People Who Live In A Glass House... Shouldn’t

Imitation is the sincerest form of Television. – Fred Allen

CBS went to court to try to prevent ABC from airing their new series The Glass House. They claimed that the show was a blatant copy of their network’s summer series Big Brother to the point where it constituted copyright infringement and “misappropriation of trade secrets.” I can’t speak to the question of “misappropriation of trade secrets,” but base on what I saw on Monday night I would suggest that it comes awfully close to copyright infringement if it doesn’t cross the line.

The Glass House features fourteen players of various ages, occupations, sexual orientations and attitudes towards the game and how it should be played. On one hand there’s Apollo, a poet, who proposes to make no alliances but rather to decide who he’s going to vote for based on having people pick cards. On the opposite side is the exceptionally obnoxious Alex – or as he calls himself at least twice in the first episode “primetime 99 Alex Stein” – who asks America if he should become “the most epic villain in the history of reality TV” but who seems to be getting a good start on that project even before America tells him “Yes!”

Audience participation is a big part of this show, far bigger than on most seasons of the American version of Big Brother after the first season. The home audience votes or has input on virtually every aspect of the game. In the first episode the audience (entirely made up of people who watched the show’s live feeds online since the episode was recorded) voted on which “guests” would occupy some of the rooms for the week – they put the oldest and youngest women in the “Enemies” room. The viewers decided on what sort of party the “guests” would have (Pool Party beat Pajama Party), the kind of drinks they’d have, and the party favours they’d receive (feather boas and Mardi Gras beads). The home audience even decided on the party game the people inside would play.

The audience also decided how the players would be split into teams for the competition which was the main feature of the week. Given a choice between “Men vs. Women,” “Older vs. Younger,” and “East vs. West,” the viewers chose “East vs. West.” One of the players, Jacob who lives in Oregon, didn’t know whether he lived in the East or the West. The only choices left to the players was who would be their team captains for the competition. Being a team captain puts the person selected (or volunteering) in considerable danger. Two members of the losing team are placed in “Limbo” – sequestered from the other players in the game but not out of the game. One of the players sent to limbo will be the losing team captain, while the other will be a member of the losing team voted for by all of the players, both from the winning and the losing team. Jacob, the guy from Oregon who doesn’t know that he’s from the West volunteers to lead the Western team, while the Eastern team is led by Jeffrey, a self-proclaimed fat Gay guy working as a receptionist in Brooklyn, who also volunteered to be team captain.

The first competition is a relatively simple puzzle. Names of members of the opposing team were on the left side of a board, and some attribute or activity that they participate in was on the right side. Separating the two sides was a four-by-four grid of squares. The squares were in fact the faces of a three sided object (there couldn’t be more than three sides or they wouldn’t have turned properly in the space allotted to them. Four team members were placed on lifts controlled from a panel behind them. Two of the remaining players operated the lifts following the instructions of the team captain. Once the competition started the players would flip the squares revealing coloured lines. The lines connected the names to the attributes. The clock would stop when when the correct people were connected by a coloured line to the correct attribute.

As I’ve said this is a relatively simple puzzle if you ignore the attributes and concentrate on getting the lines within the grid of squares to connect to each other. The West team were the first to tackle the puzzle and did exactly what they shouldn’t have done. They tried to guess which person had which attribute and tried to find lines which connect the person to the attribute that they expected them to have. It took them over seven and a half minutes to complete the puzzle correctly. The East team took the correct approach, turning the outer sets of squares – the ones by the names and the attributes – and then finding the correct paths in the middle group of squares. It took them just over three and a half minutes. The West team lost and Jacob was automatically placed in Limbo.

What remained was for the players to select the other player to go into Limbo. Throughout the time that they had been in the Glass House, Alex had been making himself the most hated person in the house. He strutted around the house in his underwear, pretending to hump Andrea, a married Mormon woman with three kids, denigrated Joy – a nurse who has also appeared in Playboy several times – as a stripper and sex worker whose opinion doesn’t matter because of that, and attacked cocktail waitress Erica for being fat. It was all part of his effort to be “the most epic villain in the history of reality TV,” but the other great reality TV villains such as Dr. Will and Evel Dick on Big Brother and Russel Hantz on Survivor had a greater plan behind their “villainy” (and in the cases of Will and Dick, it was a successful plan in that they won their seasons of Big Brother). Alex’s “plan” was to be “evil” (or rather hateful and obnoxious) for no other reason than to be evil and obnoxious. It certainly won him few friends and allies in the house. While Apollo stuck with his “plan” to vote for the person who picked a specific card, and another vote went a different way, pretty much everyone voted to send Alex to Limbo. And while Jacob quit the show shortly after he went into Limbo that doesn’t mean that Alex is safe; it is left up to the viewers to decide if Alex will be going back into the Glass House.

So is The Glasshouse guilty of copyright infringement and “misappropriation of trade secrets?” Well I can’t speak to the latter – reportedly the “misappropriation of trade secrets” included someone from ABC “acquiring” the CBS policy handbook for the show – but speaking as someone who isn’t a lawyer (and doesn’t play one on TV) and who isn’t certain as to what constitutes copyright infringement legally, I have to say that it certainly feels close enough to what Big Brother is like – and of almost equal importance what the international versions of Big Brother produced by Endemol are like – for it to be almost the same show. The basis of both shows is a “houseful of people living their lives under a ‘microscope’ with no privacy”, constantly under video and audio observation (and they know it). There are differences from the American version of Big Brother: there is no “Head Of Household” and the nomination ceremony is significantly different from the current American version of the show – they use a video screen and what appears to be a variation on the XBox 360’s Kinect movement system  for selection of one of the people to go into Limbo – and of course the evicted “guests” are decided by the votes of the audience rather than the fellow competitors. Then there’s the idea that the actions of the players are controlled by the audience. The problem for me is that virtually everything that sets the show apart from Big Brother is stuff that the American version of the show has done in the past, mostly in a limited manner, and/or is stuff that is commonly done in the international versions of Big Brother. The CBS show has had contestants “remotely controlled” by the audience in that past; in one case they had an “America’s Player” was controlled by the audience right up until the moment he was evicted. Big Brother routinely has audience votes on punishment foods and a variety of other conditions within the house. And while they no longer do it, in the first season of Big Brother the houseguests nominated people for eviction but it was the audience that decided by their votes who would be evicted. It didn’t work in the first American season which is why the format of the show was changed to make the evictions more Survivor-like. It is however very similar to the way that every other entry in the international Big Brother franchise operates. On the face of it I’d say that CBS has a strong case that the similarities between The Glasshouse and Big Brother are close enough to constitute copyright infringement.

For me the big question is whether The Glasshouse is good TV and as far as I’m concerned the answer is that it is pretty awful TV. The show comes across as almost an afterthought; while most shows, including Big Brother, have online components as an adjunct, The Glasshouse feels as though the TV show is less important than the online component. The show’s live feeds from within the house are the primary content while the TV show is merely a summary of what people saw there over the week. The one thing that ABC didn’t steal from Big Brother was multiple episodes each week (three episodes in most weeks for Big Brother including one live episode). For a show like this multiple episodes are necessary for those of us who don’t watch the live feeds obsessively (in other words those of us who have lives) multiple episodes in a week help viewers to develop a connection or empathy – or hatred – for the people on the show. It also helps to enhance the flow of the show allowing storylines to be picked out an developed. After one episode of The Glasshouse I really don’t feel any connection to people on the show. My “hatred” for Alex is based entirely on his over-the-top “villainous” behaviour (or if you prefer his general “douchebaggery”), not because I’ve seen his behaviour develop over any period of time. ABC seems to care less about their TV audience than their online audience (one sign: the contestant bios list how many Facebook Friends each player has). If you watch the show’s online components on a regular basis maybe you develop this sort of flow but from a TV point of view it that contributes nothing. The sense of dramatic flow that even shows like Survivor and The Amazing Race are able to develop in an episode was totally missing from the first episode of The Glasshouse. The web content isn’t being seen by most of the people who are the potential audience for the TV show. And since I happen to be writing about the TV show (and okay I admit it, because I had such a hard time trying to use the online content – maybe because I’m Canadian) my assessment is that The Glasshouse is pretty abominable TV.

