavour. But then I thought of a great old standby, the "wrongly" cancelled show. Networks have all kinds of reasons for cancelling shows of course but in the light of what we got from them instead, maybe they shouldn't have been so hasty with what they did dump.

Moonlight – CBS: CBS cancelled a show that usually finished first in its timeslot and replaced it with The Ex-List. More to the point they cancelled a show about a vampire in love with a human (and vice versa) six months before ($150 million gross in four weeks), and less than four months before HBO put True Blood on the air. Yeah I know there were fan protests, and I know that after what happened with Jericho (which the network totally mishandled, but that's beside the point) CBS might be just a little wary of on a show that might be described as a "cult favourite," but come on, can anyone really say that the show wouldn't have performed better than The Ex-List? No, I didn't think so.

Women's Murder Club – ABC: This was the show that was usually on opposite Moonlight an alternated winning the time slot with it. The show, about four women involved in the criminal justice system – a cop, a coroner, an assistant district attorney, and a reporter – did reasonably well in the ratings and was one of the few new ABC shows to come back after the Writers Strike, and did so with little apparent erosion in the ratings. The show was not the unanimous critical success that Pushing Daisies or to a lesser extent Dirty Sexy Money and Eli Stone were, but in terms of audience numbers it was close to the latter two series. The time slot might have hurt it; Grey's Anatomy on Thursday night might have been a better fit for the show than 20/20 or the weak and often moved Men In Trees. Certainly Women's Murder Club would have done better coming out of Grey's Anatomy than Big Shots did last season or Life On Mars did this season.

Las Vegas – NBC: Yeah, I know it was expensive, and yeah I know that it was coming to the end of its string but it was one of the great "guilty pleasures" and it deserved to be treated better than NBC treated it in what turned out to be the final not quite a season. Particularly when you remember that this season NBC had Crusoe, My Own Worst Enemy and Knight Rider, none of which can be classified as "great guilty pleasures."

1 vs. 100 – NBC: This one was really hard to decide on. There are a lot of people who would have said Journeyman but it wasn't a show that I saw much of, and I could make arguments for FOX's New Amsterdam (because I liked the concept; it reminded me a bit of Highlander) or Shark (because it's fun to watch James Woods chew scenery), the CW's Aliens In America (which I never saw, but had good ratings – well good by CW standards – until it came back from the strike and let's face it the CW needs all the help they can get). In theory at least I could even make a case for the CW's Life Is Wild on the grounds that it was closer to family fare than most of what is on any network and even at its worst in terms of ratings it did way better than all of the MRC shows that the CW put on combined. But no, I went with a game show, 1 vs. 100 and I did it because as game shows go it was more knowledge based than something like Deal Or No Deal and despite all of the tinkering that NBC did with the scoring system (instead of money levels for each question where you got that amount for each mob member eliminated they changed it to ten levels were you had to eliminate ten mob members to collect that amount of money) and the composition of "the Mob" (putting permanent mob members in, some of whom wouldn't have survived the old system – I'm looking at you Dahm Triplets and you Oscar the Grouch) it was always an enjoyable show to watch.

On The Second Day Of Christmas

On the second day of Christmas my true love – television – gave to me....two cancelled shows.

This piece isn't going to be as long as I had planned on it being. Word ate the original posting. I know I had saved it – in fact there's a nice file titled On The Second Day Of Christmas
2008 on my list of recently worked on Word files. Too bad it links to a blank page. (Almost as bad as the fact that I'm a day of Christmas behind – I didn't count Christmas Day itself as a day of Christmas and even if I did I was nowhere where I could post so...) So basically what I'm going to do is give you the Readers Digest condensed version of the part of the post that I had actually finished when this poxy program lost what I had written.

While there have been a number of series cancelled in the 2008-09 season so far, only The Ex-List from CBS and Do Not Disturb from FOX were actually cancelled and pulled immediately from the line-up. Other cancelled shows, notably My Own Worst Enemy, Pushing Daisies, Eli Stone, and Dirty Sexy Money were allowed to air most or all of the episodes that had been produced at the time that the cancellation order was given (apparently there are three episodes each of Pushing Daisies and Dirty Sexy Money that will air in the Summer 2009). The cancellation of Do Not Disturb and The Ex-List are not surprising. The "humour" in the FOX comedy had all the subtlety of being bludgeoned with a sledge hammer, while The Ex-List hinged on people buying into a premise that I can't see as being anything but absurd (a woman believes a "psychic" who tells her that if she doesn't find her "soul mate" – a man that she had previously been involved with – within a year she will never find happiness) even though many professional critics were enamoured with the show.

No, the interesting part of this season's round of cancellations is that aside from these two the series weren't immediately pulled from the line-up. Even the series that Media Rights Capital did for The CW were allowed to continue their runs after being cancelled (by MRC) until the network ended their deal with the content provider. This is in vivid contrast to previous seasons. The strike affected season of 2007-08 aside, the recent trend has been to pull shows from the line-up quickly. In the last pre-strike season, 2006-07, the five networks cancelled six scripted shows that had aired five episodes or less. And who could forget shows like Emily's Reasons Why Not (1 episode), Just Legal (3 episodes, with five more burned off in the summer), Love Monkey (3 episodes on CBS with the remaining five airing on VH1), Head Cases (2 episodes), Heist (5 episodes), Inconceivable (2 episodes), or Book of Daniel (3 episodes). These shows were all from the 2005-06 season.

The reason for the stark contrast between this season and previous seasons is not entirely clear. One explanation might be the as yet unrealised threat of a Screen Actors Guild strike (the likelihood of which seems increasingly low), or it could be one of the effects of the current economic situation – networks can't afford financially to effectively throw away the money they invested in a show by not airing all of the episodes they've paid for without a damned good reason. In the case of The Ex-List it is probably the realization that they would have better ratings (and consequently be able to charge better advertising rates) with reruns of their stand-alone procedurals.

One effect of this reluctance to immediately pull shows from the line-up has been that viewers have been given more of a chance to view shows. Many viewers – or at the ones who comment on various blogs and message boards – claim that they want new shows to "get a fair chance." Some even go so far as to state that they won't watch new shows when they air because of the fear of quick cancellation (an example of a self-fulfilling prophecy if I ever heard one; if people don't watch new shows out of fear that they might be cancelled then the ratings will be low and those shows will be cancelled). The downside of the networks not pulling shows immediately is that it seems to disprove the theory that a show will gain audience if given time to "mature." Instead viewership for most shows seems to decline or at least stabilise at a lower level when the shows "mature." Leaving aside the argument that the ratings system is "broken" (usually made without any suggestions on how to fix the system), the cancellation of low rated shows is a constant reminder that broadcasting is first and foremost a business.

