Downfall Falls Down For Me

There are things that I give ABC credit for. One of those things is doing new series during the summer. Some of these shows are scripted dramas, some are reality shows – a few masquerading as "News" programs – and some are game shows. One of their most popular game shows over the past few summers has been Wipeout. In the last two years that show was partnered with something called I Survived A Japanese Game Show. ABC cancelled I Survived A Japanese Game Show for this summer and replaced it with a new all-American game show called Downfall. After watching the first episode of Downfall I found myself wishing wistfully for I Survived A Japanese Game Show to come back and replace this mess. After watching the second episode of Downfall I found myself wishing that ABC would bring a real Japanese game show on – with or without translation – to replace Downfall. This show is such a blot on the TV landscape that the prospect of people cheering wildly about a game whose rules I couldn't even pretend to understand that give prizes I don't know the value of would be preferable.

Downfall, hosted by professional wrestler Chris Jericho, is a show with a pretty basic skeleton and a gimmick. The skeleton is pretty simple. There's a ladder structure in which players compete for increasing amounts of money by answering questions. The higher the amount of money available to be won the more questions you have to answer. For $5,000 you have to answer four questions; for $10,000, five questions, for $25,000 six questions and so on. Each level also has physical prizes, ranging from popcorn machines and poker tables to big screen TV, large appliances, and cars. These can be lost as time passes. There are seven rungs on the ladder with a top prize of $1,000,000, and players who reach the $25,000 level are guaranteed that amount of money pluc any prizes they've won to that point in time. There is an effective time limit for each set of questions. There are nine sets of questions on different categories because if player find themselves running out of time they can push "The Panic Button" which will stop the "clock" at the expense of losing any surviving physical prizes at this level. The player gets a chance to play for the money at the level by risking either a personal possession or their "Panic Partner," usually a spouse or a family friend (although the first competitor picked her husband's naval CO who had put him on a deployment before the show).The possession or person may or may not be saved while the player wins the money. That by the way is why there are nine sets of questions even though there are only seven rungs on the prize ladder. The player can leave the game at the start of any level but if they run out of time at any stage – whether they've used their two Panic Buttons or not – they leave the game.

That's the skeleton, and let's admit that it is a skeleton that has become common on just about every game show, including that primetime show that Drew Carey did and the most recent version of Password. Now let's get to the gimmick. The show is shot on the top of a ten story building, although they insist on describing it as a skyscraper. There isn't a clock. Instead there's a conveyor belt, and the prizes are placed on the conveyor belt, with the prize money at the farthest end of the conveyor belt. A the end of the conveyor belt is a sort of chute or ramp to clear the building. When Chris Jericho starts asking questions the conveyor belt moves forward. When the prize – which is actually a full sized replica of the real prize – reaches the end of the conveyor belt it falls onto the chute/ramp and thence to ground 100 feet below. Spectacular results occur when you've got fluids, like bottled water, a giant cup of coffee, or cans of paint flying though the air and smashing to the ground. When the player puts a personal object on the conveyor belt it's at risk in the same way that the prizes that the show provides are. If you don't answer the questions over it goes. If the object is something you don't particularly like – like a man who put a particularly ugly Christmas clock that his wife loved and he hated – you might be tempted to blow off the questions until object goes over the side. Similarly the "Panic Partner" is put on the conveyor belt – they're in a harness with a safety line – and they can go over the side as well. It's not like a bungee jump but more like being lowered. Finally, if the player runs out of time, signified by the fake show money falling off the conveyor belt and fluttering to the ground, that person gets lifted up – they too are in a harness, as is Chris Jericho although his harness is designed to keep him from "accidentally" stepping over the side of the building – swung out over the side and dropped off the building.

Downfall is a
lousy game show. There is nothing original or innovative in the game play. The gimmick is just that, a gimmick and frankly one that, even when you know that the prizes are replicas and studio props and not real cars or dining room sets or aquariums still seems insultingly wasteful. The less said about Chris Jericho as host the better. He may be a charismatic wrestler, but as a game show host he's no Wink Martindale, or even – dare I say it – a William Shatner. (Well maybe close to Shatner but in terms of game show hosting, being close to Shatner is no compliment.) But I think that the worst thing you can say any game show is something that you have to say about this show: it is B-O-R-I-N-G. There have been no changes to the basic skeleton of the game that would give it greater interest over the general run of uses of this skeleton. The gimmick is fun to see once or twice but after repeated viewings simply becomes repetitive and annoying. And the host tries to compensate for having a significant deficiency in charisma (in this venue) by displaying a lot of energy. It doesn't compensate for the lack of charisma however, it only serves to annoy.

By comparison, consider I Survived a Japanese Game Show. The basic skeleton was taken from Survivor and Big Brother (a group of people isolated in a house and essentially marooned in an unfamiliar environment – Tokyo rather than a deserted island) and they have to face reward and elimination challenges. But the skeleton has been given an interesting change with the location and the nature of the challenges. The gimmick too has changed. The contestants didn't face major physical and endurance challenges; the Reward and Elimination challenges were quite frankly good clean goofy dirty fun. Even the Eliminations, featuring the insane Elimination Squad were hilarious. And host Rome Kanda was no Jeff Probst. The format didn't call for one, it called for a typically unctuous game show host and that's what Kanda (an actor) gave us. I Survived A Japanese Game Show gave us far more imagination than I suspect the producers of Downfall even possess.

Please ABC, send Chris Jericho and this show to a well deserved "retirement" and bring back I Survived A Japanese Game Show.

Weekend Videos – Theme Mash-ups

(Just so you know, I think I might be coming down with something, so if this whole business is a bit more disjointed than usual you'll understand.)

You may have noticed that there are a lot of artistically brilliant people who use computers. (I'm not one of them.) As often as not these people want to show off what they make. The make music and post it online, shoot their own videos and post them online, and edit existing video and put it with a different soundtrack. The result of mixing different video clips and matching them with music or dialog that you don't normally associate with those images are known as mash-ups. In their own way these mash-ups are as much of an artistic creation as the original creations.