How Canadians Get Their TV

Michael sent me this comment about a month ago and I thought the topic was interesting enough to coax an article out of. It concerns the mechanics of how TV is delivered in Canada.

I am curious about how the Canadians get their TV. Cable, satellite, downloading (such as NetFlix, iTunes, and Amazon) or DVDs.

How many channels are available to view? How much of the country's area is reached by TV in any form? What percentage of Canadians watch TV? Is it based on the free commercial model, the pay-tv model (cable for example), or license fees of the British?

To answer part of the last question first, Television in Canada is largely based on the free commercial model, although certain premium stations – HBO Canada, Sportsnet World, The Movie Network (in Ontario and east), Movie Central (Manitoba and west), and Superchannel – are commercial free but operate on a pay-TV model by charging significantly higher subscription prices than other channels. Apparently there was, in the early 1950s, a short-lived attempt to intrdoduce a licensing system such as the British use to help fund the CBC but that effort apparently died because Canada and the United States use the same technical standards and equipment and it was nearly impossible to stop people from buying (unlicensed) sets in the US and bringing them into Canada.

According to the CRTC, virtually all Canadians have access to over the air broadcast (OTA) signals but about 92% Canadians get their TV with cable and satellite. There are two major cable companies (Rogers and Shaw), three smaller regional companies (EastLink, Cogeco and Videotron) and a number of small independent companies, some of them community or cooperatively owned. There are two satellite companies Bell ExpressVu and Shaw Direct. Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) offered by several of the telephone companies including Telus in BC and Alberta, Sasktel Max in Saskatchewan, MTS in Manitoba, BellTV in Ontario and Quebec, and Aliant in Atlantic Canada has a far smaller penetration in Canada than in the United States. Shaw, which is the primary cable TV provider in Western Canada and Northern Ontario is both the largest service provider in Canada and the largest Digital Cable provider. Part of this is because of their ownership of the Shaw Direct Satellite service which is significantly smaller than the Bell ExpressVu service.

Downloading is an available option although penetration is relatively low. According to a 2010 CRTC report in a typical week less than 25% of Anglophones and 20% of Francophones watched TV programming – defined as including “a TV program, newscast or clip from a TV program available on the Internet” – as opposed to over 40% of Anglophones and 35% of Francophones who watched amateur videos online. Sources appear to be somewhat restricted. Hulu is not legally available in Canada although there are people who try to avoid these restrictions. Apple has a Canadian service that appears (to a non-user like me) to be fairly extensive. In most cases you order from Canadian service providers such as CBC, CTV, Global, and CityTV and the cable service providers. NetFlix introduced a Canadian service in 2010. Again I’m not a subscriber so I can’t speak to the selection. Amazon Instant Video isn’t available in Canada. A potentially major problem for downloading may be the ownership issue. Shaw, Bell, and Rogers are among the largest Internet service providers in the country and the principal suppliers of broadband Internet services as well as the major cable/satellite Television providers. They also own the four largest broadcast stations – CTV (Bell), Global (Shaw), CityTV and Omni (Rogers) – as well as a high percentage of the Canadian cable channels. There is a benefit to them in restricting the penetration of downloading commercially made videos online.

The number of stations available to Canadians gets very complicated. Let’s start with broadcast. There are three English language networks – CBC, CTV, and Global – and two major English language systems – CTV Two, and CityTV. Systems are defined by the Canadian Radio Television and Telecommunications Commission as groups of stations that don’t have outlets throughout the country. There are two French Language networks – Radio Canada (which has stations in all provinces) and TVA (stations in Quebec, cable deals in the rest of the country) – and one French language system – V (formerly TQS or Quatre Saisson). There is one multilingual network – APTN or Aboriginal Peoples Television Network with broadcast stations in all three territories and cable coverage in the rest of Canada which broadcasts in English French and several Aboriginal languages – and one multilingual system – Omni, which has five stations and broadcasts in no less than twenty different languages including Mandarin, Cantonese, Punjabi, Portuguese and Italian. People in border regions can also receive broadcast stations from nearby American cities.

Turning to cable/satellite, most Canadians have access to at least five American network stations as part of the most basic cable package, with others available depending on what sort of cable package they subscribe to. Four US “superstations” (WSBK, WGN, Peachtree and KTLA) are available depending on service provider – some require a subscription to premium movie services to get these stations. Canadians also have access to 110 Canadian owned English language, 33 French language, and 54 multilingual analogue and digital services. There are 67 English language, 26 French language and five multilingual High Definition services but most of these duplicate existing analogue, and to a lesser extent digital TV services. This is in addition to a number of American and Foreign broadcast and cable stations carried in Canada. Most Canadian cable subscribers also have access to more American and international specialty channels than I choose to count. Needless to say, no cable or satellite system carries everything, either because of limited bandwidth or because of rivalries between the various cable companies which are also cable channel owners.

I hope this gives you some answers about Canadian TV. It’s not the whole story – I haven’t even touched on simsubs and why Canadian stations schedule shows the way they do – but it’s a start.

New Poll–Biggest Disappointment Of The 2011-12 Season

What constitutes a disappointment when it comes to a TV series? It varies I suppose. Sometimes it’s as simple as a show being cancelled. Sometimes it’s that a series isn’t cancelled and maybe should have been…at least in your opinion. Sometimes it’s that the show isn’t as good as you thought it would be, and sometimes it’s that the show is good but somehow does something that rubs you the wrong way. Mostly though a show disappoints when it or its fate doesn’t live up to expectations. No one – except maybe the people responsible for it – would call the fate of How To Be A Gentleman a disappointment because no one thought it was going to do anything except get cancelled quickly. Thus there was no disappointment when it died a quick (and well-deserved) death.

So what I’m doing with this poll is to present a list of ten series that were somehow regarded as disappointments. Some of these shows came from the outrage of fans, as expressed on forums and comments pages for news stories. Some of them come from critics. And a few of them come from me. As always, feel free to justify your votes by offering comments here.

---

GCB
Why is it disappointing? It didn’t live up to the hype I suppose. GCB was basically being sold as the logical successor to Desperate Housewives. It was scheduled to follow Desperate Housewives presumably to build and transfer “brand loyalty” from the older series. I remember when Pan Am was facing collapsing ratings my ratings guru, Marc Berman, kept emphasising that GCB was going to replace Pan Am at the mid-season mark and would undoubtedly perform significantly better than Pan Am. In fact GCB was only marginally better than Pan Am in overall viewers (about 480,000 more viewers) and the share and ratings in the 18-49 demographic (Pan Am 2.4 rating 6 share; GCB 2.6 rating 7 share). So GCB can be labelled a disappointment because it was a show that people expected a lot of and which didn’t deliver.

Work It
Why is it disappointing? Because ABC bought it. Pretty much everyone could tell that How To Be A Gentleman was going to die quickly based on the clips and trailers that aired before the season started so it wasn’t a disappointment that it failed. In fact it would probably have been a disappointment if it had survived. Work It has to be regarded as a different case. Everyone could see that this show was going to die quickly based on the description. The show, about a couple of guys who dress up as women to get jobs as pharmaceutical reps, was part of ABC’s group of shows that were attempting to look at the “plight” of the American male in a world where(supposedly) women have the upper hand. That part of the premise was in itself somewhat offensive but the approach they took to it was even worse. They had the men dress as women which opened a whole can of worms with the transgender community who felt the series trivialized the barriers facing them. But that wasn’t even the key element in why the show failed. It lacked the charm that a show like Bosom Buddies had, and by the very nature of the main conceit – that women have it better than men in the current job market – trivialized a lot of issues. The disappointment here wasn’t that it ran just two episodes, but that given the network’s lead time and the failures they had with their other comedies in the “plight of the American male” genre a major American network actually put this steaming pile of you-know-what on the air at all.