Reflections On The Midseason - FOX

(I had intended to get this series of reflections out quickly. Unfortunately I've been feeling really really tire over the past little while. So tired in fact that I've been literally taking naps before going to bed. Anyway I may not get another instalment of this series out until the new year.)

With all five of the American broadcast networks having announced their midseason schedules I thought it was a pretty good opportunity to look at the shows that are been replaced and the shows that replacing them and at the general successes and failures of the networks.

Cancelled: Do Not Disturb, 'Til Death (on hiatus)

Planned Hiatus: Prison Break, Don't Forget The Lyrics, Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader?

Episodes Ordered:
Fringe (full 22 episode order), Prison Break (2 episodes)

Moved:
House, Bones, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles

Returning:
24, American Idol, Hell's Kitchen, Hole In The Wall

New Shows: Lie To Me, Dollhouse,

Lie To Me sounds a lot like The Mentalist, at least based on the description in Wikipedia: "Main character Dr. Cal Lightman (played by Tim Roth) detects deception by observing body language, and uses this talent to assist law enforcement with the help of his group of researchers and psychologists." No doubt this won't be as clear cut a copy as this makes it sound. Still it sounds like a "safe" series, and its location in the time slot following the Wednesday episode of American Idol should make it fairly safe. Debuts January 21, 2009.

Dollhouse is the latest series that Joss Whedon is doing for FOX. Debuts February 13, 2009. The series focuses on a service that provides people – known as "Dolls" who can be given any personality you like and do any job that you want. Once they finish their jobs their minds are wiped and they're sent to a dormitory/lab known as "The Dollhouse." The series focuses on one "Doll" played by Eliza Dushku who is beginning to overcome the mindwipes and is developing self-awareness. Debuts February 13, 2009

Commentary: FOX has what might be described as the most schizophrenic (in popular if totally incorrect definition of the term – split personality) of all the networks. While most networks might debut new series at the midseason break, most tend to try to keep a consistent schedule from the end of September to the end of May. And when it comes to a very successful reality format, the networks try to get at least two cycles in during that period. Most importantly most networks don't break the rule that says that you don't play musical chairs with a show's time slot when the show is performing successfully. Not FOX. I swear that somewhere in the headquarters at FOX an executive once said, "Rules? We don't need no steenkeeng rules!"

I mean take a look at the shows that they're moving around the schedule. In its last original episode (December 9^th) House finished second in total viewers (13.90 million) and first in the 18-49 demographic (5.6/15). In its last original episode (November 26^th), Bones finished first in both total households and the demographic (9.43 million, 2.5/8). The only weak show of the three that are being moved around is Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, which was fourth in its time slot in total viewers and in the demographic (5.3 million, 1.9). The two game shows that are going on a "planned hiatus" (the only term that I can think of that fits what FOX is doing), Don't Forget The Lyrics and Are You Smarter Than A Fifth Grader? are both doing relatively well in the ratings considering that they're on Friday nights after all, finishing second in total households in their most recent airings and in the demographic (the latter numbers – 1.3/4 for Are You Smarter Than A Fifth Grader? and 1.4/5 for Don't Forget The Lyrics – look weak in comparison to most nights but are strong for a Friday). Conventional wisdom, the "rules" if you will, says that you keep these shows in the line-up. In other words, don't mess with success.

And then there's 24 and American Idol. I mean let's face it, what network decides to bring back a full 24 hour season of a proven hit series in February. Well okay there's ABC and Lost but that only happened after a ratings scare in the third season, but this will be the fourth season of 24 to debut in January. The aim is to run the entire series without interruption. As for American Idol, Fox treats it differently from just about any other successful returning reality series by airing only one cycle of the show per year. And, the network has been doing that since the very beginning. By comparison CBS will have aired 18 cycles of Survivor in about the same amount of time that FOX aired eight cycles of American Idol. While there is probably a sound logistical explanation for this in terms of organizing venues for auditions and just attracting talent, there is something to be said for this approach in terms of keeping the concept relatively fresh and not wearing out its welcome. While the show no longer absolutely dominates the timeslots that it airs in the way it did when it first showed up when it effectively killed The West Wing and so scared CBS that they pushed the third season of The Amazing Race into the summer, the show still regularly wins its time slot handily. What the situation would be if they followed accepted wisdom and ran the show twice a year is certainly something to ponder.

The most recent example of FOX breaking the rules is their experiment with "remote free TV." In a world where networks seem determined to cram as many commercials into an hour as the law will allow, FOX has tried an experiment with fewer commercials per hour in two of their shows, Fringe and the upcoming Dollhouse. Costs are made up by charging a premium rate for the commercials that are broadcast, but presenting them in such a way – 60 and 90 second breaks in most cases – that people are less tempted to either fast forward through the commercials or use them as an opportunity to channel surf. I suppose the jury is still out on "remote free TV;" Fringe at least seems to be successful in terms of getting eyeballs in front of the set – 8.69 million viewers in its most recent original episode (3^rd in timeslot against The Mentalist and the finale of the latest cycle of Biggest Loser) and a 3.7/9 in the 18-49 demographic. To be sure it lost viewers out of House (leading Marc Berman to describe it as "overrated") but given the nature of the series it's still a good performance as what is essentially a quirky science fiction show with light dash of police procedural. And while I don't believe that the "remote free TV" concept is a primary reason – or even a secondary – reason for what success the show has had, it is a comforting stand down from the incessant expansion of commercial time into actual story (not to mention time for an actual theme song). It's something that people always say they want but is it something that they'll actually support now that they get it.

FOX has had a promising but less than stellar first half of the season. The loss of the two Wednesday sitcoms left the network without a live action comedy half hour. In truth it sometimes seems as if the people producing comedies for FOX are reaching for the lowest common denominator in their shows at a time when other networks are aiming a little higher in terms of concept and quality of humour (the return of According To Jim notwithstanding). A show like Do Not Disturb had the potential to be so much better if the producers had gone with a different approach to the situation and to the humour. But that, it seems, isn't the "FOX way."

