Booth & Brennan And The Norwood Builder

As part of my “post-Christmas confection” of taking Sherlock Holmes cases and modern procedurals I’ve decided to combine the characters and methods from Bones with the Sherlock Holmes story The Adventure Of The Norwood Builder story from The Return Of Sherlock Holmes. This was actually the story that that cause me to develop this idea – to the degree that I did develop it – and the pairing is made for what will become obvious reasons.

For reasons about as logical as they are in most of the cases that Booth and Brennan confront FBI Agent Sealey Booth and his partner/lover/baby mama Dr. Temperance Brennan are sent to investigate the murder of Jonas Oldacre, a retired builder. The local police have already arrested John McFarlane, a young lawyer for the crime. McFarlane has everything needed to be guilty. He had the opportunity – he was at the victim’s home on the night that the crime was committed – he had motive – Oldacre had asked him to draw up a will for the builder which left everything to McFarlane – and he brought the weapon – MacFarlane’s walking stick with blood on it (hey, in the 1890s people carried walking sticks, and it’s important to the plot). Oldacre’s safe was found open, his papers rifled through, MacFarlane’s bloodied cane was found in the room, there were drag marks across the carpet through the French doors to a pile of building timbers that Oldacre found on the property. The wood pile has been on fire and Oldacre’s housekeeper reported smelling “burning flesh” from the fire. When Booth and Brennan arrive they find the FBI “Bluejackets” (the nameless and faceless – and usually lineless – FBI crime scene techs who are always there when Booth and Brennan get to a crime scene) are going through the ashes of the woodpile. They’ve already found Oldacre’s trouser buttons.

And stop. Because this is where Doyle’s story fall flat on its coccyx. Not to blow the whole story but there’s no body in the woodpile. Or at least not a human body; at the end of the story Holmes assumes that the perpetrator used a couple of rabbits to provide the smell of burning flesh which the housekeeper reported. The assumption on Doyle’s part is apparently that the heat of the fire would totally consume the rabbit corpses and everyone would assume that a human corpse would also be burned, not just beyond recognition but totally to ash. The problem is that the heat of a wood fire would not be sufficient to totally destroy a human body; modern crematoriums usually operate at between 1600 and 1800 degrees F. If it was hot enough to so totally destroy the body that you wouldn’t know it was rabbits, it would probably be enough to destroy the trouser buttons, So even the “Blujackets” would recognise the difference between a rabbit carcass and 54 year-old man with or without trouser buttons. Which in turn means that not only is there no proof that MacFarlane killed Oldacre but no evidence that Oldacre was even dead. And yet Holmes spends most of the story despairing over whether or not he will be able to clear MacFarlane until the real villain – Oldacre himself – makes a crucial mistake.

To be fair, the producers of the Jeremy Brett Sherlock Holmes series recognised the absurdity of the rabbits and substitutes in the body of a tramp that Oldacre murdered because he was the same size and weight as the builder. So, to make this go on a bit longer, let’s do that and turn Booth, Brennan and the Jeffersonian crew loose on that.

The body is taken back to the Jeffersonian. Dr. Camille Saroyan doesn’t have much to do although she can probably get enough tissue for DNA comparison with the blood on the walking stick. This causes a bit of a problem in setting up the timeline. For the purpose of the story MacFarlane has to leave the house late at night – the story says around midnight – because his reason for not taking his hat and walking stick and exiting the front door is so as not to disturb Oldacre’s housekeeper. If the tramp is going to be killed with the walking stick, Oldacre has to lure him to the house, kill him, plant him in the woodpile and start the fire after MacFarlane has left at midnight. If he kills the tramp ahead of time and hides the body in the woodpile until needed he has to get blood for the walking stick.

Meanwhile, Brennan and whichever “squintern” is working this week are stripping the flesh from the bones. Assuming that Oldacre killed the tramp after MacFarlane left she should be able to determine the height and relative strength of the person who dealt the killing blow. On the other hand if the tramp was killed beforehand she’d be able to determine by blood in the shattered bone that the blow delivered by MacFarlane’s cane was not the killing blow. Moreover she’d also be able to determine that the tramp wasn’t standing when the blow from the walking stick was struck.

The big break in the case would of course come from Angela Montenegro, the artist who does the facial reconstructions on her whizbang computer set-up. It will take her about as much time as it took me to read the original story and figure out that this would make an interesting (?) piece for my blog to come up with a face that was most definitely not Jonas Oldacre and that no one, not MacFarlane, not MacFarlane’s mother and not Oldacre’s housekeeper would recognise as Oldacre. With the evidence from Cam, Tempie and Angie, there is no way an even half-way competent prosecutor would have issued an arrest warrant for John MacFarlane.