NYC 22
Why is it disappointing? When you look at the people associated with this project I don’t think that anyone could have been blamed for expecting more and better. The show had Robert DeNiro, Jane Rosenthal and Robert Price as Executive producers. Price, whose long list of writing credits includes the The Wire, for which he won one Writers Guild Award and was nominated for another. With the talent attached to this project it would not seem unreasonable to expect something edgy and pushing the boundaries. What we got was a pedestrian and well worn show about rookie cops. Even that doesn’t have to be bad – you need only look at the parts of the first three seasons of Southland that dealt with Ben Sherman’s (Benjamin MacKenzie) time as a rookie to see what can be pulled form this sort of material. But they didn’t go that route. The result was that CBS had a show that was more like ABC’s summer series Rookie Blue but set in New York instead of “nameless city that is Toronto without actually saying its Toronto.” It should have been better.

Unforgettable
Why is it disappointing? It was cancelled. Judged purely by the storyline of the series that wouldn’t seem to be a huge loss. The show appears to  be a fairly run of the mill procedural, with the hook being that the lead character is a woman has hyperthymesia, a mental condition that will not let her forget anything that she consciously saw. Not only does this help her as a detective, it makes her hard to beat at Poker and Blackjack. In fact the only thing she can’t remember clearly is what happened on the day her sister was murdered. So as I say, it looks like a fairly run of the mill procedural. What really sets it apart is that it finished 24th in the ratings for the 2011-12 season and averaged 12.11 million viewers. Admittedly it did not perform as well in the 18-49 demographic, averaging a 2.5 rating and a 7 share finishing in 70th place in that area, but even so it outperformed CBS’s entire Friday night line-up in the demographic. The simple fact seems to be that Unforgettable was cancelled because it was on CBS. The network has an embarrassment of riches when it comes to programming. This actually becomes a problem because it keeps new shows from getting a chance to develop. Other networks would kill to have a problem like this; NBC would round up virgins to sacrifice to have a scripted show that did these sorts of ratings even with that rating in the demographic. There’s been some talk that the series might be picked up by a cable outlet in the US – both TNT and Lifetime are said to be interested – but it is a disappointment that it was cancelled in the first place when other, less worthy shows stay on broadcast TV.

2 Broke Girls
Why is it disappointing? I really enjoyed the first season of the show, particularly the relationship between Max (Kat Dennings) and Caroline (Beth Behrs). I liked that Caroline was portrayed less as a Paris Hilton style millionaire bubblehead and more as an Ivanka Trump type…with maybe a just a touch of Paris (Ivanka would know how to marry the ketchup). I was particularly impressed with Behrs whose biggest role up to this time was as a caroler in an episode of NCIS. However critics have been disappointed with the show because of the three – now four – main supporting characters, Earl (Garrett Morris), Han (Matthew Moy), Oleg (Jonathon Kite) and the most recent addition Sophie (Jennifer Coolidge). While the characters of Caroline and Max are well drawn, the supporting characters are regarded as stereotypes. Emily Nussbaum of The New Yorker wrote that the way the supporting characters are written is “so racist it is less offensive than baffling.” Another critic said that the show relies on “racial humor [that] consists entirely of having a stereotype show up, portraying it in the most obnoxious way possible, then having everybody make fun of it.” The portrayal that has been found particularly offensive by some is Han Lee, the manager of the diner. Andrew Ti in Grantland as “it's distressingly easy to imagine the writers sitting around and listing off every single ching-chong stereotype, ultimately deciding with some sorrow that a Fu Manchu mustache would be impractical for budget reasons.” And that doesn’t even mention the New Zealand critic who gave up on the show because of “those two rape jokes in the first three episodes.”

Ringer
Why is it disappointing? This series was supposed to be the triumphal return of Sarah Michelle Gellar to television, and on the successor to the network where she earned her primetime fame, The pilot for show was originally made for CBS but when that network passed on it they moved it to The CW (of which it is part owner). The show had an intriguing premise: Bridget, a stripper and recovering drug addict on the run from the mob assumes the identity of Siobhan, her wealthy married twin sister who has apparently committed suicide, only to discover that Siobhan had secrets of her own. The show received a lot of press and Internet buzz during the summer and reviews for the pilot were generally good, although with a few dissenters. The pilot received the highest ratings that a Tuesday night show on The CW has ever gotten. This didn’t translate into ongoing success as ratings dropped significantly, and the critics who initially loved the show came to dislike it, finding it convoluted and silly. Worst of all it didn’t seem to fit the  network. So in the end the disappointment here is that The CW didn’t take the momentum and anticipation that built up during the summer and translate it into a long term success, and that they didn’t produce a series that was worthy of the quality of people that starred in it. Or maybe it is just that he network was incapable of breaking the mould of the sort of shows that people expect from The CW.

The Secret Circle
Why is it disappointing? This show was cancelled, and as with Unforgettable it is a little perplexing. Maybe more perplexing than Unforgettable when you come right down to it. The Secret Circle was the third highest rated series on its network. Now admittedly the network was The CW which has rating that can most flatteringly described as anemic, but according to the traditional season ratings compiled by Nielsen it had a larger audience than several other shows on the network including Gossip Girl, 90210, Hart Of Dixie, and Supernatural, all of which were renewed for at least thirteen episodes. In fact the only shows on The CW that had higher average ratings than The Secret Circle were the show that preceded it on Thursday night, The Vampire Diaries (from the same producers as The Secret Circle and a book series from the same author) and cycle 17 of America’s Next Top Model – cycle 18 of that show had an average viewership that was less than The Secret Circle.

Missing
Why is it disappointing? For a long time I had The Finder in this spot. That was justified because a lot of people, including at least one critic who I think a lot of, said that on seeing FOX’s new line-up they increasingly thought that the network should have kept The Finder as a nice compliment to Bones. They tended to think that FOX mishandled The Finder for most of its run. As much as I enjoyed The Finder though I just can’t muster up that much disappointment that it was cancelled. As I said, I liked the show and its incredibly quirky nature. The problem is that I fully expected that it would be cancelled. Besides, I was far more disappointed about another show that was cancelled, and that is Missing. Missing starred Ashley Judd as Becca Winstone, a woman who was a CIA agent and whose son was kidnapped. The show had Judd’s character kicking ass throughout Europe. Locations for the show included Italy, Croatia, France, the Czech Republic, Austria and Turkey. All the while she is trying to unravel the conspiracy that took her son and remembering things that she did while she was a CIA agent, much of which she is not proud of. The cast included Keith Carradine, Cliff Curtis, Adriano Giannini, and Nick Eversam. Best of all it has the distinction of starting by killing Sean Bean and ending with him alive and well – the reverse of most of Sean Bean’s roles. And while it had an end that went full circle and delivered an satisfying resolution to the disappearance of Becca’s son the final minutes set things up so there could have been a second season. I was disappointed that it was cancelled.

Terra Nova
Why is it disappointing? This show had so much potential, but it was potential that was never realised. The idea of a dystopian future society attempting to save itself by colonizing the prehistoric age of the dinosaurs is full of potential. Unfortunately this Steven Spielberg produced series managed to ignore the storylines with real potential and turned the show into a rather uninteresting juvenile series. The focus of most of the episodes was on the children of the main adult characters having adventures and managing to save the day. Or screwing up and being forgiven. Or wanting to keep a pet dinosaur. In general it seemed as if the kids were, if not smarter than the adults then at least the ones that the most interesting things happened to. The adult characters were, for the most part boring. Worse, the overriding mytharc was both confusing and not particularly interesting. At times it seemed as if they were making it up as they went along. The show was tremendously expensive and delivered neither value for the money nor the quality expected from the producers. The show that replaced it, Alcatraz, was (in my opinion anyway) more interesting and more exciting than Terra Nova. At the time that the series appeared, when I was attempting to write a review of Terra Nova, my opinion was that sometime in the future Terra Nova could be remade into the series it should have been rather than the series that it was.