I first discovered this business of mashups when I was doing last week's piece on Friday night in 1984-85. There was a particular theme that had a lot of mashups done using it. You won't be seeing those this week. I will be running those next week, so just so you know, you had better have a high tolerance for the Dallas theme.

The first mashup I want to include here uses the theme from Magnum P.I. in combination with footage from various Star Wars movies to create Han Solo P.I.

The interesting thing about this combination – besides the fact that Tom Selleck almost had another Harrison Ford role, Indiana Jones in Raiders Of The Lost Ark – is that the people who made this mashup also provided a second video which showed the original title sequence from Magnum P.I. side by side with what they made so that you can compare them shot by shot (you might want to view this clip full screen to catch all of the details).

Science Fiction shows seem to attract a lot of mashups, perhaps because the fans are extremely fanatical and maybe quite creative. This mashup takes the theme from the TV version of The A Team (aka the good version) and mixes it up with scenes from the original series of Star Trek. It's not bad, but I think that someone is missing a bet by not doing a mashup using either The Next Generation or Voyager as a base to draw from... and using Reg Barclay as Murdoch! If I ever make a mashup (and I might once I really get used to video editing and effects) that's an idea I could wrap my head around – Picard as Hannibal, Data as Face, Barclay as Murdoch, Worf as B.A. and maybe Ro Laren as Melinda Culea's old role of Amy Allen (I liked both characters and it's going to be my mashup).

There are a couple of Love Boat parodies, but I like this one with the crew from The Next Generation, which always seemed to me to be more of a soap opera than the other versions. The only thing this one missed was Wesley Crusher as Vicki.

Some mashups work better than others. Sometimes it's because the timing is off but other times it is because the theme music is just too tied with visuals that can't really be replicated from existing footage. Take this version of the Hawaii Five-0 theme mixed with scenes from Star Trek: First Contact. The pace is right, the cuts are just about perfect, but the result is ... lacking.

On the other hand, this credit sequence for Star Trek: Deep Space Nine using the modern Battlestar Galactica theme is rather good.

Shows with cult followings are ripe with opportunities for mashups, particularly if there's plenty of footage available. There's a version of the Dark Shadows credits mixed with the music of Falcon Crest. (Unfortunately embedding is disabled for this one.) The big negative on this one is that the split screens aren't as complex as they would be on the original Falcon Crest. Also the creator seems to have extended the theme beyond its original length. Compare that with this version using scenes from Torchwood.

Doctor Who parodies are almost a growing industry. I just keep running into more and more of them (Doctor Who (British) Office style, Doctor Who Buffy style, Doctor Who Angel style, Doctor Who Charlies Angels style, Doctor Who Friends style, and the list goes on and on and on, often with several versions of each mashup) but I was rather intrigued with this creative effort using the A-Team music but not the voiceover. Introducing The U Team!

Finally, because I love both shows and because I love the theme from Firefly, and because I haven't really given you much of a sense of the vast variety of the Doctor Who material that's out there, Doctor Who Firefly style.

Next week, what got it all started for me – Dallas style credits.

Ch-Ch-Changes

I just did a modification to the blog. I’ve replaced my old third party blogroll with the Blogger version. Turns out the sit providing the old blogroll was giving me a 404 error when I tried to go there to change a few things around, so they got the bum’s rush. The modification wasn’t hard to make but checking out all of those blogs for ones that were essentially dead, that took time.

Summer of course is a good time for a TV Blogger to fiddle around with formats, concepts and general look and feel things. There isn’t much to review (no comments from the peanut gallery about how “much” I’ve reviewed in the past year) and you can try new stuff. This isn’t the end of the changes either. I want to spruce up the old joint. It may or may not be an Extreme Makeover: Homepage Edition project but there are some things I’d like to try over the next couple of months, and why not try it now.

Comment Moderation

It is with more than a little reluctance that I have decided to turn on Comment Moderation. Of late I've just been getting too much "comment spam" - usually from what I'm pretty sure are Asian sex sites - and it is irritating me to delete them when I notice that they appear. I've always valued the free flow of comments but of late the privilege has been abused, and not used by the people I want to see use it, the real readers of this site.

Weekend Videos – Friday Night 1984-85

This post was delayed from before the Upfronts. When I started writing this I was concerned that the 2010-11 season would see the broadcast networks largely abandon Friday nights to no-scripted reality programming, which was the way that many of the networks have been going in the past few years. Friday was seen as the "new Saturday," and not in the sense that Saturday night was once the home of some of TV's iconic series. These days the networks have all but abandoned programming anything serious on Saturday nights except sports and FOX's combination of COPS and America's Most Wanted. In the past few years Friday nights were going in the same direction with only CBS having scripted programming in all three hours in the 2009-10 season. There are hopeful signs in the current schedule, with CBS, FOX and The CW all having scripted programming scheduled for all of their time slots – at least for a while – and the other networks having some scripted programming on the night. Still there's a sense that the networks – except for CBS – are one bad ratings period away from abandoning Fridays forever to the likes of Supernanny and Wife Swap.

It wasn't always thus of course. There has been a long history of good TV shows on Friday nights. While it was never featured the powerhouse programming that Saturdays featured for many years it was a big night for the networks for many years. The tendency was to cater to an older and a younger audience – teens and single young adults were assumed to be out on dates – but before the dominance of the 18-49 demographic in the skeevy little minds of network executives, that was enough. Consider the 1975 Friday line-up ABC had the Jack Webb produced Mobile One with Jackie Cooper and a movie – Mobile One lasted 11 episodes before being cancelled. CBS had Big Eddie, a comedy starring Sheldon Leonard as a former gangster with a heart of gold (it died after 13 weeks because of what was on NBC) followed by M*A*S*H, Hawaii Five-0 and Barnaby Jones. NBC had Sanford & Son, Chico and The Man, The Rockford Files and Police Woman. Can you imagine any network putting shows of that quality on Friday nights today? Well maybe Mobile One and Big Eddie but not the other shows.

And yet that's not the line-up I'm going look at. The 1980s saw an even better group of shows. It marked the beginnings of ABC's TGIF line-up that would really flower in the 1990s, while CBS had two of its big primetime soaps, and NBC was running dramas of varying quality. I thought I'd like to look at the 1984-85 season.