This was the visible problem. The less obvious problem was the ratings of some of their other shows. Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles and Prison Break were consistently fourth in their time slots at between 5.5 million and 6 million viewers and weakness in the 18-49 demographic. And yet these two shows represent one aspect that seems to be new to FOX either since the Writers Strike or since the arrival of Kevin Reilly as head of programming at the network; an attitude of patience and allowing a show time to either find its audience or prove that it is a failure. In the case of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles in particular, the show will be getting a full second season even if it is relocated to Friday night. Another problem that FOX doesn't talk too much about is the situation on Thursday nights. The original plan appears to have been to run the Japanese style game show Hole In The Wall in the first hour to be followed with an episode of the Gordon Ramsay series Kitchen Nightmares. However Hole In The Wall turned into a hole in the ratings and was quickly ushered out of the time slot to be replaced by a second repeat episode of Kitchen Nightmares. And yet Hole In The Wall will return to the FOX line-up once the NFL season ends.

So what are FOX's prospects for the remainder of the season? The combination of House and 24 should be very strong for FOX on Monday nights which would seem to be turning into a very competitive night (not for me though, what with bowling and all). The network may well penetrate the top three with this combination, although I'm prepared to argue that another cycle of ABC's Dancing With The Stars combined with the CBS comedies will keep the shows from making it into the top two. And even though it's been flagging I wouldn't expect American Idol to fall out of the top two on Tuesday night and I'd be so bold (and wise – when I predict something I like to know it's a sure thing before I predict it) as to suggest that American Idol will have no trouble winning the Wednesday first hour and give a good boost for Lie To Me, unfortunately probably to third place where it will knock out my beloved Life.
Bones should do well in the first hour of Thursday, at least until the new season of Survivor cuts in, but I doubt it will help Hell's Kitchen too much. As for Hole In The Wall coming in to replace the Football overrun opposite 60 Minutes and America's Funniest Home Videos...or even the CW's reruns of Jericho it has to be the most absurd thing I've heard of in a while. It's only going to last as long as it takes someone to actually see ratings for it.

That leaves us with Friday night and the much anticipated Dollhouse. For a die hard "Whedon-ista" like me this whole business of Joss taking another show to Fox is worrisome and to have that show wind up in the so-called "Friday Night death slot" makes it even worse. I'm sure that there are people out there right now getting ready to send dolls (or maybe doll heads) to the Fox offices to protest the cancellation of the show even though it hasn't aired yet. Visions of Firefly dance in our heads, and taken in the context of what happened to Firefly that is not a good thing. The show's lead-in, the less than spectacular performing Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, doesn't exactly fill us with confidence either. And yet I'm going to present a couple of reasons why I expect the show to do "well enough" to survive. By "well enough" I mean probably a second place finish in the ratings. The first of these reasons is that Joss feels confident with the current management at FOX – Whedon has said something to the effect that "these guys" aren't the same ones that interfered with and then cancelled Firefly (I just wish I could find the exact quote). By these guys Whedon was primarily referring to Kevin Reilly. And when you remember that Reilly is the guy who carried Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip for a full season, renewed Friday Night Lights for its second season despite the ratings, and stood up for 30 Rock, Whedon's confidence starts to make sense. As for putting the show in the "Friday night death slot" I'm going to suggest a look at the competition. CBS has Flashpoint which was a big success during the summer and will probably win the time slot, but what are ABC and NBC putting on in the second hour of Friday? Well, from ABC we get Supernanny which does badly in both the ratings and the demographics. As for NBC, they'll be running thirteen episodes of Friday Night Lights. As much as I love the show I can't see this doing well, given its performance last season and the fact that the thirteen episodes have already been available on the satellite service DirectTV (and not done very well). The net result is, I suspect (or at least hope), a second place performance for Dollhouse, always assuming of course that the show is at least halfway decent. Unless the show is really really bad, I don't think that we'll see the sort of quick cancellation that has made FOX infamous

While I don't think that FOX will perform as well as CBS for the remainder of the season, the network does have a stable and successful line-up on most nights that should see the network doing very well indeed.

Reflections On The Midseason - CBS

With all five of the American broadcast networks having announced their midseason schedules I thought it was a pretty good opportunity to look at the shows that are been replaced and the shows that replacing them and at the general successes and failures of the networks. And I decided that I might as well start with CBS.

Cancelled: The Ex-List

Episodes Ordered: Eleventh Hour (18 episodes), The Mentalist, Gary Unmarried, Worst Week (16 episodes)

New Shows: Flashpoint (Friday, second hour), Harper's Island (Thursday, third hour once the run of Eleventh Hour concludes), Game Show In My Head (Saturday first hour).

Flashpoint isn't really a new show. This is the second season of the Canadian made police series that debuted this past summer, and did very well in the ratings. The show stars Enrico Colantoni, Hugh Dillon, Amy Jo Johnson, David Paetkau and deals with the situations faced by the "Strategic Response Unit" of a major – if unnamed – Canadian city, presumed to be Toronto. Returns January 9, 2009 (replacing The Ex-List).

Game Show In My Head is a hidden camera game show from Ashton Kutcher, hosted by Joe Rogan. Contestants perform five stunts for the public for $5,000 each, before a bonus round in which they can double their money up to $50,000. Based on the Saturday time slot and the decision to show episodes back to back, it's likely that this show is being burned off. Starts January 3, 2009.

Harper's Island is described as a 13 episode "mystery event" (the sort of thing that back in the day we used to call a mini-series) dealing with a series of murders of people attending a "destination wedding" on an isolated island off the coast of Seattle. The show is described as "Scream meets 10 Little Indians" and stars Harry Hamlin, Adam Campbell, Elaine Cassidy, Katie Cassidy, Richard Burgi and Jim Beaver (who is well known to those of us who hung out at the rec.movies.past-films newsgroup). Debuts April 9, 2009.