Of course, in the story the big break in the case comes when Lestrade comes to gloat to Holmes about a new bit of evidence in the case, MacFarlane’s bloody thumb print near the hat rack near the front door where MacFarlane’s hat was hanging. Holmes realises that the print hadn’t been there when he first viewed the crime scene, and determines that someone used a wax impression on sealing wax to make a wax “positive” mould of the print.. He sets out to measure the length of the ground floor of the house and of the top floor and determines that there is a hidden room in the house. He literally smokes Oldacre out by having some constables burn some straw and shout fire, forcing Oldacre to escape the “burning” house. On our modern reality of course, the FBI “Bluejackets” and the local cops would have photographed every blood stain and taken finger prints in the murder scene, and probably in the front hall as well, so they would know that there wasn’t a fingerprint where one suddenly appeared. A modern criminal probably wouldn’t have made this sort of error. And in truth I doubt that today Oldacre would have stuck around his house after framing MacFarlane. Since Oldacre’s motive in trying to frame MacFarlane was not just to get revenge on the young man’s parents but to also to escape with his money and avoid paying his creditors it would make sense for him to flee immediately when it wouldn’t have in the days when one travelled on foot, on horseback or bicycle, or in some sort of wagon or carriage. Now if he’d transferred his funds in the way that he did in the story – mailing checks to a fictitious identity, it would make him a bit harder to trace, but why do that when the funds can be transferred to a numbered off-shore account and then moved around some more electronically. In short, I’m not absolutely sure Booth would have arrested Oldacre. That would be for more talented writers than I to figure out.

A Christmas Confection–Sherlock Holmes vs. Crime Procedurals

I’m not able to do a “Twelve Days Of Christmas” this year (not that my attempts in recent years have been brought to completion) so I’ve decided to come up wit a sort of Christmas confection. Since I just bought a Kindle a couple of months ago (and I love it) I’ve been stocking it with a number of free books, including two books of Sherlock Holmes short stories. One of the stories got me to thinking about how well Holmes would fare in comparison with the crime-solvers on several of the current police procedurals the answer I fear is not very well although there are a few cases where Holmes would have never been called in.

The Adventure of Black Peter is one case where ordinary, real life police would have been ahead of the case before Holmes was even out of the city and the person that the police eventually (wrongly) arrested would never even have been a suspect. In that case a former sealing and whaling captain is found in a small cabin that he maintains on his country estate, impaled with a harpoon that the Victim kept there. On the table in the room are two glasses that had been filled with Rum. The police arrest a young man who breaks into the cabin the day after the killing in search of a tin box which has disappeared. Holmes determines that it is impossible for a man of the suspect’s size to have pushed the harpoon though the victim’s body, and that the murderer had to be a former sailor – because only a sailor would drink Rum when there was better liquor  available – and put an advertisement in the paper for a harpoonist because only a harpoonist would have had the strength to throw a harpoon through the body of a grown man.

Today of course Holmes would never have gotten out of London before the police would have had all o f the information they needed to make the arrest, and the “suspect” that they arrested in the story would never have been even looked at as a possible killer. Why? Because even the smallest police force would have dusted the harpoon and the glasses for fingerprints, and since this was obviously an unpremeditated killing there would have been finger prints. And sailors being sailors our mysterious harpoonist would most likely have been fingerprinted at some point during his life on a drunk and disorderly charge. Case solved without all of Holmes’s ratiocination.

On the other hand, if Holmes had to depend on today’s police in the Adventure of the Six Napoleons he – and they – would never have heard the story that led him to the recovery of the Borgia Pearl and the murderer of a Mafia member. Holmes becomes interested in the case when Inspector Lestrade poses him a problem about a “lunatic” who goes around smashing cheap plaster busts of Napoleon, one in a shop, one taken from a home burglary, and one in an burglary at the office of a doctor (in fact the same man whose how was broken into). A fourth bust is taken from another home where the body of a man, quickly identified as an Italian criminal and member of the Mafia (yes, that’s actually in the story) is found murdered on the house’s doorstep. Holmes determines that the bust is from a particular batch of six made at a particular factory on the same day. The prime suspect in the case, an Italian, nicknamed Beppo, who worked at the shop where the first bust was smashed, had previously worked at the factory and had been arrested on the same day that this particular batch of six had been made. Holmes,Watson and Lestrade learn where the other two busts are located, One in suburban London and one in the country, and stake out the suburban residence. Sure enough they catch the man after he broke into the house and smashed the bust. Holmes then contacted the owner of the sixth bust, bought it at a significant profit from the owner, smashed it and found the Borgia Pearl which the culprit had stolen and hidden in the bust just before he was arrested for another crime.

What would have happened today is that Holmes would never have heard of the case because Lestrade would probably never have heard of it. In the incident at the shop, the value of the busts wouldn’t have been sufficient for the police to have been involved while the first burglary wouldn’t have attracted much police attention because nothing was taken. The first home burglary would have raised a few flags as would the break in at the Doctor’s office. In the latter case the primary interest of the police would have been whether any drugs had been stolen, but since there weren’t the police would most likely have filed it and given it only a slightly higher priority than the home burglary. Either that or they would have wondered what the Doctor had been hiding in the busts of Napoleon. Suffice it to say that of the crimes committed only the murder at the site of the fourth burglary would have drawn the attention of a Police Inspector like Lestrade, and would therefore be told to Sherlock Holmes would have been the murder, and in that case the break-in might have been regarded as important but the smashed bust would have been just a curious incident, indicating that the robber had been disturbed before he had started robbing the place. Without knowing about the previous incidents with the cheap busts of Napoleon, no one – including Sherlock Holmes – would have been able to deduce who the killer was, and what his motive was. Beppo wouldn’t have been caught and he would have recovered the Borgia Pearl. All while Holmes, Lestrade and the whole police force were trying to figure out if the murdered man was simply a good Samaritan trying to stop the burglary and who was stabbed for his troubles or whether it was a case of a falling out amongst accomplices.