ABC opened the night with Benson, then in its last season. What I have is a truncated version of title sequence from that season. Missing from this clip are Rbert Guillaume, who played the title character Benson DuBois and James Noble who played Governor Gatling. I've chosen this version of the show's title sequence because the only other clip from Benson available on YouTube features the original cast of the series which, except for Guillaume, Noble and Inga Swenson were replaced within two season, and I happen to be a fan of the interaction between Benson and Rene Auberjonois's character Clayton Endicott III. Next up, at 8:30 Eastern was Webster, starring Emmanuel Lewis, Alex Karras and Susan Clark. The show was about a newly married couple who on returning from their honeymoon suddenly find themselves the parents of a small black child whose parents had died. This clip features Heather O'Rourke and is something of a compilation of her scenes in the episode. At 9:00 came a rather obscure show called Hawaiian Heat with Jeff McCracken and Robert Ginty playing a pair of Chicago cops who finally get tired of the cold snow and lack of women in bikinis (which was apparently a big selling point of this show) and arrange to transfer to the Honolulu PD. Given that it was up against Dallas and Hunter it isn't surprising that it only lasted 13 weeks. Finally, in the third hour ABC had the third and final season of Matt Houston, starring Lee Horsley and Pamela Hensley. Added to the cast in this season was Buddy Ebsen as the title character's Uncle Roy. Houston was a millionaire oilman who was a private detective as a hobby. Hensley played his lawyer and personal assistant. The worst thing about the addition of Buddy Ebsen – besides the image of Barnaby Jones firing an Uzi – is that it meant less Hensley...who was the main reason why I watched, given the absurd nature of most of the plots in the show.

Over at NBC the night led off with the first series version of V. Adapted from the mini-series of the previous two seasons (May 1983 and May 1984). Since the second mini-series ended with the apparent destruction of the Visitors thanks to the Red Dust and the capture of Diana, the show needed a way to bring the Visitors back, which they accomplished by having a greedy corporate type free her and then having government collapse when the Visitors came back. It was a reach and the series ran out of ideas after 19 episodes. Following V was one of NBC's genuine successes, Hunter, starring retired football player Fred Dryer and Stepfanie Kramer as a pair of detectives with something of a "Dirty Harry" attitude when it came to dealing with the criminals. The relationship between Dryer's Rick Hunter and Kramer's Dee Dee McCall was at times fractious, although by the second season this was toned down by Roy Huggins, who had been called in by series creator Stephen J. Cannell to serve as Executive Producer. Huggins emphasised the chemistry between Hunter & McCall although he never took as far as latter producers did. The series ran for seven years but fell apart in its last season after Kramer left the series. NBC round off the night with Miami Vice, also in its second season. Starring Don Johnson, Philip Michael Thomas and Edward James Olmos. The premise of the show is pretty much summarized in the title; the lead characters – Sonny Crockett and Rico Tubbs – are vice cops in Miami, although in this case the principal vice is the importation and sale of drugs. Since I included the Miami Vice theme a couple of weeks ago I've decided to offer a scene featuring Phil Collins's song "In The Air Tonight." The show was often accused of being essentially a music video masquerading as a TV show, and scenes like this tend to support that theory.

CBS had the powerhouse line-up of the three networks. In the first hour was Dukes Of Hazard which was in its final season with the network. "Them Dukes" were John Schneider and Tom Wopat playing cousins Bo and Luke Duke who were under the watchful eye of their Uncle Jesse (played by the great character actor Denver Pyle) and a host of supporting characters including James Best and Sorrel Booke. The show was a basic battle of Good (the Dukes and their friends) versus Evil (Boss Hogg and Sherriff Roscoe P. Coltrane) but played in an extremely light-hearted manner, with the bad guys being caricatures who were not quite lovable but somehow not hate worthy. Daisy Duke, played by Catherine Bach provided sex appeal – in a very chaste way since she was yet another Duke cousin, and therefore unavailable to the heroes and unapproachable by anyone that she one her family didn't approve of. Following The Dukes Of Hazard was Dallas which was in its seventh season. The 1984-85 season was the one in which Barbara Bel Geddes retired from the show following her heart surgery and was replaced by Donna Reed, and that is the version of the titles I've included here. Dallas was of course the iconic prime time soap about the Ewing Family. The character of J.R. Ewing, the philandering, "ethically challenged" head of Ewing Oil brought Larry Hagman, who had previously played the straight-laced and scrupulously ethical Major Anthony Nelson on I Dream Of Jeannie back to prorminence and eventually eclipsed his fame for his previous role. Finally the network had the third season of Falcon Crest a prime time soap created by Earl Hamner, who had previously created The Waltons. Starring Jane Wyman as Angela Channing the conniving matriarch of a California winery who is in conflict with just about anyone who gets in her way... which is just about everyone. There was a huge turn-over in cast over the years which meant that new characters suddenly shot to prominence, and at times the plot lines became convoluted and down-right ridiculous, but through it all the series was dominated by Wyman's presence.

I doubt that we'll ever see the networks put forward line-ups like these on Friday nights again, but I'm not entirely convinced that the night is a lost cause either if there were a network besides CBS that was willing to think outside of the 18-49 Demographic box and program the night for families with younger kids who can't go out and the right groups of older viewers who don't want to go out. Those are markets too.

Weekend Videos – Top Rated Shows 1955-1959

(This post delayed by Blogger - I still can't post directly from Word 2007 which has never been a problem until now.)

About a month ago I started posting video clips from the top rated TV shows of the year. My first postings were for the period from the 1950-51 season to the 1954-55 season. This post will feature the period between the 1955-56 season to the 1959-60 season. Here are the rules or at least the guidelines. I will list the top three shows for each season along with the percentage of the nation’s televisions that were tuned to that show during the season. These figures are drawn from the Complete Directory To Prime Time Network And Cable TV Shows 1946-Present. If the season’s top rated show has already been featured either in this post or in the previous post in this series I’ll find a clip from the second highest rated show, provided that it also hasn’t been featured before. The same procedure holds true if there are no clips of the show available online. Finally I’ll also try to make a few comments on the three top rated shows of the season.