Commentary: If I were CBS President Les Moonves I'd have a huge grin plastered on my face and only part of it would be because I'd be sleeping with Connie Chung Julie Chen. Of course I'm not Les Moonves (and not sleeping with Connie Chung Julie Chen dammit), but I think you get my point. While CBS's line-up is hardly flashy or innovative, the facts speak for themselves. Of five new series that debuted in September for CBS only one has been cancelled is The Ex-List which lost between 30% and 40% of Ghost Whisperer. Even at that it finished second in its time slot in its third and final outing, and would probably have won the time slot had it stayed there. And yet what happened on Friday nights once The Ex-List was removed from the line-up is illustrative of the strength of the CBS line-up. The final episode of The Ex-List had an audience of 5.33 million viewers and a rating in the 18-49 demographic of 1.5/5. In the weeks that followed CBS aired two repeats of NCIS (11.21 million, 2.3/8 in the demographic in the first week; 11.26 million, 2.4/7 in the second week), a Price Is Right: Salute To The Troops special (7.31 million, 1.7/5), a repeat of The Mentalist (11.62 million, 2.4/7), a second – repeat – episode of Ghost Whisperer (5.97 million, 1.5/4), and a repeat of Numb3rs (8.45 million 1.9/6). What this seems to illustrate is that CBS has a line-up of dramas that can readily be repeated and can draw an audience when they're being repeated. I think it can be argued that having a show on in the same place every week, regardless of whether the episodes are new or repeats, is a way to build win fan loyalty. If nothing else, in this rocky economy it is one way of keeping costs at an acceptable level. Instead of creating new shows (that almost inevitably fail) to fill hiatuses in the long dark periods between sweeps periods, it has to be cheaper to run repeats, and if those episodes come from a previous year or two and thus aren't fresh in people's memory, well so much the better.

Moonves isn't doing badly in the comedy business either. Of the four half hour comedies on Monday night, about the only weak spot – and in this case weak is relative – is Worst Week. Worst Week manages to pull 10.6 million viewers (first place) and a rating of 3.5/8 in the 18-49 demographic this past Monday against the first half of the Boston Legal finale, Heroes (which barely won the demographic), Privileged and Prison Break. In just about every other time slot and by any other network that would be regarded as a strong performance, but Worst Week follows Two And A Half Men (15.65 million viewers, 5.2/13 in the demographic) meaning that Worst Week is losing about a third of the earlier show's audience. But while most networks seem to have trouble carving out one night with comedies – or even one successful comedy – CBS has made a bridgehead on a second night with the Wednesday night combo of the veteran New Adventures Of Old Christine and rookie Gary Unmarried. They aren't winning the night but they are pulling solid second place ratings against the time slot winner, FOX's Bones (and this is in spite of me panning Gary Unmarried – so much for the "power" of internet critics!). Net result is the cancellation of ABC's Pushing Daisies and a cut in the order for Knight Rider from twenty-two to seventeen episodes.

And as far as Reality shows go, sure they've had more than their share of summer misfires over the past few seasons, but they've still got Survivor and The Amazing Race performing well, an d in the case of the latter likely to perform better once NBC's Sunday Night Football is out of the way.

Of course Moonves has worries – probably. There has to be some concern about how the audience will react to William Petersen's imminent departure from CSI and there has to be some concern over audience erosion from established shows. Indeed there has to be some concern over what will replace some of the established shows. CSI is in its ninth season, Without A Trace is in its seventh season, as is CSI: Miami. NCIS and Cold Case have both been on for six seasons. Relatively speaking Criminal Minds is something of a "baby" on CBS, having only been on for four seasons. Inevitably, and more likely sooner rather than later for some of these shows, an end will come – not necessarily because of bad ratings but because the "important" people on the show decide it is time to move on, or because someone at the network decides that it isn't cost effective for them to keep the show on the air even though it's not only holding its own in the ratings but may even be winning its time slot. The question of whether or not to be innovative, or indeed whether or not the network can afford to take the risk of being innovative. Or whether, as Maureen Ryan of the Chicago Tribune said on Aaron Barnhart's TV Barn podcast, "In response to all the crisises that we were just talking about... [indistinct] they're just going to batten down the hatch and make nine different Mentalists." Does CBS replace a CSI (for example) with an innovative show that pushes the envelope a bit or does the network stick with what has made them a success. Of course that's for the future. For right now of all the networks, CBS is sitting prettiest.

Short Takes – November 4, 2008

As a lot of you might know, in the past I used to do a regular series of posts called Short Takes in which I wrote about TV related news and gave my opinion on stuff. I sort of gave up on it, primarily because I got behind in grabbing stuff for the column and it got to be a bit of a hassle, and mostly because, by the time I had the column written it was usually old news. I can't say that I really miss writing those pieces but there is a bit of a hole, so I've decided to try to revive the idea. Well sort of. This is an experiment undertaken largely because I want to write about someone that I don't know much about who is in a situation that I don't know much about, but what I know about him, mostly his writing, I basically like and what has happened to him I basically don't like.

Another TV Critic Fired: Eric Kohanik, one time president of the TV Critics Association has been fired as editor and TV critic for the TV Times booklet that appears in most of the CanWest newspapers, including my local rag, the Saskatoon StarPhoenix. According to Bill Brioux, former TV columnist for the Toronto Sun who currently does a weekly column for the Canadian Press (a column that is not seen locally) and produces the blog TV Feeds My Family the fault isn't with Kohanik's work but the general malaise that has infected newspapers in general: "TVTimes, one of the more handsome weekend TV supplements, has been deemed dispensable in this age of high newsprint costs, declining ad revenues and on-screen TV listings. At one time it appeared in 33 newspapers across the country as part of the Southam and later CanWest chains. Like the print edition of TV Guide in Canada, it is being phased out of circulation, reduced to mere listings without editorial content."

Making this about me for a moment, this leaves me without a TV critic that I can read in the local paper, as the local rag basically depends on the syndicate for most of its entertainment content. Now admittedly, even when the StarPhoenix was part of a two paper family owned chain as often as not they farmed out TV criticism to outside sources. For a long time in the 1960s they had a local critic – a man named Ned Powers, whose brother-in-law I bowl with, and who sometimes bowled with my mother – but he usually wrote about once or twice a week and I don't remember much of what he wrote. After all it was nearly 40 years ago. In the 1970s and early 1980s the paper had a column written by Gary Deeb of one of the Chicago newspapers. I think it was the Tribune but I'm not sure. Deeb used to infuriate me when he criticised shows I liked but that's part of being a TV critic. Deeb's column vanished rather suddenly as I recall, and I don't really recall anything replacing him. Eventually, along came Kohanik but I confess I wasn't really aware of when he started being a big part of the TV Times experience for me.