But these sorts of puzzle are relatively simple ones. In  first of these “confections” l’ll show you how one of Holmes’s cases would prove no match for the modern TV detective and his forensic anthropologist partner and lover, and how Conan Doyle made a huge mistake when he wrote the story. It will be called Bones and the .

On The Sixth Day Of Christmas

On the sixth day of Christmas, my true love – Television – gave to me… six male characters I’ve enjoyed.

Well I’m late and getting later. Beyond that I’ve got some open spots in the whole “12 Days” thing. Still I’ve got a few more things that I do have something for, so what I’ll probably end up doing is dropping the “Twelve Days Of Christmas” title and round up the rest of the stuff that I’ve got. At least the male characters are easier for me to write about than the female characters. As I’ve said, the 2010-11 season has a lot more male characters to write about than female characters. A couple of these are a bit of a surprise, even to me.

1. Scott Caan – Danny “Danno” Williams on Hawaii Five-0: Say what you want about the new version of Hawaii Five-0 – and I have – you’ve got to admit that the remake of the original series gave the character of “Danno” more personality in the first episode than the original series gave their “Danno” in all the time that James MacArthur played the role. This Danno is a rather defiant “fish out of water” who hates being in Hawaii, refuses to follow local habits (he always wears a shirt and tie even though everyone around him avoids that like the plague) but stays there because he’s a divorced dad who is devoted to his daughter. Caan’s version of Danno isn’t deferential to his “boss” Steve McGarrett. He is, by turns sarcastic, dubious, professional and even, on rare occasions, supportive of McGarrett. In fact, most of the time Caan makes Danno more interesting than Alex O’Laughlin makes McGarrett. The important thing to me is that which Jack Lord’s McGarrett could do reasonably well without James MacArthur’s Danny Williams – as he did in some episodes while MacArthur was on the show and for the show’s final season when he wasn’t – it is hard to imagine O’Laughlin working without Caan to play off of. It’s a great relationship the show sort of falls apart without it.

2. Jackie Earl Haley – Guerrero on Human Target: Considering that Guerrero is sociopath who routinely tortures people whit whatever he has close to hand and whose moral compass seems to be stuck pointing any direction but North. Guerrero is Christopher Chance’s (Mark Valley) left hand man, the left hand being the one that usually gets stuck doing the dirty stuff (at least in some traditions). Guerrero isn’t a particularly complex character but he is a fun one filled with little character quirks. He doesn’t put his name down on paper anywhere and he has an almost paranoid fear of people being able to track him down. Physically unimposing – he’s short and wears glasses – as often as not just his name or a look from him is enough to get his potential victims to break down and tell him anything he wants to know. Guerrero is pretty much the polar opposite of the other major supporting character on the show, Winston. Their relationship tends to be adversarial, albeit with a grudging acknowledgement that they don’t really work well without each other. Jackie Earle Haley, the former child star and award winning actor seems to have great fun with this part.

3. John Noble – Dr. Walter Bishop on Fringe: Every year since Fringe started (which seems longer than it really has been) I hope that John Noble will at the very least get an Emmy nomination for playing Walter Bishop. And every year I know I’m going to be disappointed because Fringe isn’t on some high profile cable network and it is a “genre show” (which means science fiction – you don’t hear of shows in the forensic genre being called “genre shows”) with a”cult following.” Those two things are the kiss of death for mainstream awards. That’s a pity, because even before this season John Noble has been outstanding playing Walter Bishop. They say that one of the hardest things for an actor to play is crazy, and Walter is, as the British would say (or at least the class of British that we usually see on imported TV series) completely dotty. Thing is that it’s a fun kind of dotty. Walter has an endearing child-like quality even when he’s whipping up his latest device or postulating some theory which is at the same time a crackpot idea and absolutely correct. That’s the Walter that we’ve known up until this season, and I’ve thought that the portrayal was worth an Emmy.This season something new was added for John Noble: “Walternate.” “Walternate” – the version of Walter Bishop in the alternate universe that is at war with ours is in his own way probably just as mad as our Walter, but not in an endearing way. Walternate is completely ruthless, willing to kill “our” Olivia to bring his Olivia back to his side once her mission is completed, and when that proves impossible lops off pieces of the corpse of a formerly trusted associate (his Philip Broyles) to match Olivia’s weight. And that’s not even mentioning his willingness to use his son, the only remaining Peter Bishop, as an integral part of a weapon that will destroy “our” universe. And he did it all cloaked in patriotism and his role as Secretary of Defense. Playing two characters in the same show is always a trial for for an actor, and in playing both our “dotty” Walter and his polar opposite the sociopathic Walternate, I think that John Noble has truly earned the Emmy nomination that he will undoubtedly not get.