1955-56:

The $64,000 Question 47.5%, I Love Lucy 46.1%, The Ed Sullivan Show 39.5%

The $64,000 Question was a phenomenon in its day, and the basic concept of the show – a ladder system in which players win more money as they answer tougher questions – is a major part of many modern game shows like Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? The thing that was both the big gimmick and the cause of The $64,000 Question’s eventual downfall was that the players were asked questions in areas where they claimed expertise. The producers were able to select contestants, often based on the incongruity of their areas of expertise. Thus you had a shoemaker who was an expert on opera, a jockey who knew a tremendous amount about art, or an attractive young woman psychologist who knew all about boxing. However this meant that the producers could tailor the questions they asked to whether they and the audience like the contestant. While The $64,000 Question was never “rigged” in the way that other game shows of this period were by giving contestants the answers to the questions, the producers did vary the difficulty of the questions at the higher levels in an attempt to let popular contestants win more money and make less popular contestants lose. Debuting in June 1955 the show was off the air by November 1958, a victim of the game show fixing scandals, although it should be noted that the show’s ratings had begun to slip even before the scandals. The sound track on this clip is slightly out of sync with the visuals.

1956-57

I Love Lucy 43.7%, The Ed Sullivan Show 38.4%, General Electric Theater 36.9%

We’ve already seen I Love Lucy in a previous instalment of this so we have to turn to the second place series for this season, The Ed Sullivan Show. The show started in 1948 as Toast Of The Town and was renamed The Ed Sullivan Show after its host in 1956. Sullivan soon became a television institution (and a favourite of anyone who even thought of doing impressions during his lifetime – including on his own show) in spite of the fact that all he did was introduce the acts at the beginning of the show and shook hands with them at the end. What exactly did Old Stone-Face do on his “really big shoo?” Well the fact is that Sullivan, who had started as a boxer and a sports writer and became and entertainment writer (really a gossip columnist) in the competitive New York newspaper market, had an incredible eye for talent and for knowing what the public wanted. Moreover he was presiding over what was really a vaudeville show. He was able to put together a mix of established acts and newcomers, acts for kids and for adults that would attract a diverse audience. Sullivan knew the established acts and as I’ve said had a great eye for what would work as combinations. But it all needed something to hold it together. That was what Sullivan did on his really big shoo – he held the diverse acts together. This clip from 1964 features the great Frank Gorshin.

1957-58

Gunsmoke 43.1%, The Danny Thomas Show 35.3%, Tales of Wells Fargo 35.2%

Gunsmoke had debuted on TV in the 1955-56 season, although the property would have been familiar from radio where it had debuted in 1952. It failed to crack the top 30 in its first season but had finished seventh in the 1956-57 season. The arrival of Gunsmoke on the scene is responsible for the rise of the “adult” western as a genre on TV. In the 1957-58 there were five westerns in the top ten (Gunsmoke, Tales of Wells Fargo, Have Gun Will Travel, The Life And Legend Of Wyatt Earp, The Restless Gun). Gunsmoke offered viewers strong likeable characters and a definite “Good vs. Evil” motif. As the series developed – and it did run for 20 years so there was plenty of time for development and shifts in focus, which helps to explain why it lasted for 20 years – more characters and greater depth were added to the show. This episode is the first episode of the series from 1955.

1958-59

Gunsmoke 39.6%, Wagon Train 36.1%, Have Gun Will Travel 34.3%

The 1958-59 season may have been the high point of the Western’s popularity. Of the year’s top ten shows only three weren’t Westerns: The Danny Thomas Show, The Real McCoys and I’ve Got A Secret. Wagon Train was one of the great westerns. Inspired by the John Ford movie Wagon Master it starred one of Ford’s stock company, Ward Bond from 1957-1961 when Bond died. In fact Ford directed one episode with Bond that aired eighteen days after the actor’s death of a heart attack in 1961. The show had fairly small regular cast – Bond’s trail master Major Adams, (replaced by John McIntire after Bond’s death) the scout played for five seasons by Robert Horton and for three more by Robert Fuller, the assistant trail master played by Terry Wilson, and the cook played by Frank McGrath. or the most part the episodes weren’t about them, they were about the people in the wagon train and the people that the train encountered as they travelled from St. Joseph Missouri to California, making it more of an anthology series than most westerns. This clip, from 1960, features Peter Lorre and Robert Horton.

1959-60
Gunsmoke 40.3%, Wagon Train 38.4%, Have Gun Will Travel 34.7%

Have Gun Will Travel was another of the classic Westerns. Richard Boone played the man called Paladin (real name unknown), a cultured and erudite former army officer, who is also a professional gun for hire. Dressed entirely in black, Paladin would usually leave his residence at the Carlton Hotel in San Francisco to fulfill a contract – or not, since sometimes he felt more sympathy with the people that he was hired to deal with than with the people who hired him. The only other recurring character in the series was the hotel Chinese bell hop known as Hey Boy played by Kam Tong, although in the fourth season he was replaced by a new character, Hey Girl (played by Lisa Lu) because Kam Tong had taken a somewhat larger part in a different series. Because of this the series had numerous guest stars, some of whom appeared numerous times, many of whom would be instantly recognizable. One unique aspect of Have Gun Will Travel is the fact that there are themes, and that the closing theme is the one that is better known. The music that is most associated with the show, Johnny Western’s Ballad of Paladin made its first appearance after the first season, and was never the introduction to the show. The show’s actual theme was composed by Bernard Hermann. This clip features frequent guest star Charles Bronson, and Harry Carey Jr. I’m also including a clip of the closing theme done by Johnny Western.

The Difference Between Canadians And Americans

As I have often noted here, I am a Canadian. And Canadians are different from Americans. One place where this is apparent is in what we watch on TV. Oh, it's not Canadian shows that we watch on TV – for the most part Canadian shows don't penetrate onto the Top 20 list of most watched shows – but what interests us is quite different from what catches the hearts and minds of Americans. Following is a list of the Top 20 shows In the United States for the 2009-10 Television season, based on Total Average Viewers per Episode, with their position in Canada and the average number of viewers in Canada for the same show. (For American Idol and Dancing With The Stars I am assuming that the more highly watched shows are the Performance Shows and the lower rated versions are the Results Shows). For comparison a general rule of thumb is that the Canadian population is 10% of the US population, but that is a rough estimate.