The death by inches of the TV Times and paper TV listings in general is something else that bothers me considerably. To be sure I have issues with the TV Times. For one thing it doesn't carry listings of the full spectrum of cable channels available to me while carrying listings for other channels that I have no way of getting, but I truly like having a full week listing even if it is a listing of majority of the channels rather than everything. Sure, my digital cable has a guide function, and there's a listings channel on the analog part of the cable, but the analog listings channel only covers the next hour or so, and the digital guide at most lets me see a day or two into the future. Beyond that I have to schlep off to the computer to check Zap2It. Sure it doesn't sound that arduous – and it isn't really – but so much easier just to have it in a magazine beside my watching position.

Of course, more important to me than the listings is to have someone who can give me their opinion of a shows, and just to write about them, and that's going, moving to the Internet. Maybe that's a good thing. If you read Ed Bark's blog you'll eventually discover that he has more independence now than when he was working for the Dallas Morning News which was owned by Belo Corporation, which also owned one of the Dallas stations. Bark wasn't allowed to critique local TV news stations even as the newspaper was moving its national TV coverage to wire service copy. I'm not going to speculate that Eric Kohanik had to deal with similar problems while working for the newspapers owned by Canada's third network (newspapers which conspicuously don't take ads from either CTV or CBC, and probably not from Rogers in areas where Rogers' CITY-TV stations are operating). He's always seemed pretty fair and balanced to me, calling crap crap regardless of the station on which it aired. What I am more than willing to say though is that having this sort of thing in my local newspaper is useful to me. And my local newspaper is giving me short shrift when it comes to TV coverage. The daily primetime listings were discontinued to give readers a full page of comics (up from the previous half page – the local rag doesn't like comics – takes away from ad revenue). TV get short wire service news squibs in the Entertainment pages...sometimes. On the Saturday there are a couple of columns that tells us the highlights of TV on Saturday and Sunday (no Sunday papers in the CanWest chain). But TV criticism? They spend more column inches on a snarky gossip columnist, and he doesn't get that much space in a week. Sure, TV criticism on the Internet is fine and may even be where it all ends up, but for me, I like being able to immerse myself in it in a way that I can't while sitting in front of a computer screen and can while reading my newspaper. I guess I'm going to have to buy the Globe & Mail more often.

Network Cancellations: Five so far this year. Do Not Disturb went first, in September. Next, ABC dumped the Ashton Kutcher created game show Opportunity Knocks on October 16^th after three episodes. Then CBS dropped The Ex-List on October 27^th after four episodes. Finally Media Rights Capital, which was programming Sunday nights from The CW has dropped two of their series, Valentine and Easy Money, although they will apparently burn off the remaining episodes produced of both series. The cancellation of The Ex-List comes as sweet vindication for those of us who came to love Moonlight. On the other hand I am one of those who is still mystified by the CBS decision to cancel the relatively successful Close To Home to create a hole for Moonlight.

I did review Do Not Disturb – found it dreadful – but missed the other four. Actually I had no earthly intention of writing anything about Opportunity Knocks which sounded like one of the worst ideas ever. I had no real desire to write or even view either Valentine or The Ex-List, so the decisions by their respective networks saved me the trouble

Network Renewals: NBC has given back nines to Knight Rider and Kath & Kim. They`re both mysteries to me but Kath & Kim is probably the bigger one – I just don`t get it. CBS's The Mentalist also received a full season order, not surprisingly given that it seems to be the only true success so far this season. They've also increased the order – although not yet to a full back nine – of their Thursday night drama The Eleventh Hour. The CW has given a back nine to their highly publicized 90210 although not to the show that follows it, Privileged. I mention Privileged because while the show loses audience out of 90210 its audience seems to consistently increase by 20-30% when the DVR "Live +7" audience is factored in.

Network Movements: NBC has announced that they will be bringing the original Law & Order back on Wednesday nights in the third hour. The show was originally intended to air on Sunday nights once Football ends but will instead replace the underperforming Lipstick Jungle. That show in turn will move to the third hour of Friday night, unseating the sophomore cop show Life which moves to the second hour of Wednesday night, reducing Deal Or No Deal to one episode a week. With the first hour of Wednesday being Knight Rider, the result is a new Wednesday block of shows labelled "Crime Night" by NBC.

Olbermania: Okay, I confess that since I've been able to get MSNBC for "free" (thanks to Shaw Cable which made it part of the Digital Basic package – though personally I'd rather they'd done that with BBC World instead) I've become a huge fan of Keith Olberman, who for better or for worse has been a huge part of this election cycle. Oh I don't really watch Olberman for his political views, though I largely agree with them, but because the guy is hugely entertaining. The guy's an okay interviewer but I don't watch him for that. I watch for his opinions – and he is opinionated – for his "Worst Person in the World!!!" bits and for those times when he goes on one of those famous rants of his. I mean if I want calm rationality I'll watch Rachel Maddow (I'm in love with Rachel, albeit a mostly platonic love that acknowledges her Lesbianism). I watch Olberman for the crazy. And as the election campaign has gone on the crazy has been infinitely entertaining. Thus it was probably inevitable that Saturday Night Live would turn its satirical light on Olberman. All that was needed was someone who could "do" justice to Olberman. Enter Ben Affleck...

First Blood 2008

Well we didn't have to wait long for the first show to be pulled from the line-up. While the Fox Network is claiming that Do Not Disturb has only been pulled for the October 1^st episode, various entertainment journalists including Michael Ausiello and E! Online have stated that Do Not Disturb is done like dinner and won't be back. The action came just a few days after the show's producers sent a letter to Variety apologizing "for being the perpetrators of such bad television" even as they begged for viewers to give them a second chance because the show got better, honest. In the letter they wrote, "We here at Do Not Disturb agree that by airing the Work Sex episode — before airing the actual pilot — we created much confusion and we deserve all the criticism, the bad puns (i.e. 'an early checkout from the fall season,' 'Do Not Make in the First Place,' etc.) and, yes, even the accusation that it very well could be the final nail in the multicamera sitcom's coffin."

A mere three episodes of the series aired which had ratings which would be anemic even for The CW let alone FOX. The first episode – which was not the official Pilot for the series – drew 4.65 million viewers and a 1.9/5 rating among the 18-49 demographic. The ratings went down each week with the third – and presumably final – episode drew a mere 3.53 million viewers and a 1.4/3 rating in the 18-49 demographic. The show will be replaced at least on October 1^st, with a second episode of 'Til Death which hasn't exactly been drawing stellar ratings this season itself.