4. Donnie Wahlberg – Detective Danny Reagan on Blue Bloods: Truth be known, this is more of a case of me liking the actor and bringing the character along for the ride so to speak. I’ve basically been a fan of Donnie Wahlberg since I saw him in Band of Brothers (what? you expecting me to say New Kids On The Block?) and I also liked him in Boomtown, the series he did after Band Of Brothers, (which was created by Graham Yost, who also wrote two episodes of Band of Brothers). I did miss his very short running CW series Runaway and some of his other movie and TV work, but what I’ve seen him in I like him in. And that includes Blue Bloods. Wahlberg plays NYPD Detective Danny Reagan who is the eldest son of Police Commissioner Frank Reagan (Tom Selleck). Danny is one of those cops who bends the rules. If you follow enough police procedurals you know that just about all of them have cops who “bend the rules.” What makes Danny Reagan different – and indeed what makes the whole show different – is that we see beyond the work life and into the personal family life of Danny and the rest of his family. Thus we see and get to know Danny’s wife and how she reacts to some of the situations that she’s in; we get to see the reaction of his sister Erin – an Assistant District Attorney – to some of the things that Danny does when he “bends the rules.” This adds an extra dimension to the character and gives Wahlberg something to work with.

5. Jim Belushi – Nick Morelli on The Defenders:
and
6. Jerry O’Connell – Pete Kaczmerik on The Defenders: This is the one that surprised me because I really haven’t liked either of these two actors in roles that they’ve had in the past. And yet, I like them in this and I think it’s because these fit the characters nicely. I’m probably less surprised with Belushi’s performance. While I, like just about anyone else who has written even a comment on a website about TV, complained about his previous series According To Jim, I am aware that Belushi has at least some acting chops both in comedy and drama. The character of Nick Morelli fits Belushi well; a Chicago-born lawyer who enjoyment of his prosperity is disrupted by the end of his marriage and his sudden return to the dating scene. As for Jerry O’Connell, I have to say that I find him the more limited of the two actors. I‘ve seen at least some episodes of the four series that O’Connell has done as an adult, and while I actually liked him in Crossing Jordan, I could barely watch a single episode of his last series, Checking In and I don’t think I saw a complete episode of Carpoolers. My impression of O’Connell is that he often plays varying degrees of the same character, always energetic and usually quite pleased with himself. In the two comedies, he was oversexed and even a bit smarmy. There is just something about O’Connell that I always find annoying. In The Defenders all of those negative character aspects are found in Pete Kaczmerik but they work. Pete is a womanizer and egotistical and over-energetic, and a bit smarmy but those are the traits that this character, a fast talking lawyer who is a few steps above being an ambulance chaser but nowhere near the top of his profession would have. Maybe putting him opposite Belushi has worn off some of the traits that I previously found annoying in both of them.

On The Fifth Day Of Christmas

On the fifth day of Christmas my true love – Television – gave to me…five female characters I enjoyed.

This one is a bit hard to write because it seems to me that this past TV season has not been a good one for roles for women. Oh sure, there were good parts for women in the CW’s new shows – Hellcats and Nikita – and on some of the new sitcoms, but with the exception of NBC’s Chase there really isn’t a new drama with  solid female lead, and while I haven’t reviewed it yet Chase really feels like a pretty bad show. In fact at least some of the shows that were cancelled this season were better than Chase. Well at least one of them was, but we won’t get into Lonestar because I have a definite theory about why this show failed to ignite on broadcast TV…but I don’t want to get into that here.

A couple of things to bear in mind. First, I really only feel comfortable in talking about shows that I see on a regular basis or have more than one episode’s exposure to . As a result I won’t be talking about most sitcoms or extolling a member of the cast of Hellcats or Nikita, and I haven’t seen enough episodes of The Event to feel confident in saying anything about Laura Innes’s character on The Event or about Monica Baccarin’s character Anna on V despite the fact that I like both actresses. Similarly, because I had DVR problems and had to delete most of Season 4 of Mad Men I won’t comment about Elizabeth Moss or Christina Hendricks on that show even though I’m given to understand that Peggy Olsen and Joan Holloway had great storylines. The other thing to remember is that the only order that these comments are in is by the day of the week that I see the show. Finally, I don’t mention Marg Helgenberg, but she’s always a presence on any list like this.

1. Stana Katic – Detective Kate Beckett on Castle: Kate Beckett the voice of sanity on Castle. She’s always level headed and practical even as she’s surrounded by people who aren’t. Even the two detectives she works with, Ryan & Esposito, have their “goofy” moments when they’d be classified as comic relief, but there’s very little of that for Beckett. Of course, the Beckett-Castle relationship is the heart of the show. Romantically it hasn’t been smooth sledding for them, although there definitely seems to be a connection if one or the other of them can figure it out. Professionally he exasperates her, even as she recognises that he has flashes of brilliance. She’s also able to see beyond the part of Castle that is immature to the man beneath who can be serious, who cares for his friends is devoted to his daughter and worries as she grows older and more independent. It may not be the greatest role on TV, and Katic is unlikely to win an Emmy, or much else in recognition of her performance, but it’s a nice part.