Position	United States	Viewers	Canada	Canadian Viewers
1	American Idol	24,714,000	4	2,789,000
2	American Idol	23,461,000	5	2,686,000
3	Dancing With The Stars	19,725,000	11	2,172,000
4	Sunday Night Football	18,782,000
5	NCIS	18,699,000	10	2,201,000
6	Undercover Boss	17,732,000
7	The Mentalist	16,828,000	9	2,279,000
8	CSI	15,820.000	15	2,084,000
9	NCIS: Los Angeles	15,667,000	20	1,768,000
10	Dancing With The Stars	15,298,000	14	2,092,000
11	Two And A Half Men	14,825,000	16	2,032,000
12	Big Bang Theory	14,224,000	12	2,169,000
13	Desperate Housewives	14,058,000	17	1,933,000
14	Survivor Heroes vs Villains	13,669,000	1	2,929,000
15	Criminal Minds	13,552,000	3	2,807,000
16	Grey's Anatomy	13,552,000	2	2,899,000
17	Survivor Samoa	13,450,000	1	2,929,000
18	60 Minutes	13,269,000
19	The Good Wife	12,617,000
20	CSI: Miami	12,617,000	13	2,125,000

Rounding out the list of the most popular shows in Canada are:

Position	Show	Viewers
6	Amazing Race 15 & 16	2,529,000
7	House	2,493,000
8	CSI: New York	2,349,000
18	Lie To Me	1,811,000
19	Hockey Night In Canada	1,796,000

Of the most popular shows in Canada, only Hockey Night In Canada is a Canadian produced show. Undercover Boss and 60 Minutes don't air in Canada while Sunday Night Football is seen on TSN, one of the cable sports networks, meaning the The Good Wife is the only show not in the top 20 in Canada that is seen on a major network (Global) in this country. Also, in Canada both seasons of Survivor (Samoa and Heroes vs Villains) were lumped together as one.

I'm not entirely sure what to make of the differences. Three of the six top rated shows in Canada are reality-competition series as opposed to five of the top six in the United States (and yes, I am stretching the definition of reality-competition to include Football – it is a competition and it is reality) but we seem to like different reality-competition series than Americans. Of the top five shows in the United States only two are in the top five in Canada, and they do significantly (in Canadian terms) less well than two scripted shows that don't penetrate the top 10 in the United States. I could say that Canadians might like our shows to be a bit deeper intellectually – I think you could argue that shows like Criminal Minds, House, and Lie To Me are just a little bit deeper than some of the shows that are on the top 20 in the Unites States. That would fit our love of The Amazing Race which has placed in the top 10 in Canada since the show started but which has long struggled in the US market. But that's probably not the real explanation. After all, that doesn't explain Grey's Anatomy. So while I acknowledge that there is some sort of palpable difference between what Americans and Canadians watch, I'm sure why that difference exists.

Upfronts 2010 – Video Previews

I want to publicize the new network shows. Really I do, even though there are some that I don't think will make it – and I've expressed my opinion on those in an earlier post – and there are some that I don't want to make it, and I like to think that I've tried very hard not to express that, though it may have slipped out. At this point I'm willing to keep my critical barbs in check on the grounds that I really can't judge a book by the blurb on the dust jacket, which is about what we have right now. But like I say, I want to publicize the new shows which is why some of the actions by some of the networks irritates me. Considerably. As I have reminded you repeatedly (ad infinitum, ad nauseum) I'm a citizen of that mass that separates Wasilla Alaska from the Oval Office, and no I don't mean the intelligence of more than half of the American electorate I mean Canada. And some of the networks – by which I mean ABC and CBS – have decided that my being Canadian somehow makes me a risk. They've cut me off from even seeing the previews for new shows for copyright reasons. CBS told me (on their website at least) that the previews were "not available for your geographic region," although their YouTube site clearly states on every video that I want to see that "This video contains content from CBS, who has blocked it in your country on copyright grounds." ABC is pretty much the same thing. Setting aside the fact that I don't think you use "who" when referring to a corporate entity like CBS or ABC, I'd like to know how come it is a copyright violation to show these clips to someone in Canada? FOX and The CW don't have any problem with me seeing their trailers. Neither does NBC which has their trailers on their website rather than YouTube. Fortunately there are other avenues to explore, but as you can imagine it is an irritant, particularly when you realize that those other avenues are through a European source which has posted the video clips I'm looking for. Why is it that Europeans can post these trailers "in the clear" so that I can see them and put them into playlists but I can't get them from the source? It is ... puzzling. Rant over.

I did manage to find trailer for most of the new shows at YouTube, thanks to that "other source" that I mentioned. I'll start off with the ABC trailers. Which unfortunately happen to have the most technical difficulties of all of them in terms of video problems. I've decided to arrange the clips by the day on which they appear with mid-season replacements after the current season of shows air. For ABC this means the running order is: No Ordinary Family, Detroit 1-8-7, Better Together, The Whole Truth, My Generation, Body of Proof, Off The Map, Mr Sunshine, Happy Endings. Here are a few first impressions based on what I've seen – remember when I wrote up my opinions of the shows earlier I deliberately hadn't seen the teasers that I was able to see. No Ordinary Family looks like about what I was expecting, family oriented and essentially the Fantastic Four origin with fluorescent water instead of Gamma Rays and different powers as a result. It could do okay. Detroit 1-8-7 looks like it could be okay. Not sure what to think about The Whole Truth. I like the leads but I'm dubious that the split focus will work long term. My Generation isn't going to work, and I don't think Off The Map will either. The show in the mid season that I'm looking forward to? Mr. Sunshine just because of the great cast.