The X-Factor
Why is it disappointing? This isn’t my assessment but the disappointment here lies in the show’s ratings. Before the show debuted it was claimed that if the series drew “anything less than 20 million viewers” it would be a flop. Those words came from the series’ producer and star Simon Cowell. He felt that anything less than the sort of ratings American Idol had received the season before would represent failure. Others took up the cry; I remember listening to Marc Berman’s podcasts and in every episode he claimed that The X-Factor would be a giant-killer, a success of immeasurable proportions. In the event, the show finished in 19th place in the ratings with 12.67 million viewers, although it did well in the 18-49 demographic (4.4 rating and a 12 share for the performance episodes). For comparison, the performance episodes of American Idol – on the same day and time as The X-Factor performance episodes – averaged 19.81 million viewers and a 16.2 rating and 17 share in the demographic. NBC’s comparable series The Voice (which Cowell recently suggested was the place were X-Factor rejects should try out) finished 9th in the ratings (15.77 million) and did a 6.1 rating and a 16 share. This put it in 3rd place in the 18-49 group, just behind American Idol and seven places ahead of The X-Factor, which finished 10th with the 18-49 crowd. By Cowell`s own expectations and what people where hyped into believing this make The X-Factor at least a disappointment of not an actual flop.

Upfronts–Responses to Comments

To finally wind up the Upfront discussion I want to respond to some of the comments that were left in the various articles. The Upfront articles usually yield a number of comments here on the blog anyway, and some of them are pretty good, so let’s take a look.

NBC


Todd Mason wrote:

Well, thank goodness we have no fewer than two series imitating DEXTER coming this season (at least)...this one and SLICING AND DICING KEVIN BACON on Fox.

I know what you mean Todd. The only link I really see to Dexter is that the three shows all have serial killers, but I doubt that either of the two network shows would be on the air if it weren’t for Dexter so it’s less imitation than Network Weasel logic: it did okay on cable so it’s time to put it on broadcast. For the record, I think the FOX Kevin Bacon series – The Following – is likely to be the more successful one (assuming that either one is going to be successful, which I doubt). NBC’s mistake in my view is to tie their show to the Hannibal Lecter character. I think there’s a greater opportunity if the serial killer character isn’t known until he makes his first kill, which shouldn’t come in the first episode. We know what to expect from Hannibal Lecter from the beginning so the shock value of that first kill is minimized.

The Kevin Bacon series reminds me more of Criminal Minds but with an overriding mytharc aspect. The other difference is that while the characters on Criminal Minds operate as a team, the characters on The Following are more antagonistic to each other, or at least to the Kevin Bacon character. Let’s just say that Criminal Minds is the DC Comics version of the concept while The Following is the Marvel Comics version.

Next Roger Owen Green wrote:

I figured Who Do You Think You Are would stick. It's the one show I watch with my 8 y.o.

I really hoped that Who Do You Think You Are would stick as well. Initially I didn’t think it was a show that an American commercial network would embrace, and that it really wasn’t suited to commercial TV. Still I think that it’s loss, combined with the “quality” of the reality shows that NBC is offering, is a bit of a black eye for the network.

Todd Mason responded to Roger’s comment:

Well, WHO DO YOU THINK is pretty much the same series as PBS's Finding Your Roots with Henry Louis Gates, Jr....which I hope Canadians might have access to, even if mostly on border stations (haven't doublechecked to see if CBC or anyone else has picked it up, or if TV Ontario and/or SCN will be carrying it if they haven't yet).

The PBS show might be available in some areas but I don’t think it was seen where I live. It doesn’t appear on the list of shows on the two PBS stations available from Shaw Cable – WTVS in Detroit and KSPS in Spokane – but those lists might be out of date. In recent years I haven’t been watching that much on PBS in part because of the interminable Pledge Weeks where the programming more closely resembled an all infomercial/self-help channel than educational television.

SCN is more than a bit of a sore subject with me. In 2010 the provincial government decided to shut down SCN – the Saskatchewan Communications Network – because of “low ratings,” and to save money (in a booming resource economy). A private company called Bluepoint Investments bought the network at the eleventh hour. The new owners planned to offer commercial programming in the prime time period and include advertising. They even got simsub rights for their programming that are only granted to broadcast stations. Earlier this year Bluepoint announced the sale of SCN to Rogers Communications, the owner of Citytv. The station will be rebranded as “Citytv Saskatchewan” and while Rogers claims they won’t seek alteration in the current license, which included a commercial free educational block from 6 a.m. to 3 p.m. I’m willing to bet that won’t last that long. The only real educational networks left in Canada are TV Ontario and the Knowledge Network in BC.

CBS

Linda wrote:

When they advertised they were doing an American version of Sherlock I said, "I bet Watson is a woman." Bingo! Of course this isn't a new concept; They Might Be Giants and The Return of the World's Greatest Detective both used the idea. And wasn't there a children's book takeoff on Holmes where the main boy character's "Watson" was a girl?

There probably was, though I’m not enough of a Holmes aficionado to know the title or the details. Making Watson a woman is something an American network, and particularly CBS, would do to create “unresolved sexual tension” (UST). There was a reporter in a Canadian newspaper who claimed that most CBS procedurals had a male-female relationship that could be seen as UST. It wasn’t well-developed and some of the cases of UST were fairly absurd (he mentioned Mac Taylor and Jo Danville on CSI: New York which was something I never saw until he stated it, and don’t see it as being particularly obvious since he mentioned it).

At the time I commented on Linda’s comment and mentioned that the network was also attempting to avoid any charges that the Holmes-male Watson relationship might be seen by some as being a sexual one. Todd Mason jumped on this statement of mine:

Well, of course, today in the Real US and environs, increasingly we see extended-period same-gender roommates...and, increasingly among the young, less worry about homosexuality. (Hell, I live platonically with a woman who owns the house.)

And tell me Todd, do you feel any Unresolved Sexual Tension? Because Television tells us both of you should be expected to be filled to the brim with UST. Obviously you’re right about it being common in real life but these are Network Weasels we’re talking about here, and as a group I think they tend to be conservative on a thing like that, trying as much as possible to avoid controversy. I recently heard Gary Marshall taking about The Odd Couple, and the network weasels of the day were constantly sending him notes telling him (demanding really) to assert the character’s heterosexuality by having more women on the show in a romantic context. I also know that the Doyle Estate sent a letter to Guy Ritchie ordering him not to have anything in his second (and presumably subsequent) Holmes film that would suggest a homosexual relationship between Holmes and Watson. It wasn’t an issue for Doyle or for a couple of generations of stage film and TV producers, but the Doyle Estate made it an issue. I can definitely see the network weasels at CBS saying “why borrow trouble. Changing Watson’s gender avoids any implications and gives us unresolved sexual tension. It’s a win-win answer.”

Todd continues:

Even going back to the '60s, Keith Robertson's YA novels about Henry Reed and Midge Glass employed a male-female Holmes/Watson dynamic (and essentially a platonic one), even though Reed and Glass were more evenly matched (as has also been the post-Doyle tendency...at very least, the latter-day Watson tends to be the one to pull the Holmes's iron out of some fires he's too unconventional/unconcerned to care about).

Well the Robertson novels aren’t specifically Holmes and Watson. Inspiration is different from keeping the characters but changing their genders. The relationship may be similar but the characters aren’t them. House and Wilson were inspired by Holmes and Watson, but they weren’t the characters in the same way that the characters in Elementary are clearly intended to be.
The male-female Holmes dynamic where it’s not actually Sherlock Holmes and Joan H. Watson seems to be quite common. I actually think that the relationship between Patrick Jane and Theresa Lisbon on The Mentalist is a Holmes and Watson style relationship with a man and a woman as lead characters. And yes, I am detecting UST showing up increasingly in that relationship, particularly in the season finale. (One day I’m going to do a post on the comparisons between the Holmes canon and The Mentalist,)

The Season Night By Night

Ben wrote:

I can see why you'd call Revolution a "dead show walking." It looks very reminiscent of shows like The Event and FlashForward, shows that wanted to be the next Lost but made the mistake of jumping right into conspiracies without building interest in the characters.