2. Julie Benz – Dr. Stephanie Powell on No Ordinary Family: I’ve liked Julie Benz since she first appeared as Darla on Buffy The Vampire Slayer.  Given that the character of Darla seemed initially to be a brief and not terribly well developed part – a close associate of The Master who ends up dead in the first or second episode – she managed to catch both our attention and the attention of the producers so that Darla grew in importance over the course of both Buffy’s run and then the run of Angel. I came to look forward to her appearance in other guest starring bits in other shows. I’ve never seen her in Dexter but I’ve heard good things about her in the role of Rita. Her turn as Robin Galagher, the stripper who becomes Katherine Mayfair’s lover, is one of the few highlights of Desperate Housewives for me in recent years. Stephanie Powell is a different role from many that she’s played. Stephanie is a brilliant career woman who happens to have super-powers (she has super-speed). What Stephanie isn’t is a super-hero. She has these powers but she has no desire to use them to fight crime. What she wants, and what she uses the power for is to be able to have it all. Super-speed allows her to be both the high powered scientist that she’s studied to be and is very good at, and the wife and mother side that was always coming second for her. Stephanie is very different from most of the characters that Benz has played in the past, and as I’ve come to expect from her, Julie Benz pulls it off beautifully.

3. Mayim Bialik – Amy Farrah Fowler on The Big Bang Theory: Frankly I could also have gone with Kaley Cuoco just as easily; if you don’t think she’s essential to that show as Penny then obviously you didn’t see the episodes that she didn’t appear in after her riding injury. Still, Amy Farrah Fowler – the female Sheldon Cooper – is a dream role and Bialik is either just about perfect for it or, as is the case with Jim Parsons, she works hard to make the character her own, to the point where you really can’t think of anyone else in the part.  







4. Anna Torv – Olivia Dunham on Fringe: I’ve always liked Anna Torv on Fringe. She always seemed to me to be the on the outside looking in on the in on both the insanity of the events that she’s investigating. At the same time she the observer of the relationship between Peter and Walter. It was surprising to me to find people who thought that the way she portrayed Olivia indicated that she had limited acting ability rather than it being a specific choice. With the current season and the appearance of “Fauxlivia” – the Olivia from the alternate universe – we’re really seeing that the way that Torv portrayed Olivia in the first two seasons was a conscious choice on her part. Fauxlivia was more ruthless than “our” Olivia, but at the same time she smiled more and had more of a sense of “joy” to her. It was part of the character so that Peter could look back and say that he should have realized that it wasn’t “his” Olivia that he was having a relationship with. It’s in this that most doubters have hopefully come to realise that she is a very capable performer.

5. A.J. Cook – FBI Agent Jennifer “J.J.” Jareau on Criminal Minds: I spent lot of time debating this one. I could have gone with Kirsten Vangsness as Penelope Garcia (also on Criminal Minds), or Robin Tunney as Teresa Lisbon (The Mentalist), but I think that Cook’s role in the show was unique. Her departure from the show (apparently due to the producers’ desire to reduce the show’s budget) was both highly unpopular with fans and I think that it took a vital element away from the show. Agent Jareau was the one character on Criminal minds who was oriented outwards. By that I mean that the characters role wasn’t directed primarily at the solution of the crime. J.J. was the person that police agencies contacted initially and the one who chose the cases for the team. She was the person who dealt with the families of the victims on a personal basis, and she was the public face of the Behavioral Analysis Unit because she was the one who dealt with the media. While the show has mandated that Vangsness’s character will take over at least some of JJ’s duties, I still think that eliminating the character was detrimental to the series. That alone makes her a character that I enjoyed.

On The Fourth Day Of Christmas

On the fourth day of Christmas my true love – Television – gave to me… four reasons to complain about being Canadian.

Now don’t get me wrong, I love just about everything about being Canadian. I love our style of Bowling, I’m quite fond of the Queen being on the money, and after my mother’s heart attack in November, you bet I love our government run health care system and phooey on Americans for not understanding how and why it works. Suffice it to say that if we lived in the United States my mother would either be dead, bankrupt or both.

But still, there are a few things wrong about how this country works, and  how it impacts me trying to do this. Those things are of course Television related. These aren’t in any particular order, just thoughts as we go along.

1. Media Concentration: You think it’s bad in the United States? Consider this: The vast majority of private TV stations (as opposed to the CBC’s stations) are owned by three companies. These three companies also own a large percentage of Canada’s cable TV stations. These three companies are Rogers, Bell Canada, and Shaw. By no coincidence whatsoever, these three companies own both of Canada’s satellite broadcasting systems – Bell ExpressVu and Shaw Direct – and the largest and second largest cable companies in the country – Rogers and Shaw Cable. 