Next up is CBS. The running order is Monday's Mike & Molly and Hawaii Five-0, Wednesday's The Defenders, Thursday's $#!* My Dad Says, and Friday's Blue Bloods. For fun I've also included the theme for the new version of Hawaii Five-0 – and Ivan you're right, it burns. Based on the clips Mike & Molly seems like a rather innocuous comedy although not one that's likely to set the world on fire. If you ignore the title, $#!* My Dad Says really doesn't seem that ground breaking either. The Defenders is probably going to be the weakest of the Wednesday night court shows, and I really don't see it as a good fit out of Criminal Minds. Still it's a different look for Jim Belushi from his time on According To Jim. The two really big shows are Hawaii Five-0 and Blue Bloods. I give the nod to Blue Bloods as the better show. Based on what the network has chosen to reveal from Hawaii Five-0 and what I've seen of the NBC series Chase (not to mention the only returning show in the time slot, ABC's Castle) I'm not entirely convinced that it will win the time slot. I have to wonder if network would have been better to schedule Blue Bloods on Monday, Hawaii Five-0 on Wednesday and The Defenders on Friday.

FOX has Lonestar on Monday, comedies Raising Hope and Running Wilde on Tuesday, with drama Ride Along and comedy Mixed Signals along with animated comedy Bob's Burgers coming in the mid-season. While trailers for most of the FOX shows are available the trailer for Bob's Burgers has been pulled by the network. FOX's new shows seems pretty dismal to me. The cast on Lonestar is about the only thing recommending it. I just can't see the public warming to this show about a conman who is thinking about doing the right thing. I see no hope in Raising Hope, and while Running Wilde has a dark comedy feeling to it, where the protagonist is rather unlikable, I'm not sure that this is going to be popular with the public. Ride Along looks like it could do well. It's scheduled to replace Lonestar and I think that will happen sooner rather than later. Mixed Signals breaks no new ground but I'm not sure that's necessarily a bad thing under the circumstances.

NBC has the largest number of new shows for the 2010-11 season. There was no trailer online – either on YouTube or on the NBC website – for Law & Order: Los Angeles. For once it may also be the line-up that I anticipate the most. On Monday they have The Event and Chase, on Wednesday Undercovers and Law & Order: Los Angeles, On Thursday Outsourced and Love Bites and on Friday School Pride and Outlaw. At the mid-season they have Perfect Couples, Friends With Benefits, The Paul Reiser Show, The Cape, and Harry's Law. While The Event looks good (and by "looks" I mean the physical appearance and casting) I have my doubt about how well it will do. I've said it before and I'll say it again, I don't know how much patience the public has for these ongoing serialized thriller type shows. Chase doesn't have that problem. It looks to be self-contained in every episode, and if the public actually give it a look it could give Hawaii Five-0 and Castle a real run for the top spot on the night. As I expected Undercovers looks like it could be real fun. Think of it as what happened to Harry and Helen after True Lies, with more than a little Hart To Hart added for flavour. I haven't managed to watch the clip of Outsourced through to the end, but it has a lot of qualities that are reminiscent of The Office. It could work, but it isn't my sort of show. I think that Love Bites and School Pride are due for a quick exit from the line-up and deservedly so. While I like Jimmy Smits I am unimpressed with the concept behind Outlaw. Of the mid-season dramas, The Cape looks like it could quickly turn into a cult favourite that I'll probably be watching. It seems like a suitably dark and yet enjoyable story but whether it will take off with a mainstream audience is the question. I'm sadly inclined to think they won't. I really don't care too much for Harry's Law either. I like Kathy Bates but the show looks too much like a quest for redemption and a purpose. Of course it is a David E. Kelly series and that has always carried with it a certain amount of "quirky." Of the comedies, we all know that if Friends With Benefits gets a series finale, the two leads will decide that the people they've been searching for all this time is each other, and the less said about Perfect Couples the better; it seems formulaic to me. The one comedy that I'm really looking forward to from the NBC list is The Paul Reiser Show. It may not be a winner but it brings together elements that we normally see on cable shows like Curb Your Enthusiasm. I'm looking forward to it and that's not something I generally say about comedies.

The CW has only two new shows at the beginning of the season, and only two trailers available. Actually they are more like clips than trailers. The Hellcats trailer doesn't tell us much about the show beyond the fact that it is about cheerleading. For the life of me I don't even know if we've seen the lead character in this clip. Obviously not aimed at me, but I think it may find an audience with the young women who watch America's Next Top Model. Hey, cheerleaders are probably more relatable than the models, from last year's failure The Beautiful Life. However I think the show that is going to be the biggest success for The CW is going to be Nikita. It's appeal should cut across gender lines because of Maggie Q and the "kick-ass" quality of the lead character.

I've given you all my opinion of these shows based on the clips that I've seen. I cold most assuredly be wrong, because right now all I can judge on is these little three minute clips. I've read a commenter on another site describe the completed versions of The Paul Reiser Show as "godawful." But, base on these clips maybe you, my readers would be willing to give me your opinions – based on what you see here – of the coming new shows in Comments..

2010-11 Season Night By Night

It's time now to take a look at the Fall 2010-11 TV schedule on a day to day basis. What I'm trying to do her is to handicap each night's programming and to attempt – sight unseen, not even a trailer (maybe a couple of commercials but that's all) – to pick the winners and losers from each night. It's an inexact science that verges on Voodoo, and I'm not much of a practitioner. My predictions last year were sufficiently imprecise that I can claim victory (following the rule for all prophets to keep your predictions sufficiently vague so that you can spin them however you like after the fact). And that's the policy I intend to follow this time around as well: keep them vague unless I really feel committed about something...and don't feel committed about anything. As I stated last year, there are two rules to keep in mind: nothing on The CW will win its time slot; and in competition between a new show and an established series, the established series will usually win – particularly if the established series has completed its second season – unless the show has started to lose viewers in previous seasons (or its on The CW). With these concepts in hand, let's look at the new schedule. (All times are Eastern.)