Who Does The PTC Hate THIS Week? – February 29, 2008

Every so often I get thoroughly frustrated when I write about the Parents Television Council. I really don't like these people, and as a Canadian I really don't get where they're coming from. Every time I see the PTC complain about some real or imagined bit of indecency I do so with the knowledge that virtually everything they complain about – since it's usually sex rather than true violence – could be seen at any time of the day on Canadian TV and wouldn't raise an eyebrow. There is no Canadian equivalent of the PTC, for which I will say "thank heaven for small mercies." In fact, during the infamous "Nipplegate" incident, the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council received more complaints about an commercial that was perceived to be sexist than it did about seeing Janet Jackson's breast.

So why do I care personally about the actions of the PTC? If Canada produced most or all of the shows seen on the Canadian airwaves I wouldn't care a whit. But we don't. Our private broadcasters mostly do a great job of self-regulation but really they're capable of doing this because they buy most of their shows from the United States. And most of the time they buy them from the US broadcast networks, a group which is so cowed by the fear of the FCC and that their advertisers will desert them at the very threat of a boycott that they leave edgy programming to those who don't face regulation, the cable networks.

Okay, now I had this all planned out to show how this past week the PTC had moved from the absurd through the foolish to the idiotic. And then they went and changed their pages. The stuff is still available in their archives. There's a bit of doggerel that is near Vogon-like in quality that shows that what the PTC really wants is for TV to return to the 1960s as if nothing were wrong; apparently TV was lost irretrievably with All In The Family. Then there was the claim that the game show 1 vs. 100 deserved a "D" descriptor because host Bob Saget made a condom joke, and regular mob member Sister Rose disapproved ("'Since 1988, what company's trademarked slogan is "Just Do It"?' Along with the correct answer of 'Nike,' one of the other possible answers listed was Trojan condoms. When the contestant answered correctly, host Bob Saget responded with a ribald riposte: 'You're positive it wasn't Trojan?... I'm just ribbing you.' This reference to (ribbed) condom was so out of place that one of the show's recurring 'mob members,' the nun Sister Rose, felt compelled to ask Saget, 'Family show?'") which wasn't precisely how things went down. Oh yeah, and they lumped the presence of the Dahnm Triplets (the first triplet Playboy Playmates) in there with the dialogue in some manner that I swear I don't get. But those have been archived now. Instead we get what is essentially a full-court press against two shows; the CBS airing of Dexter and the recently cancelled Las Vegas, with a slam at the way that Jericho was rated thrown in for good measure.

Let's get Jericho out of the way first. The PTC's complaint here is simple. They think the show deserved to be rated TV-PG LV rather than TV-PG L. According to the PTC, "Early in the episode, a fierce battle scene is shown. Several dead bodies are dragged away from the fray while guns fire around them. Later, the body of a man who was killed while attempting to sneak into Jericho is shown, to prove to the main characters that they are still at risk. And if these incidents were not enough to make a case for a V designator, there are numerous other situations involving gun threats scattered throughout the episode." Well they aren't. The V designator refers to "moderate violence" at the TV-PG level. The battle scene was shot in such a way that we saw was not people being shot but rather people firing guns, and the wounded (in virtually all cases) being dragged off the firing lines. The scenes with the wounded and, later the scene of the man who was killed – off-screen – are not to my mind depictions of violence but rather the aftermath of violence. Indeed in the case of the man who was shot trying to sneak into town, the only "proof" we have that he was shot was the statement by the character Major Beck. The other scenes involving "gun threats" may be considered violence but do they really reach the threshold for "moderate" violence that would be required for a V descriptor.

Moving on we come to Dexter. I should preface this by saying that while I've recorded the first two episodes of the CBS version of Dexter, I haven't watched them yet. Then again I suspect that the PTC hadn't seen the edited – some might say bowdlerized – version of Dexter when they started castigating CBS for repurposing the show for broadcast TV after it had aired on the premium Showtime network. (I should also mention that even when I do watch it I won't see the US ratings; in one of those things that can happen only in Canada thanks to our cable laws the CTV network – which has the rights to the broadcast version of Dexter – will simultaneously substitute their signal over top of the CBS signal so I won't see the Canadian rating not the US rating. It's particularly ironic since given the broadcast regulations in Canada CTV could show the uncensored version of the show in the same time slot as the CBS show, but what they couldn't do is substitute that signal - including the commercials of course – over top of the CBS signal. And that would affect their viewership ratings and ad revenue.)

The first of the two references to Dexter was a press release which essentially called on advertisers and local affiliates to boycott the broadcast of the series. Or perhaps their intent was to let viewers know they should write their "Dear Sir, you cur" letters to tell advertisers that they would never buy another of their products until they pull their advertising from this horrendous show. The press release has the very provocative title "CBS Deems Serial Killer Show to be Appropriate for 14-Year Old Children." The press release makes a major point of the fact that the edited series received a TV-14 rating from CBS, but fails to mention what – if any – descriptors the premier episode received. All they say is this: "Despite repeated public promises for responsible edits and accurate ratings guidelines for parents, CBS elected to assign this graphic program with an adult storyline a TV-14 rating, meaning that CBS decided that the show would be appropriate for children as young as 14 years of age." The PTC follows this with a complaint that, "depictions of violence were barely altered from the Showtime Network original format," and in fact, according to Wikipedia, the primary edits for the broadcast version were primarily for language "with scenes involving dismemberment of live victims somewhat shortened." The mythical 14-year old child whose mind is irrevocably corrupted by this show is the main focus of the PTC rant along with the callousness of the executives at CBS, as delivered by the organization's president Tim Winter: "What could possibly lead them to determine that a show about a pathological serial killer 'hero' could be appropriate for 14-year old children? The only reason is corporate greed. CBS knows full well that advertisers would flee in droves if the program's rating accurately reflected its content. The suits at CBS have wantonly turned their back on the fundamental public interest obligations incumbent upon those who use the public airwaves –
even spending $4.2 million in 2007 to lobby the federal government about indecent programming and other issues." Of course Winter offers absolutely no proof of the assertion that advertisers would flee "in droves" if the show were given the TV-MA rating that Winter and the PTC insists that it deserves. In fact, while my understanding of the advertising industry is limited it is my belief that programs are not put on the air in a vacuum and that advertisers, or at the very least ad agencies, get to see episodes of the programs before they air to decide whether or not they will buy ad time. In this case they would obviously be fully aware of much of the content even before the series was considered for airing since the show had been on the air – if not available for advertising sales – for two seasons on the premium cable network Showtime. In other words, advertisers were fully aware of what they were getting when they purchased ad time on this show.