Five years ago – January 2006 – things were somewhat different. I say somewhat because while the three major “systems” (that has a specific meaning in Canadian TV that I won’t get into) owned almost all of the stations that aired their shows, there was a far greater variety of voices in terms of ownership. It’s true that Bell owned CTV and some cable networks, but Rogers and Shaw both owned comparatively small cable channel group. The Chum Media Group owned the CITY-TV system, having taken over the Craig Media Group two years before which gave them most of the stations in the group. CHUM also owned a fairly significant cable presence both from channels they had started and those they acquired from Craig. The Global network, now owned by Shaw, was then owned by Canwest along with a number of specialty channels. Alliance-Atlantis, now exclusively a movie production and distribution company, had a significant cable presence. In 2006, CHUM sold their broadcasting assets to Rogers and their cable channels to CTV, while Alliance-Atlantis sold its channels to Canwest and they are now owned by Shaw.

In my opinion this trend towards media concentration is a bad thing. It restricts the local responsiveness of stations in the community. Economic decisions mean that in Saskatchewan (for example) local newscast aren’t local any more. There are only two of them, and they have become more regional broadcasts than local. People in Prince Albert, which used to have its own CTV station now watch news from Saskatoon, which has a primary focus on Saskatoon but also has to serve not only that city and Prince Albert and all of the other communities in Northern Saskatchewan. 

Another part of the situation is that concentration of ownership can effectively restrict what we see. The former CEO of Shaw Media, Jim Shaw, quite famously refused to pay a fee to the Canadian Television Fund (which he was required to do as part of his license) because he felt that Canadians didn’t want to watch the shows that were being supported by the fund, and in part because he disagreed with some of the shows being funded (Trailer Park Boys in particular was a show that Shaw loathed). Back then, all Shaw could do was complain and make this sort of “grandstand play.” Today Shaw, or rather his successor at Shaw Media, can largely determine what shows will and won’t be made.

2. I can’t be on The Amazing Race: That may seem like a selfish one but it is a reason to complain about being Canadian. I can’t a participant on The Amazing Race, or Survivor, or Big Brother, or many of the prime time game shows like the current Million Dollar Money Drop, and it’s all because I don’t have a US passport. In a recent visit to Canada Amazing Race host Phil Keoghan said that if Canadians wanted to participate in The Amazing Race they should get a Canadian network to do their own version of the show. That of course is never going to happen, either in the specific case of The Amazing Race or the general idea of Canadian based reality shows. Why? Because the Canadian networks have no valid reason to do their own version of these shows. Canadians are huge fans of The Amazing Race – it is one of the top rated shows on Canadian TV – but the Canadian networks get a show like The Amazing Race for far less money than it would cost them to produce a Canadian version, particularly when you realize that a Canadian network would be unable to sell it in the international community to recoup some of the cost… like the producers of The Amazing Race (or Survivor or Big Brother, or Dancing With The Stars) are able to do.

It’s something of a shame really. There’s no real reason – beyond cost really – why we in Canada shouldn’t have a Dancing With The Stars featuring Canadian celebrities and sports figures, or a Canadian Big Brother. We do have a Canadian version of So You Think You Can Dance and we have had Canadian Idol. But Canadian Idol is no more and a large part of the reason for that is that CTV, the Canadian network that ran Canadian Idol decided that they couldn’t afford it.

3. Finding shows: It isn’t easy. On occasion I get offers to participate in phone interviews with people from shows I’ve never heard of let alone watched, or information and promotional material for shows. I’d like to at least try some of this stuff but I don’t feel that I can do a lot of this stuff because I don’t know if the show is airing in Canada or if it does air here I don’t know when, or on what channel. It’s one of the reasons why so much of what I write about is broadcast TV. I don’t know if Psych is available in Canada, or if it is where I can find it.

Another side of this is that a lot of the shows that really interest me are on the higher priced premium movie channels that I don’t subscribe to because I can’t afford them. I’d love to write about something like Boardwalk Empire, Sons of Anarchy, Men Of A Certain Age and a number of other shows, but I can’t because they’re only available on two premium movie channels which would cost me $17.00 each. I can’t afford to spend $34.00 a month to watch these shows, some of which are basic cable shows in the United States. Sure, these may eventually make their way to non-premium cable here, in much the same way that Dexter and The Closer have, but by the time they do, the episodes are often a year or two (or more) old and any reviews that I could write about them would be out of date at best, irrelevant (because the show is no longer on the air) at worst.

4. Blocked feeds: These are the bane of my existence, particularly around Upfronts, but it often also applies when publicists send me links to clips. Last year all of the American networks had their trailers available on YouTube, but only NBC (and I think maybe The CW) had their new series trailers available to viewers outside of the United States. This made it very hard for me to put together a package of trailers for this blog. Even if I could find a source for clips that were legitimately available to me as a Canadian, my readership isn’t exclusively Canadian – in fact if the results from Google Analytics are correct the largest single nationality is American – and those people who aren’t Canadian won’t be able to see those Canadian legal clips. During the last Upfronts I managed to find a source for clips for all of the networks so that I and all of my readers could see them…until YouTube shut the clips down a few days later. With publicists, I’ll take the link that they’ve sent me, and usually end up being told that the clip that I’m supposed to be seeing – because the publicist wants me to see it – isn’t available in my jurisdiction. It is frustrating (to say the least).