Well my assessment of Revolution as a “dead show walking” wasn’t entirely based on the premise though that was a contributing factor. Among the factors is the fact that it’s going up against two established shows – Castle and Hawaii Five-0 – and the fact that of the three Revolution has possibly the weakest lead-in with The Voice. Then you can add on the nature of the show itself; a future world without electricity, a place largely reduced if not to the stone age then to an agrarian society far less advanced than it was the last time we didn’t use electricity around 1850 (the first practical electric motors were developed in the 1850s). I’m not convinced that the mass audience is ready for that kind of a world even if they take the time, and don’t jump into the conspiracies right away – which I suspect they will. The public didn’t buy into a show like Kings (which I actually grew to like over time, so much so that I bought the DVDs) or Jericho. I’m not convinced that when given the choice between this show and Castle’s “cop and writer solving crimes in a serio-comic romantic manner” or Hawaii Five-0’s “elite cops in paradise” storylines that they’ll take the time to let Revolution build.

I'd hesitate to write it off, though. One of the creators is JJ Abrams, who co-created Lost itself, even though he left it for others to flesh out. And the other creator is Eric Kripke, who's kept Supernatural going for years. If both of them do what they do well on this show, and if they hire writers who can create a good hour of TV, and if the network gives them space to do all this, then the show has a fighting chance. Granted, that's a lot of ifs, but I'm withholding judgment until the show debuts.

It is a lot of ifs. Your really need to look at the track record, as my relative who handicaps horses would say. Eric Kripke’s only real success has been Supernatural, and that’s a series that probably wouldn’t have received a second season on a network that wasn’t The CW. On the other hand he was also responsible for the failed attempt to make a series of Tarzan, which performed so dismally that even the old WB wouldn’t keep it on the air. And while I’m a bit more charitable about JJ Abrams than Todd Mason (see the next response), I would like to point out that his most recent series. Alcatraz, was largely a failure, and that most networks would have ended Fringe a couple of years ago. And we probably shouldn’t mention Undercovers. By most network standards, most of what Abrams has done would be regarded as failures. Of the “ifs” that you mention maybe the biggest is “if the network gives them space to do this.” Even dealing with NBC – a network that seems increasingly desperate and/or resigned to their fate – I’m not sure the network will be willing to “give them the space” if the standards that they use to measure success or failure (the ratings and particularly the 18-49 ratings) aren’t met. After looking at the clips I think the show looks intriguing but that it probably isn’t the sort of thing mainstream, broadcast TV viewers would go to en masse. It would find a niche on SyFy or maybe the USA Network but I don’t see it working on a broadcast network.

Todd Mason responded to Ben:

I really don't like Abrams's work, and it should be noted that he's had exactly one sustained television success, that in collaboration with a number of folks out of Chris Carter and Joss Whedon's productions (guys who may have had only one or two sustained series respectively, but they were frankly much better series for at least most of their runs, and the Carter and Whedon productions strangled in their cribs were also more interesting than the Abrams misfires...or than SUPERNATURAL).

Well as I said to Ben, I’m a bit more charitable about JJ Abrams than you are. After all, before Lost he was also the the Executive Producer and writer behind Felicity, and Alias, and he’s currently got a second season for Person Of Interest on CBS. Of course he was also the man behind What About Brian, and Six Degrees and Undercovers and Alcatraz And then there’s Fringe (of which I’m a huge fan) which seems to have survived as long as it has because apparently Kevin Reilly loves the show (or Rupert Murdoch wants to keep his ex-wife’s namesake niece employed – that would be Anna Torv). I do tend to agree with you as regards the “failures” of Carter and Whedon – the shows you describe as having been “strangled in their cribs.” A Millenium or a Firefly is more interesting to me than most of Abrams’ failures and some of his successes.

The Video Trailers

Zoey wrote:

I have to say there isn't too much on television that I look forward to these days. I've been watching for a new favorite show but just haven't had that hit yet.

I have favourite, or at least preferred, shows on most night, but I’m pretty easy to please. Don’t put me asleep, don’t give me a headache, and for heavens sake don’t be a talent show and I’ll give you a try – if I like what I see I’ll stick like a barnacle. That’s how I was with The Amazing Race and despite stumbles I’m still the show’s biggest fan. Well at least one of them.

Turning to the list of the coming season’s shows, there aren’t that many that really reach out and grab me the way that The Amazing Race did eleven years ago, or CSI and The West Wing did a few years before that. I don’t see anything on this year’s slate from ABC that will grab me like Revenge or Once Upon A Time did last season. CBS has one show that I’m really looking forward to (Vegas), two shows that have the potential to hold my interest (Partners and Elementary), and Made In New Jersey that doesn’t do a thing for me. What I’ve seen from FOX, in terms of clips, doesn’t work for me. On NBC, out of the huge roster that they put out there, the only shows that do anything for me are The New Normal and Chicago Fire. And right now the only thing that really did anything for me on The CW is Arrow. I don’t know what that says about the shows or me. Maybe my attraction to shows like Vegas, Chicago Fire and Arrow says more about me and my impending geezerhood (I’ll be 56 in August) than it does about the shows. I want someone in the hierarchy of the networks to take the sort of risks that gave us CSI, NYPD Blue, The West Wing, and yes Survivor. Unfortunately I don’t think the networks as a group feel secure enough to try something truly radical and daring.

---

I’ve got a couple of other things to take care of in the next week or so – including working up a poll, and then I’m going to try another set of summer recaps – because my attempt to recap Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip last summer went so well. This year’s recap will be of a show that will probably divide my readers. It will be…….

revealed to you when I write the first post.

Upfronts 2012–Video Trailers

Well, the situation with the plumbing was successfully resolved, thanks almost entirely to the efforts of my step-uncle who happens to be a professional plumber (and one of only two or thee of my late stepfather’s family who ever treated me civilly). Useful to have people like that in the family, as long as you don’t abuse the privilege. There was something that wasn’t fixed that we discovered after he left. I had hoped that it was a cheap – as in no money – fix. Turned out that it wasn’t. Cost me about 40 Loonies and some replacement parts to get it done but at least it was one of those things I could do myself.

Anyway that brings me to what is usually the end of my upfront posts, the one where I try to find clips of the various new shows from the networks and hopefully give you – and me – a better idea of what the new shows are going to be like. I like doing this as well because it means I don’t have to write a lot. Except that this time around I think I will write some comments for some of the shows.

There are a couple of things to be aware of. First up, not all of the networks have trailers up on YouTube or other services. More importantly, for me, not all of the clips that are put up are available outside of the United States. This year has actually been better than previous years. Besides NBC, FOX and The CW, all of which had clips last year that weren’t region blocked, CBS seems to have lightened up their position on showing their clips outside of the US a little Two of the network’s four new Fall shows aren’t region blocked. For the rest I may have to be a bit “inventive.” Only ABC continues to region block. Again, I’ve had to get “inventive.” Unfortunately no amount of inventiveness has allowed me to find trailers for two FOX shows, The Mindy Project and The Goodwin Games or for The Carrie Diaries from The CW.

The other thing you need to be aware of is that while the clips are up now, there is no guarantee that they’ll stay up. The clips from third parties – the one’s I’m getting “inventive” with are the most likely to get taken down, but in time even the networks will take down or otherwise keep you from seeing their clips. Of the 28 legitimate trailers that I had in playlists last year at this time only five are still available to be watched.

• The Neighbors looks worse than the description sounds. Is that even possible? In short it doesn’t just suck it sucks badly.
• The Last Resort looks like it gives good pilot. The question is does the rest of the series live up to the pilot. Just remember that the pilot to Flash Forward was great too.
• Malibu Country: Reba McIntyre has never been divorced. So how come she always plays divorced women with idiot ex-husbands? Also Lilly Tomlin and a marijuana lollipop. Comedy gold.
• 666 Park Avenue: I’ve liked Terry O’Quinn since he was on JAG (and Vanessa Williams since she recovered from the Penthouse photos – not to mention in the Penthouse photos) but I don’t think the American public is ready for a luxury apartment building as the ante-room to Hell.
• Mistresses has probably been dumbed down and cleaned up for the American public. I desperately want them to realise that.
• Zero Hour probably won’t work either because it debuts at mid-season but it does have a DaVinci Code thing going for it so it jus might be a worthwhile longshot.
• Red Widow: Dark.
• How To Live With Your Parents (For The Rest Of Your Life) seems very pedestrian. I’ve seen it done so many times before.
• The Family Tools: see above.
• I mean seriously there is no way that mere words can describe how badly The Neighbors sucks.