The second Dexter related piece is a TV Trends article titled "Dexter's Depth of Depravity." Surprisingly though, it really isn't an article exposing the "depths of depravity" of Dexter. No, based on what I've read, it is just as much an article exposing the depths of depravity of the professional TV critics who have had nice things to say about Dexter coming to broadcast TV. They even say it, after going through a couple of paragraphs saying what they invariably say about Dexter and CBS: "a graphically violent and bloody drama with a serial killer for a hero" for the show, and "CBS hit a new low for television" for the network. Having got that out of the way the PTC turns to the critics as a group: "The implications of this move are dire, but even more so has been the wave of approval and adulation with which TV critics and entertainment industry insiders have greeted the series' arrival in every American home. For what could be better, these critics seem to ask, than that the publicly-owned airwaves be used to glamorize dismemberment and serial murder?" There's a little dig at '70s liberal critics: "Once, critics condemned the Dirty Harry movies as 'fascist' because they depicted a police officer shooting criminals. Today, they cheer Dexter because it depicts a serial killer torturing and dismembering criminals." Then later the writer comments, "This tendency on the part of TV writers and critics to dismiss the seriousness of Dexter's glamorization of evil is especially galling because it is so disingenuous. The show doesn't glorify or promote Dexter's actions, critics claim; it's just a character study of a conflicted individual, they say. But would CBS show – would Hollywood even make – a program with, say, a 'conflicted' Ku Klux Klan member as the hero? Or a "charming" killer who stalks and murders homosexuals? Of course not – and they shouldn't. (emphasis theirs) Such programs would be grossly offensive and downright harmful; and the fact that Hollywood doesn't make shows like this demonstrates that they know how harmful such programs could be. By showing such actions or ideas in a favorable light, TV would be making them seem unexceptional and even appealing; and the more often such a show was repeated, the more common and appealing such actions would seem." Of course the creators of the show are not immune from criticism, but it seems to be less muted than the criticism of either CBS or the critics: "Dexter's creators claim that by choosing to make the hero of their program a warped serial killer, they aren't glamorizing his actions. But this is incorrect. TV has portrayed negative character types before; but nearly always, programs show such characters being punished for their crimes. On Dexter this is not the case. In fact, Dexter is portrayed as a charming, likeable young man…who just happens to cut off people's arms and legs while they are still alive. By making Dexter an appealing personality and allowing him to escape the consequences of his actions, the program is making him a hero, and is reducing gruesome mass murder to a cute, harmless eccentricity."

Well let's go into this for a bit. First of all, it should be obvious to anyone with two working brain cells to rub together (and I'm not going to say that this would eliminate virtually every member of the PTC; I'll think it but I won't say it) that the critics who wrote about Dirty Harry in the 1970s are not the same critics who are writing about Dexter today. Even if they were, there is a disconnect between Harry Callahan, operating under the cover of authority often with scant regard for the laws he was sworn to uphold, and Dexter, who admits to being exactly what he is, a killer in the mould of Hannibal Lecter. The difference between Lecter and Dexter is that the latter's tendencies are directed by a set of rules. Insane rules – given the insanity of using a serial killer to get the killers that the law can't (which by the way is similar to the plot of the second Dirty Harry movie Magnum Force except that in that movie it ws vigilante cops instead of serial killers) but rules nonetheless. Callahan broke the rules he was given to get the job done; Dexter obeys they rules he was given by his adoptive father.

But let's go further into this criticism of the critics. The PTC says (slightly edited from the quote above), "would Hollywood even make – a program with, say, a 'conflicted' Ku Klux Klan member as the hero?" The answer of course is yes, if you extend the definition of "program" to include feature movies. The one that I'm particularly thinking of is American History X which looked at a former neo-Nazi who tries to prevent his younger brother from following the same path. There have been other examples as well. Not to mention stories about people (frequently abused women) who have acted outside of the law to ensure their own safety, for example the TV movie The Burning Bed. Indeed there is a whole sub-culture in American media and fiction that celebrates the notion of vigilante justice as a solution when conventional law enforcement was deemed inadequate – Charles Bronson's Death Wish films are an outstanding example. I'm not sure what sets Paul Kersey in those movies apart for Dexter except perhaps that Dexter is probably surer of his victims' crimes.

The thing that I find disingenuous is not the various TV critics tendency to "dismiss the seriousness of Dexter's glamorization of evil" but rather the PTC's continual and repeated mischaracterization of the title character. They consistently refer to the character of Dexter as the "hero" of the show. I'm sure that my more literary readers will cringe at this description (right Bill Crider?). Dexter is more properly described as the protagonist of the piece, defined by Wiktionary as "the main character in a literary work or drama." Dexter is the protagonist of the series in much the same way that Macbeth is the protagonist of what my theatrical friends call "The Scottish Play". No one would describe Macbeth as a hero. In fact a more accurate term for both Macbeth and Dexter – and indeed for Kersey and Callahan – would be anti-hero, defined as "a central character in a story, film or play who lacks the conventional heroic qualities seen in the archetypical hero." And I'm sure that there are at least some people at the PTC who understand the concept of the anti-hero as a protagonist. But of course it suits the PTC's purpose to use the term "hero," a term which has many evocative qualities. As an audience we empathize with heroes, we support their actions, we cheer their deeds and yes, we observe them as a role model. But a hero isn't necessarily the protagonist; in the play MacDuff probably embodies the qualities of a hero but MacDuff isn't the central figure of Macbeth, it is the regicide (killed Duncan), the man who orders the assassination of his best friend and his son (had Banquo killed though his son Fleance escaped death), and mass murderer (had everyone in MacDuff's castle including his wife and young children hacked to death with swords) Macbeth who is the protagonist because we see the world through his perspective. In watching the play we don't want to emulate Macbeth any more than any sane person would want to emulate an essentially soulless serial killer. But calling the lead character in Dexter the show's "hero" generates outrage and protests (and presumably donations) from people who see the PTC as a way of voicing their legitimate concern about what their children see on TV.