A second aspect of this relates to people posting clips. It isn’t uncommon for people to post Hulu clips, or clips from AOL’s In2TV. Which is all very well in most circumstances – which is to say when they’re Americans serving an American audience – but when it comes to non-American audiences we’re out of luck. Obviously it’s usually impossible for bloggers or website owners posting clips like this to find an alternative source for this sort of clip that isn’t blocked, but they should at least be aware that the problem exists.

I’m constantly amused/irritated by people like Leo Laporte who say that broadcast TV, or even the current model of broadcast and cable, is outmoded going to go away because people can use services like Hulu and Netflix and devices like AppleTV, the Boxee Box, and other ways of linking your TV to the Internet to get shows online. This they say allows you to pick and choose what you want to see when you want to see it. It’s probably Nirvana for those who understand how to make it work and and can afford it or actually be bothered to use it. The thing is that so much of the technology and the services that it depends on to be able to work isn’t available outside of the United States. There is no Hulu in Canada, and given that our major content providers and Internet service providers are also owned by cable and satellite providers, I doubt that there will be anything like Hulu in Canada for a very, very long time.

On The Third Day Of Christmas

On the third day of Christmas, my true love – Television – gave to me… three reality show moments.

I’m still behind but this post and the next one should be quickies, so I’ll catch up a bit.
My friends in the blogging field, notably Ivan Shreve and “Toby” O’Brien have accused me at times of knowing far more about reality TV than is entirely healthy, an accusation to which I say HA! and HA! anew. The truth is that I watch a few reality shows. I watch the ones I like, which are generally reality-competition shows that aren’t talent shows or shows about dating. I really think that I am rather selective in the shows that I watch. I normally watch Big Brother, Survivor, Hell’s Kitchen, Kitchen Nightmares, Celebrity Apprentice (not the non-Celebrity version mind), Dancing With The Stars and of course the greatest reality-competition series of them all, The Amazing Race. Not that many at all really, and I’ve never lowered myself to the point where I watch The Bachelor The Bachelorette, or Biggest Loser. And Jersey Shore, or the Real Housewives franchise? Fuhgeddaboudit.

Inevitably reality-competitions shows attract “big” personalities, for good or for ill. Part of the reason for doing a show like this is that you have something of an exhibitionist streak, either emotionally or physically; you want people watching you and you don’t care that much what they see. Reality competition shows also generate situations where things go wrong or people do things that embarrass themselves because it seemed like a good idea at the time. So here are three of my favourites from the past year.

1. Bristol Palin in a Gorilla Monkey Monkee suit
The Fall season of Dancing With The Stars featured Bristol Palin, the daughter of former Vice-Presidential candidate Sarah Palin (and somewhat infamous in her own right for being pregnant out of wedlock during her mother’s campaign). Controversy seemed to follow young Bristol as far more talented dancers than her were eliminated. In fact, one of the options for this slot was the elimination of fourth place finisher Brandy; Derek Hough’s jaw literally drops when he hears the news. The other notable event in that season was when 76 year-old Florence Henderson “whipped out the girls” (fortunately encased in a suitable for TV bra) in the piece before she did the Tango to the theme from The Brady Bunch. Those of us who saw it can’t forget it…no matter how hard we try. Bristol Palin’s success was almost certainly a by-product of her mother being a favourite of Tea Party supporters (they try to deny it by claiming that Bristol’s dancing improved during the course of the show – and it’s true, but given that she started with no skills improvement was to be expected; she was still a bad dancer, just not as bad a bad dancer). Possibly the nadir of Palin’s dancing career on the show was “TV Theme week” in which the teams danced to TV show themes (well duh). Palin and her dance partner Mark Balas got the theme from The Monkees. And for some reason Mark thought that dressing up might help. As you can see here, it really didn’t, though the judges were kind.

2. Quitters on Survivor: Nicaragua
Survivor usually deals up more than its fair share of drama. During the “Heroes vs. Villains” season in the spring we had the confrontation between Rob Mariano (Boston Rob), who I consider to be one of the best strategists that Survivor has ever seen – and also the only person in Survivor history to actually make fire by literally rubbing two stick together – against Russell, the immunity idol magnet who had come second the previous season and actually tried to buy the title of Sole Survivor in the reunion show. Rob saw right through Russell and twice had a plan to get him out, only have Russell stay because he was able to persuade two of Rob’s allies to vote against their own best interests. Still, Survivor: Nicaragua brought us a villain almost as bad as Russell: Naonka Mixon. Naonka literally wrestled a woman with one leg to the ground to get a clue to the hidden immunity idol, and implied that she might throw the woman’s prosthetic leg into the fire while she slept. She stole food from her team and hid it, and then when Kelly B – the woman with the artificial leg – found out about it she first shared food with her and then got the other members of her tribe to put more blame onto Kelly for not immediately ratting Naonka out than on herself for actually stealing the food. Naonka went through the whole game as the Queen Witch Bitch of Nicaragua. Until she decided that she was too cold and too wet and quit.along with Kelly Shin – known on the show as “Purple Kelly”… when you actually saw her on the show which wasn’t always that often. But she after she announced her desire to quit (but before it was accepted – the show wanted to give both women a chance to change their minds), Naonka had one more bit of “witch-bitchery” about her. She was on the winning team of a “reward” challenge (some reward – they got to see a sneak preview of the new Jack Black movie Gulliver’s Travels) however they were offered a chance to get some extra supplies if one of the winning team opted not to go on the reward. Since there had been a fire at the camp that destroyed their tarp, and virtually all of their food, someone would be sitting out the reward… but it wouldn’t be Naonka. Despite the fact that she knew she wasn’t going to change her mind, Naonka was determined to get every reward she was “entitled” to. Which led to the Tribal Council seen in this clip. The other players, both still active and on the jury were dumbfounded that after thirty days in the jungle and with just ten days left in the shooting schedule, these two would quit without any injury or medical problem. As for host Jeff Probst, well he seems to have a hard time keeping his anger at these two quitters at bay. Jeff doesn’t like quitters on his show. To make matters worse, despite not being voted off, Naonka and Purple Kelly became part of the jury, and this time there was nothing anyone could do to keep it from happening. However a new rule, announced at the show’s reunion episode, will give producers the option of not allowing quitters to participate in the jury at the discretion of the producers.