• Partners looks like a pretty typical CBS comedy, no more no less.
• Vegas needs a name change but I am really looking forward to this one. Dan Feinberg and Alan Sepinwall say this “isn’t a CBS show” in style but I think it’s a great fit – a procedural that just happens to be a period series as well.
• Elementary is a CBS series according to Feinberg and Sepinwall. I suppose they’re right but it reminds me a lot of The Mentalist but with something missing.
• Made In New Jersey doesn’t look like it should fit between CSI: New York and Blue Bloods; it should lead the night. CBS tries this sort of show a lot with mixed success. The Good Wife this is not.

• The Mob Doctor isn’t a fit replacement for House. I like William Forsythe in just about everything but just from what I’ve seen this isn’t going to work.
• Ben And Kate doesn’t do a thing for me. I’d rather be looking at The Mindy Project. (But it’s still light years better than The Neighbors).
• The Following clip feels a bit disjointed and I don’t think it really gives a feel of what the show is about. I’m hoping that when The Mob Doctor dies this will take its place and do well in its timeslot.

• Revolution looks a bit better than I expected. Maybe if they push the similarities to The Hunger Games they might have something. The timeslot might hurt with that approach though.
• Go On is another “Matthew Perry as angry sarcastic guy sitcom.” He does it well but I’d rather see him do something different. The again I liked him on Studio 60.
• The New Normal confirms my initial feelings about it. I like it. It’s warm and a bit tender. But will it work on NBC with the sort of comedy the network has built its reputation around?
• Animal Practice looks like a more typical NBC comedy. It will get critical support and low ratings.
• Guys With Kids: Didn’t I see this last year when it was called Man Up? Okay, not quite, but while the specifics are different the base idea seems suspiciously similar. Or maybe it was some movie that I haven’t seen.
• Chicago Fire looks like a hot property to me. (Fire humour)
• Do No Harm hasn’t given me enough to really make a judgement on.
• Infamous: See above. NBC tries to mimic Revenge?
• Next Caller looks to be another typical NBC sitcom that I won’t be watching.
• 1600 Penn sucks – but not nearly as bad as The Neighbors. It’s only the second worst new series this season.
• Save Me: Have I ever mentioned how much I dislike Anne Heche. This doesn’t give me a reason to change my opinion.

• Emily Owens M.D.: I don’t really “get” Mamie Gummer, but it took me a long time to “get” her mother Meryl Streep. This show looks like it’s going to be pleasant dramedy fare. Not my cup of tea frankly.
• Arrow looks great. I mean I know that what The CW really wants to do is a Batman TV series and Green Arrow is what they’re allowed to do, but they’re doing it with enthusiasm and I can get behind that.
• Beauty And The Beast: The clips provided by The CW are dark – and I don’t mean in a dramatic way. I don’t really know what I’m seeing, and we don’t see much of the series’ male lead. But it has Kristin Kreuk and there’s nothing wrong with that.
• Cult is another clip where I don’t really know what I’m seeing. The concept sounds more interesting than Beauty And The Beast and like a great fit with Supernatural but I’m just not sure.

The 2012-13 Season–Night By Night

Again this year it’s time to look at the how the networks schedules stack up directly against each other. I’m going to try to handicap each network’s chances and try to pick the winners and losers without actually seeing anything more than a few of the commercials that the networks have been running since they made their announcements. As I’ve said before, prediction or prophecy isn’t an exact at the best of times, and as I get older I fear that my ability to predict what the networks will keep – being based on the 18-49 demographic – is going to less and less accurate.

I think I did rather well by way of predictions in my article last year. Maybe because I kept a lot of the predictions fairly cryptic, and sometime simply didn’t mention a show. Two of the big successes of the past season weren’t mentioned by me at all: Once Upon A Time and Revenge. On the other hand my suggestion that there might be a glut of “singing reality-competition shows” – there were four last season – turned out to be a pretty good one. The X-Factor didn’t turn out to be as big a success as FOX and various TV pundits suggested, American Idol ratings have slipped, and The Sing-Off has had its last song sung. Only The Voice was a huge success. I also stated that “a sufficiently large audience for a scripted show other than one of the CBS shows might persuade the networks to stay in the business of doing original scripted shows on Fridays.” Grimm did produce a “sufficiently large audience” to be renewed, and every network (with the exception of The CW which had two scripted series on the night for many years and has now moved America’s Next Top Model to the night) has at least two hours of scripted programs on Friday night, at least at the start of the season. On the other hand I did get Charlie’s Angels wrong, and my only excuse was that I hadn’t seen a trailer for that at that point.

Last year I also had my Battle of the Night and Show To Keep An Eye On statements – they were never really predictions and I didn’t say if the reasons for keeping an eye on a show were because the shows were bad or good. Just to review here are my Battles of the Night for last year and how things turned out with them.

Monday: “8:00-10:00 p.m. Dancing With The Stars vs. The Sing-Off”
Dancing With The Stars is still around while The Sing-Off was cancelled. On the other hand the current cycle of DWTS has had problems against The Voice. Don’t know why, but then I hate (singing) “talent shows.”

Tuesday: “10:00-11:00 p.m. Unforgettable vs Body Of Proof vs Parenthood”
A very interesting one. The show which had the best ratings of the three – Unforgettable – was cancelled while both Body Of Proof and Parenthood have been renewed. Then again Body Of Proof was moved off the night and replaced by Private Practice so of the three original competitors in the time slot the winner is…Parenthood?!?!?!?

Wednesday: “10:00-11:00 p.m. CSI vs Law & Order: SVU”
Law & Order SVU had the lowest ratings of all three shows in the time-slot while CSI had the highest, plus SVU will be on an hour earlier this coming season. Clear win to a revitalised CSI with an assist from Revenge (which has also moved but because it was popular).

Thursday: “10:00-11:00 p.m. Prime Suspect vs Private Practice”
Prime Suspect died a quick death. KO win to Private Practice. The fact that after their failures in this time-slot last season NBC decided to air a newsmagazine – Rock Center with Brian Williams – this season says a whole lot.

Friday: “I’m not really sure. Maybe 8-10 with all the scripted shows going up against the three reality series.”
Clear victory to the scripted shows. Extreme Makeover Home Edition is gone, Kitchen Nightmares is being held until mid-season, Only Shark Tank remains. Meanwhile A Gifted Man may have died on CBS but every network will start the season either with at least one scripted show in that two hour block or some that will be coming on in November.

Sunday: “9:00-10:00 p.m. The Good Wife vs Desperate Housewives
Good Wife is still in the time-slot Desperate Housewives is done, although admittedly it’s departure was largely pre-planned. Moreover The Good Wife won Julianna Margulies an Emmy, the second acting award for the show in as many years. Win to The Good Wife.