Sunday

	ABC	CBS	Fox	NBC	The CW
7:00-7:30	America's Funniest Home Videos	60 Minutes	The O/T	Football Night In America	Local
7:30-8:00	America's Funniest Home Videos	60 Minutes	The O/T	Football Night In America	Local
8:00-8:30	Extreme Makeover Home Edition	The Amazing Race	The Simpsons	Football Night In America	Local
8:30-9:00	Extreme Makeover Home Edition	The Amazing Race	The Cleveland Show	Sunday Night Football	Local
9:00-9:30	Desperate Housewives	Undercover Boss	Family Guy	Sunday Night Football	Local
9:30-10:00	Desperate Housewives	Undercover Boss	American Dad	Sunday Night Football	Local
10:00-11:00	Brothers & Sisters	CSI: Miami	Local	Sunday Night Football	Local

This is NBC's big night, about the only night they're going to win and that dominance will end with the Football season. Of the rest CBS should win the first two hours (60 Minutes, The Amazing Race). The battle between Desperate Housewives and Undercover Boss looks like it will be intense. Ratings for Desperate Housewives have been slipping in the past year but the question is whether Undercover Boss can stay as popular as it was in the inaugural half season. Since the show debuted following the Super Bowl – meaning that it was running against Celebrity Apprentice and the predominantly male Football audience was up for picking – we have no idea how much of its audience was people who would normally be watching the NFL game. I'd say that Desperate Housewives will probably edge out Undercover Boss but the show's ratings will continue to slip. The third hour is the time slot with the greatest questions. Taking Football out of the equation, the question becomes whether the relocates CSI: Miami, which had been showing some significant slippage in its Monday night slot last season will be able to deliver its audience to Sunday nights. I'm prepared to suggest that Brothers & Sisters will have a fairly easy time against CBS, at least until the end of the Football season.

Monday

	ABC	CBS	Fox	NBC	The CW
8:00-8:30	Dancing with the Stars	How I Met Your Mother	House	Chuck	90210
8:30-9:00	Dancing with the Stars	Rules Of Engagement	House	Chuck	90210
9:00-9:30	Dancing with the Stars	Two and a Half Men	LONESTAR	THE EVENT	Gossip Girl
9:30-10:00	Dancing with the Stars	MIKE & MOLLY	LONESTAR	THE EVENT	Gossip Girl
10:00-11:00	Castle	HAWAII FIVE-0	Local	CHASE	Local

Dancing With The Stars will continue to dominate the night along. The first hour will be a three-way battle – sorry friends of Chuck but your show has sadly been labelled a "cult favourite" and won't be growing an audience. I'm less than impressed with Rules Of Engagement but like an old-time Timex watch it keeps just ticking and ticking and ticking, so I suppose I'm missing something. The second hour narrows down to a two way battle because I just don't see Lonestar doing much. People who watch broadcast TV don't seem to like shows about criminals – remember Smith a few years ago or that CW (by way of MRC) show a couple of seasons ago? Both shows died fast deaths. Lonestar may look good but I don't see it overcoming viewer resistance. The same principle holds true with The Event; we've seen that viewers also don't really want these extended conspiracy theory series, no matter how well they're done. I'm slightly unsure of is how well the new CBS comedy Mike & Molly will perform. The show's pedigree is certainly strong as a Chuck Lorre comedy, and the two main characters are played by actors who are familiar to viewers. In the beginning at least the third hour presents the biggest questions. Castle is the only incumbent in the time slot, which is usually a good thing, but CBS is certainly trying to assert supremacy in the time-slot by moving the high profile newcomer Hawaii Five-0 into the spot vacated by CSI: Miami. The wildcard here is Chase. If people turn into Hawaii Five-0 to see what the fuss is about and then decide that like several other recent remakes it isn't worth the trouble, then this show might benefit. Right now, I don't really see it happening.

Tuesday

	ABC	CBS	Fox	NBC	The CW
8:00-9:00	NO ORDINARY FAMILY	NCIS	Glee	The Biggest Loser	One Tree Hill
9:00-9:30	Dancing with the Stars Results	NCIS: Los Angeles	RAISING HOPE	The Biggest Loser	Life Unexpected
9:30-10:00	Dancing with the Stars Results	NCIS: Los Angeles	RUNNING WILDE	The Biggest Loser	Life Unexpected
10:00-11:00	DETROIT 1-8-7	The Good Wife	Local	Parenthood	Local

Here's a surprising fact about Tuesday nights. In the second half of the 2009-10 season, three shows in the first hour of Tuesdays were generating over 10 million viewers each. On a weekly basis. Based on the changes that the other networks have made and what CBS hasn't changed,I feel confident in saying that CBS will win the night overall. The problem is with the other networks. One of the big Tuesday battles is going to be between ABC and Fox in the first Hour, and it's going to be a battle for second place behind NCIS. I love the idea behind No Ordinary Family and I've been a fan of Michael Chiklis since his first series The Commish. Played right and against the right competition this show could find a following. Glee isn't that competition. First it's an established show even if it isn't established in this time slot. Secondly Glee is the more realistic show and I really think that it will work better than a show that seems to be trying to be a live action version of The Incredibles. Turning to the second hour, I have no hope that the Fox comedies will have any success. First, they're Fox comedies and second they're on opposite the Dancing With The Stars Results show – in truth the only variety show left on TV, with singing, dancing and (allegedly) comedy – and NCIS: Los Angeles which was the highest rated new show of the 2009-10 season. Regardless of the merit of the two comedies (and I don't have much hope for them in that respect) that's pretty heady opposition to buck. And that doesn't even figure in the second hour of Biggest Loser. The final hour of the night features The Good Wife, the first CBS show in some time which actually managed to run the entire season and be renewed for a second season. In most weeks it won the time slot. Whether that will happen again depends on how well Detroit 1-8-7 does with the public. Parenthood is a good show, but to my mind it is in the wrong time slot and isn't a contender to win the third hour either in overall ratings or in the demographic. Thus it comes down to whether Detroit 1-8-7 can draw an audience. The show sounds like it could be worth seeing but whether the documentary format works as well with a drama as it does with a comedy is a major question.