The attack on Las Vegas is also two-fold. In a major press release the PTC calls on its members in the Central and Mountain time zones only to send complaints to the FCC about the February 15^th episode of Las Vegas – ironically the last episode to be aired – for "airing female nudity during prime time." As the PTC describes it: "three girls gather together in the center of the casino floor and begin to disrobe. They strip until they are naked and then begin running around the casino. In the security office, the girls can be seen on the television monitors running around the casino naked. Their buttocks are visible, and only shadows obscure their breasts and groins." Inevitably there is a mention of the $1.4 million fine against "52 ABC affiliates" (clearly the PTC refuses to acknowledge the drawdown to about 40 stations as a result of the FCC appeals process) stating that "that didn't deter NBC from airing barely obscured female nudity during a primetime airing of Las Vegas." In fact Time Winter's statement about the Las Vegas episode seems to suggest that this was deliberate policy on the part of NBC: "NBC seems eager to test the FCC's resolve to fine stations for violating broadcast decency laws. I remind NBC that the broadcast airwaves are public property. The TV networks do not own them. The TV stations do not own them. The industry must be held accountable for the content they air and the FCC must act in the public interest by slapping NBC with a significant indecency fine."

Setting aside my own opinion of the FCC's rightness or wrongness on the ruling in the NYPD Blue case, the claim that there is anything even approaching equivalency between the scene in Las Vegas and the scene in NYPD Blue is so absurd as to make a body weep with laughter. Even the PTC acknowledges that the scene is shot in such a way as to obscure the women's breasts and groins. In their appeals decision the FCC said in the NYPD Blue case that "the partial views of her [Charlotte Ross] naked breast from behind and from the side are not sufficiently graphic and explicit in and of themselves to support an indecency finding." In other words it was her bare buttocks which were seen fully nude from behind. By contrast in the scene from Las Vegas the most you can see is a long distance shot of one of the women. Most of the shots are seen through the casino's security system and are overhead shots. There may be shots of the side of the women's buttocks but there is nothing to indicate that that they are not wearing a G-string or a thong. Indeed the shot (which I saw on a real TV as opposed to what you can see in this little streaming box) didn't seem to this viewer to contain anything that would be actionable even under the current FCC regime. I think that what we are seeing here is an attempt by the PTC to force the FCC to further tighten up the boundaries of what is and isn't acceptable, and my singular fear is that the FCC might ignore precedent even further and do just that.

The second part of the PTC's assault is aimed at the same episode in the organization's Broadcast Worst of the Week category. They also point out the "gratuitous nudity": "The first minutes of the program contained this gratuitous nudity. In an introductory scene, three women create a distraction by stripping their clothes off and streaking through the casino. As the security team watch on the monitors and leer at the women in delight, Las Vegas' viewers see the scene carry on for nearly an entire minute, as the women are depicted from every angle and from various distances, including mere feet from the camera. The women's breasts bounce as they run, further highlighting the blatant nudity and sexuality of the scene." Taking this point by point, the security team do not "leer at the women in delight." It is true that one character, Mitch (the guy in the wheel chair) does make some "sexist" comments and is distracted by the scene – which of course was exactly the point, to distract the people in the Casino Security room so that the two men would be able to assemble their guns – but he is the only one, and his actions fit with what we know about this character. The rest of the description is exaggeration and absurd. The very nature of running means that the viewer never gets a truly clear view of any of the women at any given time. Indeed, "mere feet from the camera" usually gives the viewer only a glimpse of part of the body. In fact though, the bulk of the scene is viewed through the casino's overhead camera system rather than on ground level. As for the women's breasts bouncing as they run, that tends to happen whether the women are nude or dressed if the women are "big" enough. The PTC also points to a subplot concerning Mike's bachelor party in which his uncle, a church deacon, brings two strippers to his nephew's bachelor party (Danny had cancelled the strippers because of the presence of Mike's father and uncle). In what I'm sure the PTC will see as yet another of TV's assaults on religion, Mike's uncle, "is shown dancing suggestively while sandwiched between the girls. Apparently aroused by one of the girls, the minister tells his wife he is leaving her for the stripper and staying in Las Vegas." Let us again note that these "strippers" are not at any time seen in any state of nudity – or even implied nudity – which is unheard of for a bachelor party. But then again, the PTC never really develops this point.

It is perhaps the opening and closing paragraphs of this article that show the opinion that the PTC holds towards network television. In their opening paragraph they say: "Last week, NBC wrote a new chapter in ongoing story of ever-increasing indecency on broadcast television. On February 15^th the writers of Las Vegas showed that their lust for ratings overshadows any concept of common decency, not to mention obedience to federal law concerning broadcast decency, when they depicted three fully nude women in prime time at 10:00 p.m. ET – which is 9:00 p.m. in the Central and Mountain time zones. This episode was a significant step in advancing the entertainment industry's agenda: the elimination of the line between decency and indecency." It is yet another example of over-exaggeration and overblown, inflammatory rhetoric on the PTC's part, meant to paint the networks as big, bad, evil and out to pervert the American public. And all in the quest for ratings, which of course means money. They don't mention – presumably because at this point they didn't know but the ratings for this episode, which wasn't promoted as being anything beyond a two hour season finale and certainly not promoted with an emphasis on the supposed draw of female nudity, wasn't enough to save the show from cancellation (dammit). But for overblown rhetoric, not to mention the refusal to acknowledge that they've won (for the moment) this particular battle thanks to the NYPD Blue situation, you can't beat this final statement: "This level of nudity, shown on broadcast TV, in prime time, is of major concern to family viewers. But offensive as it was, the nudity in this episode is not even the worst part. The real concern is that such programming will normalize nudity on prime-time broadcast television. Unless viewers act now, it is only a matter of time until nudity is a regular occurrence on television." This is hogwash. In the period when nudity – real nudity – was a prevalent feature on network television, the NYPD Blue years, there were only two regular prime time series that showed bare buttocks or other forms of nudity on even a semi-regular basis. They were NYPD Blue, produced by Steven Bochco, and Brooklyn South, which ran for a single year on CBS and was produced by Steven Bochco. And yet the PTC would have us believe that the mostly implied nudity in this scene from Las Vegas is enough to "normalize nudity on prime-time broadcast television" and mean that it won't be long, "until nudity is a regular occurrence on television." Again I say hogwash.