So let’s see what I can come up with this year. All times Eastern; new show in capitals (except CSI and NCIS)

Monday

	ABC	CBS	FOX	NBC	The CW
8:00-8:30	Dancing With The Stars	How I Met Your Mother	Bones	The Voice	90210
8:30-9:00	Dancing With The Stars	PARTNERS	Bones	The Voice	90210
9:00-9:30	Dancing With The Stars	2 Broke Girls	THE MOB DOCTOR	The Voice	Gossip Girl
9:30-10:00	Dancing With The Stars	Mike & Molly	THE MOB DOCTOR	The Voice	Gossip Girl
10:00-11:00	Castle	Hawaii Five-0	Local	REVOLUTION	Local

Battle of the night:
8:00-10:00 p.m.: Dancing With The Stars vs. The Voice

Show to keep an eye on: Mob Doctor

To explain my choice for “Battle of the Night” I need to point out that while Dancing With The Stars prospered against NBC’s The Sing Off in the first half of the season the show’s ratings fell when it was opposite The Voice for their second cycle of the 2011-12 season. The only real changes between the two was the addition of Alcatraz on FOX, which moved House an hour earlier, and the replacement of The Sing Off with The Voice. Oh yeah, and a much better group of dancers on DWTS. So the question, at least for the first half of the season is whether the trend will continue with ratings for Dancing With The Stars going down while The Voice is stable or goes up, or whether the public is tired of the glut of “singing” shows in which case ratings for The Voice will go down. Also, will the decision to go for an “all-star” version of DWTS help or hurt the franchise.

I named Mob Doctor as the show to keep an eye on because, of the three new shows at the start of the season it’s the one whose fate I’m least sure of. Partners will slip into the 7:30-8:00 slot without any problem. It’s perfect in tone for the time-slot and the shows on either side of it. On the opposite side, Revolution is a “dead show walking” and would be even if it weren’t going up against Castle and Hawaii Five-0. The concept is just too far out there. Even the worst haters are going to have to admit that Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip was better than this crap and would get better ratings. Which leaves us with The Mob Doctor as a show that I just can’t figure. Oh, I’m sure it’s going to be cancelled next May (assuming there is a next May; the Mayan calendar might be prophetic after all) but I just don’t know if the ratings will be so bad that FOX will pull it before the planned run ends. Interesting conundrum.

Tuesday

	ABC	CBS	FOX	NBC	The CW
8:00-8:30	Dancing With The Stars	NCIS	Raising Hope	The Voice	Hart Of Dixie
8:30-9:00	Dancing With The Stars	NCIS	BEN AND KATE	The Voice	Hart Of Dixie
9:00-9:30	Happy Endings	NCIS: Los Angeles	The New Girl	GO ON	EMILY OWENS M.D.
9:30-10:00	Don’t Trust The B---- In Apartment 23	NCIS: Los Angeles	THE MINDY PROJECT	THE NEW NORMAL	EMILY OWENS M.D.
10:00-11:00	Private Practice	VEGAS	Local	Parenthood	Local

Battle Of The night:
9:00-10:00 p.m.:
Happy Endings and Don’t Trust The B---- In Apartment 23 vs. The New Girl and The Mindy Project vs. Go On and The New Normal

Show to keep an eye on: Vegas

This is the first night where we see the battle between network sitcom blocks, and the 9:00-10:00 period is the first one where we see six sitcoms going head to head, three of them new shows. Now of course they’re all going to get their cookies crushed by bully on the block NCIS: Los Angeles but that really doesn’t matter because this is mostly a battle for second place.The landscape has changed for ABC because the Dancing With The Stars results show has been moved an hour earlier, so Happy Endings, which is probably the weaker of the ABC comedies, gets any supposed ratings boost out of that. It also inherits higher expectations of what it should be getting in terms of retention of the previous hour’s audience. The new Matthew Perry comedy Go On probably faces similar expectations out of The Voice results show but the pairing with The New Normal actually looks like the best combo that NBC is putting out there, maybe for the whole week. The question is whether people are going to watch another sitcom with Matthew Perry, since his last effort (on ABC) did so well. I also think that the FOX pairing of The New Girl and The Mindy Project is a good one. I’d say it’s better than the weak lead-in of Raising Hope and Ben And Kate. There’s plenty of evidence that Raising Hope, which had a weak sophomore season after a good (but not really great) debut season isn’t strong enough to anchor the night. Then again, last season it had the flagging Glee in the first hour…except when it didn’t. All things considered though – well all things except actually seeing some clips from the show that is – Ben and Kate seems to be the weakest of the new comedies on Tuesday, and that could have an impact on the ratings – and the expectations – for The New Girl and The Mindy Project. Oh, also on in that timeslot is The CW’s Emily Owens M.D. but barring major viewership shifts (which the Mayan calendar does not predict) this “all life is like high school” show isn’t going to be a significant player in the fight.

My show to keep an eye on though is Vegas. It makes sense that when CBS jumps onto the period drama bandwagon they would do it in a form that they’re most familiar with, a cop show. The cast looks very strong, with Dennis Quaid going head to head with Michael Chiklis. CBS is taking a big risk here; they dropped Unforgettable which was winning the time slot by a good margin even against veteran Private Practice, reportedly not because Unforgettable was doing badly but because the new shows, including Vegas, were that good. So Vegas has to prove itself by holding onto a big chunk of the NCIS: Los Angeles lead-in. It’s not just that they have to beat Private Practice and Parenthood, they have to beat them badly.

Wednesday

	ABC	CBS	FOX	NBC	The CW
8:00-8:30	The Middle	Survivor	The X-Factor	ANIMAL PRACTICE	ARROW
8:30-9:00	Suburgatory	Survivor	The X-Factor	GUYS WITH KIDS	ARROW
9:00-9:30	Modern Family	Criminal Minds	The X-Factor	Law & Order: SVU	Supernatural
9:30-10:00	THE NEIGHBORS	Criminal Minds	The X-Factor	Law & Order: SVU	Supernatural
10:00-11:00	NASHVILE	CSI	Local	CHICAGO FIRE	Local

Battle of the night:
10:00-11:00 p.m.: Nashville vs. Chicago Fire

Show to keep an eye on: Chicago Fire

Two things you need to know. I came oh so close to making Arrow the “show to keep an eye on” because it may be the first CW show in a while to finish ahead of a major network show in quite some time; I think Smallville did it once a few years ago. That’s not a case of having a lot of faith in how good Arrow is going to be it is a case of having a very low opinion of Animal Practice and Guys With Kids. Of course this is being done without the benefit of seeing any clips; the two shows could have the qualities of comedies by Preston Sturges, Billy Wilder and Buster Keaton combined…but I doubt it. But they’re not the worst sounding comedies on this night. That dubious honour goes to The Neighbors from ABC, the description of which sounds like the legendary failure Cavemen. This leaves us with the 10:00-11:00 timeslot. If we can accept that CSI will win the hour – and there’s no reason to think they can on the basis of the season past – then the real battle is between Nashville and Chicago Fire. I think I have the potential to like both shows. Nashville promises to have something of a soap opera quality, and I like series star Connie Britton from her time on Friday Night Lights. On the other hand Chicago Fire might well be the best new show that NBC has this fall. I realise that that isn’t saying much – NBC only has two new dramas as well as a raft of sitcoms. If I were to give an edge to one of the two series I would lean towards Chicago Fire.

And that’s the frustrating part for me. I think the show is on the wrong night; it should be on Thursday night. Thursday night generates the highest ratings in terms of audience size and the demographic (as I understand it) of any night of the week. It also generates some of the highest revenue for the networks because it is the night that the major movie studios spend the most to promote the movies that open the next day. Logic would seem to suggest that the network put its top show in the third hour of Thursday night. And yet NBC is airing the low rated newsmagazine Rock Center With Brian Williams in the timeslot. Chicago Fire would be the perfect show for the Thursday night slot, particularly against CBS’s Elementary and ABC’s Scandal, the former a new show and the latter a show that did did adequately but not spectacularly in the short run this spring. That’s why I think that Chicago Fire is a show to keep your eye on – it might (and should) move to Thursday when we’re not looking.