Wednesday

	ABC	CBS	Fox	NBC	The CW
8:00-8:30	The Middle	Survivor	Lie To Me	UNDERCOVERS	America's Next Top Model
8:30-9:00	BETTER TOGETHER	Survivor	Lie To Me	UNDERCOVERS	America's Next Top Model
9:00-9:30	Modern Family	Criminal Minds	Hell's Kitchen	Law & Order: SVU	HELLCATS
9:30-10:00	Cougar Town	Criminal Minds	Hell's Kitchen	Law & Order: SVU	HELLCATS
10:00-11:00	THE WHOLE TRUTH	THE DEFENDERS	Local	LAW & ORDER: LOS ANGELES	Local

Lots of questions here. This could be NBC best night outside of Sunday night when they have Football. Survivor should win the first hour overall, and probably in the demographic, so the question becomes which of the other four shows (I'm not counting the CW in this) will come in second and survive. I'm not sure that Lie To Me can really anchor the night. It worked fine after House and might have worked against the sort of shows that CBS had there previously, but will be in big trouble against Survivor. The Middle isn't the strongest of the returning ABC comedies but I don't think they could have run the best of the ABC comedies at this hour and still have Modern Family be as good as it currently is. I'm really interested in seeing Undercovers, and if this is done properly it it could be the show that finishes second to Survivor. The second hour belongs to Criminal Minds and Law & Order SVU. I'm not entirely happy about the decision to run L&O: SVU here – I'd much prefer to see in the third hour of Tueseday nights while Parenthood moved down to an earlier hour. A fall season of Hell's Kitchen – if indeed this is what Fox intends to do after the Baseball playoffs – is basically a placeholder until American Idol comes back or they're first to move things about. The ABC comedies will do well if not spectacularly. This brings us to the third hour, or the "Court Hour" as I'm beginning to call it. I'm going to offer a theory about The Defenders, a show that seems totally out of place not just in the time-slot but in the whole CBS line-up. My theory is that this is a placeholder and that the Untitled Criminal Minds spinoff will be slotted into this time when the show is "ready" and this show fails. I'm pretty certain that the show will fail based on the actors, the premise and the competition. I'm pretty certain that what will work here is what has gone before even if it is in a different skin. I'm talking of course about Law & Order: Los Angeles. I may think that the differences between Los Angeles and New York aren't sufficiently huge to justify a new show (now if they'd imported the British version of Law & Order they might have something different enough to be intriguing) but I'm convinced it's going to work better than either of the other two shows in the time-slot.

Thursday

	ABC	CBS	Fox	NBC	The CW
8:00-8:30	MY GENERATION	The Big Bang Theory	Bones	Community	Vampire Diaries
8:30-9:00	MY GENERATION	$#!* MY DAD SAYS	Bones	The Office	Vampire Diaries
9:00-9:30	Grey's Anatomy	CSI	Fringe	30 Rock	NIKITA
9:30-10:00	Grey's Anatomy	CSI	Fringe	OUTSOURCED	NIKITA
10:00-11:00	Private Practice	The Mentalist	Local	LOVE BITES	Local

The last time that CBS aired two half hour comedies at 8 p.m. Eastern Time (currently the first hour of primetime) was in the 1965-66 season when the network had the combination of Gilligan's Island and My Three Sons. Of course back then the networks were programming from 7:30 p.m. on so the 8 p.m. time period wasn't as big as it is today (for the record, the 7:30 p.m. timeslot on CBS featured a little show called The Munsters). The changes on the night are relatively small in terms of changing shows around but I think that the philosophy involved is very significant. In the first hour let's dismiss My Generation – if it lasts 13 weeks I'll be very surprised – and the always reliable Bones and turn to the confrontation of the night, the CBS comedies versus the NBC comedies. Community has never been a huge ratings draw – really none of the NBC comedies other than The Office have been – while The Big Bang Theory has been a breakout hit on Monday nights. The question is whether it can anchor a time slot effectively since there is a school of thought that suggests that the show's success is predicated on its Monday lead-in, Two And A Half Men. I don't agree with that assessment. While I don't think that The Big Bang Theory will draw the same sort of numbers that it drew on Mondays, I am confident that it will win the overall and probably the demographic in its time slot. And I predict that $#!* My Dad Says will be competitive with The Office in its time. I expect the status quo for the rest of the night. Outsourced might work well enough for the network to give it a full season and maybe more, but Love Bites is probably DOA.

Friday

	ABC	CBS	Fox	NBC	The CW
8:00-8:30	Secret Millionaire	Medium	Human Target	Who Do You Think You Are?/SCHOOL PRIDE	Smallville
9:00-10:00	BODY OF PROOF	CSI: NY	THE GOOD GUYS	Dateline NBC	Supernatural
10:00-11:00	20/20	BLUE BLOODS	Local	OUTLAW	Local

Wow! All of a sudden Friday is a hot night for the networks. Previously an under-programmed wasteland for reality shows we suddenly have nine scripted programs on the evening. As a result I believe that networks that program reality shows and news programs will suffer. While I don't think those shows will be cancelled – on the whole they're cheap to produce – they're going to hurt the networks that program them. This definitely plays into the hands of CBS and to lesser extents FOX and The CW. My expectation is that having Secret Millionaire as a lead will hurt ABC's Body Of Proof while Outlaw will suffer with School Pride and Dateline NBC preceding it. FOX has a potential problem developing with The Good Guys. Assuming that the show does not do well during its Summer run it is likely that the network will pull the plug on the show before September. Since FOX has tentatively placed Kitchen Nightmares in the time slot for the mid-season, their programming strategy is at risk. In terms of viewership, my assumption is that Medium, Human Target and Smallville will all draw from different audiences. They probably don't have too many problems facing them. In the second hour it shapes up to being a battle between Body Of Proof and CSI: New York. Even though the show has been losing audience in the Wednesday time slot, if they can retain most of their audience they should do quite well. This doesn't necessarily mean that Body of Proof won't draw enough of an audience to stay on the air but I'm not sure it will win its time. The network is going to have to be patient with it. As for the battle between Blue Bloods and Outlaw, I expect Blue Bloods to be dominant. While I like Jimmy Smits, I find the premise of Outlaw (an appointee to the Supreme Court resigning and re-entering private practice as a lawyer?...working for the little guy??) to be somewhere outside of the realm of believability. Give the third hour – and the night – to CBS but with credit to the others for not giving up on the night.

Life kept interrupting me while I was trying to get this post done. One other thing; I like to post video clips from the new shows in a separate post but the US networks are definitely not making it easy for me; I can't find FOX or ABC and most CBS clips tell me that they "are not available in your region." It may take a while to find what I need.