Thursday

	ABC	CBS	FOX	NBC	The CW
8:00-8:30	LAST RESORT	The Big Bang Theory	The X-Factor	30 Rock	Vampire Diaries
8:30-9:00	LAST RESORT	Two And A  Half Men	The X-Factor	Up All Night	Vampire Diaries
9:00-9:30	Grey’s Anatomy	Person Of Interest	Glee	The Office	BEAUTY AND THE BEAST
9:30-10:00	Grey’s Anatomy	Person Of Interest	Glee	Parks & Recreation	BEAUTY AND THE BEAST
10:00-11:00	Scandal	ELEMENTARY	Local	Rock Center With Brian Williams	Local

Battle Of The night
9:00-10:00: Glee vs. Person Of Interest and Grey’s Anatomy and The Office/Parks & Recreation, and maybe even Beauty And The Beast

Show to keep an eye on: Elementary

Tough one to figure. In fact I wasn’t even sure I could decide on a battle of the night because every hour on Thursday has something interesting going on. In the first hour you’ve got The X-Factor results show and while the show wasn’t the blockbuster that people were expecting it still did well in the ratings. But CBS is moving up its own heavy artillery in the form of The Big Bang Theory and Two And A Half Men. That could be a real battle because CBS is trying so hard for the win. The new show in that timeslot, The Last Resort may seem intriguing (it does to me) but I don’t think it will work. It certainly won’t be the next Lost which is what I think some people at ABC are probably praying for.

In the third hour, with NBC abdicating by putting Rock Center With Brian Williams in the timeslot we have a head-to-head, mano a mano (in the truest Spanish sense of the phrase) battle between relative newcomer Scandal and newcomer Elementary. The latter is worrying to me because while superficially the show seems to be the sort of thing that CBS does – a procedural with a quirky protagonist and a competent associate – tying it to the Sherlock Holmes characters is a bit “cutesy,” not to mention derivative of the show that is currently running on the BBC. (Actually, in writing this I’m reminded of how similar this could be to The Mentalist in tone). And that may explain why Elementary is the show I think you should keep an eye on, if only just to see if if CBS can draw an audience with the show.

But the battle of the night still has to be Glee against everything else in he timeslot. The shows on CBS, NBC and ABC are all established commodities on the night. Grey’s Anatomy is sliding a bit in the ratings (and the just killed off Lexie, my favourite character on the show; Damn you Shonda Rhimes!!!) but it’s still powerful. Last year’s newcomer in the slot, Person Of Interest started slow but grew into a bona fide hit. The Office and Parks & Recreation both have a vocal fan base, although neither is as strong in terms of ratings as they are in critical appeal. Against them is Glee. FOX is not eager to publicize the fact that Glee bears a strong resemblance to Heroes in that it started as one of the hottest things around, a critical and ratings darling, but very quickly began to lose steam in the ratings and has been losing critical support as well. I would suggest that they’re pairing it up with X-Factor in part because they expect that the two will flow together with people who watch the singers on the reality show hanging on to watch the singers on the scripted show. But I also think they’re hoping for a ratings boost for Glee as the show sees some of the original cast that fans grew to love moving on and the show at least partially moving away from the high school setting. If it works there’s going to be a real dog fight in this time slot and I don’t know who’ll win. If it doesn’t work, well Glee will be seen as one of those shows that has a brief shining moment and then falls to earth.

Friday (as of November)

	ABC	CBS	FOX	NBC	The CW
8:00-8:30	Last Man Standing	CSI: New York	Touch	Whitney	America’s Next Top Model
8:30-9:00	MALIBU COUNTRY	CSI: New York	Touch	Community	America’s Next Top Model
9:00-10:00	Shark Tank	MADE IN NEW JERSEY	Fringe	Grimm	Nikita
10:00-11:00	Primetime: What Would You Do?	Blue Bloods	Local	Dateline NBC	Local

Battle of the night
8:00-9:00: Last Man Standing and Malibu Country vs. Whitney and Community

Show to keep an eye on: Malibu Country

The battle of the night is an interesting one. It isn’t just ABC’s new comedy block versus NBC’s third comedy block, it can be perceived as “populist” shows versus “elitist” shows. Both Whitney and Community produced poor ratings both last season and, in the case of Community, since it’s been on the air. However Community at least has been a critical darling with a dedicated audience – and an audience that presumably NBC values enough to give it at least 13 episodes this season. On the other hand no critic regards Last Man Standing as an act of genius. That it was the only survivor of ABC’s Tuesday comedy block last year is entirely due to the star power of Tim Allen. Lest we forget after all, his previous series Home Improvement wasn’t a critical darling either; the public loved it though. Malibu Country has the same quality going for it. Reba McIntyre has a real talent for comedy, and showed it in her old WB/CW series Reba. The critics routinely complained about it, and the executives at The CW apparently agreed because the first thing they did when The WB and UPN merged to become The CW was to cancel Reba. When,  after protests, they grudgingly gave it a 13 episode renewal it averaged 3.6 million in it’s abbreviated final season, making it one of the top shows on the network. The only people who liked it were the viewers.

Malibu Country gets to be my “show to keep an eye on” because I think the ratings it is going to get are going to surprise a lot of people, particularly the people who say that “Friday is the new Saturday” and talk about the “Friday Night Death Slot.” It’s not going to be huge with the 18-49 demographic, and certainly not huge with the 18-34 age group that seems to be the subset that people who are obsessed with such things focus on now, but I believe that it is going to grab an audience on either side of the demographic and I’m convinced that this is the approach that they networks are going to have to take for Fridays. So why this show rather than Made In New Jersey? Well, because Made In New Jersey is a typical CBS Friday show, not unlike previous occupants of the evening, like Ghost Whisperer and Close To Home. It’s not necessarily a bad show in concept but it’s just not the sort of thing that is likely to be as significant as Malibu Country. Made In New Jersey is a basic fish out of water story in which the “fish” succeeds because she’s an outsider. It could be a very good show but it is also a “safe” show and the success that it will have – and I’m betting that it wins its timeslot but will probably not retain all of the CSI: New York lead-in – will be a relatively safe success. It won’t tell anyone anything, and I think that Malibu Country, if it succeeds, will tell anyone who is paying attention a lot.

Sunday

	ABC	CBS	FOX	NBC	The CW
7:00-7:30	America’s Funniest Videos	60 Minutes	The OT	Football Night In America	Local
7:30-8:00	America’s Funniest Videos	60 Minutes	The Cleveland Show	Football Night In America	Local
8:00-8:30	Once Upon A Time	The Amazing Race	The Simpsons	Football Night In America(8:15)	Local
8:30-9:00	Once Upon A Time	The Amazing Race	Bob’s Burgers	(8:15) Sunday Night Football	Local
9:00-9:30	Revenge	The Good  Wife	The Family Guy	Sunday Night Football	Local
9:30-10:00	Revenge	The Good  Wife	American Dad	Sunday Night Football	Local
10:00-11:00	666 PARK AVENUE	The Mentalist	Local	Sunday Night Football	Local

Battle Of The Night
9:00-10:00: The Good Wife vs. Revenge

Show to keep an eye on: 666 Park Avenue

Maybe the most stable night on TV this season though that’s going to change once the Football season ends. 666 Park Avenue is the default “show to keep an eye on” because it’s the only new show on the night. I don’t think it’s going to work; American audiences have historically not been particularly interested in this sort of gothic drama, and a good cast – Terry O’Quinn and Vanessa Willams – probably won’t make that much of a difference.

The Revenge vs. The Good Wife battle is also a default choice. I think that ABC’s plans collapsed in flames when GCB failed, because I suspect that they planned on moving GCB to the Desperate Housewives slot. Revenge might work there although it isn’t nearly as light as Desperate Housewives was. The Good Wife has never been a big hit although it has collected a couple of Emmys for two of the actresses (Archie Panjabi and Julianna Margulies), and is probably regarded as a “prestige” show for CBS because of the Emmy wins. One thing that may hurt The Good Wife is something that tends to plague CBS shows on Sundays; delayed starts because the Football game (or the golf match) ran late. I really can’t get excited for this battle. I think that unless Revenge collapses badly, or unless it totally crushes The Good Wife – two outcomes that I think are totally unrealistic – both shows are going to be back, and neither one is going to breakout spectacularly. In other words the result at the end of the year is going to be status quo ante – the same as it was before.

Wow. That took a lot longer than I expected. Maybe if I hadn’t had a clogged drain – which still isn’t open and needs a plumber, and this is a long weekend in Canada – turn into multiple plumbing problems, I might have gotten this done earlier.