3. Claire and the Watermelon on The Amazing Race
The biggest reality incident of the year came in the first episode of The Amazing Race. GemsTV home shopping hosts Brook Roberts (the blonde) and Claire Champlin (the brunette) were in England where their Roadblock task (one which has to be done by only one of the team and can’t be switched; that’s important in this case as you’ll see) was to use an overgrown slingshot to knock down a suit of armour. With a watermelon. Seems simple enough right? And for most of the people who were on the show it was. Not for Claire. As you’ll see in the video the watermelon had a mind, and a sense of direction, all its own. The result was shocking to say the least, to the point where the jugglers and acrobats, hired to provide “Local Colour” dropped out of “Local Colour” mode and rand over to see if she was alright. Needless to say, the video went viral. The original CBS release (which I’m showing here; be advised, there is a short commercial at the start) has had over 2.2 million hits, and various other versions have had between 100,000 and 1.5 million hits. There’s even a guy who claims that it was all a fake. But would you really trust a guy in bug glasses?

On The Second Day Of Christmas

On the second day of Christmas, my true love – Television – gave to me... two departing executives.

In this case I'm speaking of The CW's Dawn Ostroff who recently resigned as the networks President of Entertainment, and Jeff Zucker who was fired as President of NBC Universal in September.

I really don't know that much about Dawn Ostroff. Most of the programs that the network airs aren't directed to a person of my age and gender. This is quite deliberate, a policy that Ostroff who has headed the Programming Department at The CW since the network was created has championed. The CW's focus on the "young female" (teens and early 20s) focus means that the network has the youngest audience on TV. This allows the network to claim victory with small audiences by claiming that they're successful in reaching their target audience and going after advertisers who are trying to reach that market. Still there have been missteps and casualties both in the transition from the two networks which made up The CW, UPN and The WB, and in the subsequent period. The CW is the only network without any sitcoms. The WB had a fairly well regarded set of Friday night sitcoms which included their highest rated show of all at the time, Reba. The Friday night comedy block was dumped because one of the things that UPN brought into the merger was WWE's Friday Night Smackdown which was that network's biggest draw (some might say their only draw). Ostroff initially cancelled Reba when the two networks merged, on the grounds that it didn't fit with the demographic that the network was aiming for, however the show was given a 13 episode order just before Upfronts in May 2006, largely on the grounds that more episodes to allow the show to be syndicated. Brought on to replace one of the of the two new series to debut during the first season of the new network, it became one of the top rated shows on the new network. There were reports that the show would be given a full season order but the show was completed its thirteen episodes and was cancelled. The last sitcoms on The CW were Everybody Hates Chris and The Game in the 2008-09 season. Ostroff also had major problems on Sunday nights after Seventh Heaven left the night in the 2006-07 season. Ostroff was at the helm when The CW decided to farm out their entire Sunday night schedule to an independent producer named Media Rights Capital. The arrangement fell apart within a few weeks of the shows debuting with MRC cancelling their shows and The CW cancelling their deal with the content provider. The CW limped through that season with a combination of reruns of the cancelled CBS series Jericho and movies and hasn't programmed the night since. The network also has an ongoing problem in finding a program to follow their only continuing reality series, America's Next Top Model. Ostroff will be leaving the network to spend more time with her family.

But of course the real target of this post is former NBC Universal President and CEO Jeff Zucker, also known as the man who was fired up. He started his NBC career as field producer at Today in 1989, became the show's Executive Producer in 1992, was named President of NBC Entertainment in 2000, President of the NBC in 2004 (giving him responsibility not only for NBC but also NBC-Universal's other TV properties including Sci-Fi, Trio, and USA Network), CEO of NBC in 2005, and President and CEO of NBC Universal in 2007. In fact his progress was only halted by two things: there was nowhere higher at NBC Universal to go, and then the company was sold to Comcast. Comcast was not as enamoured of Zucker's record as his former bosses at General Electric were. In September 2010 Zucker was fired and replaced with Comcast COO Steve Burke. 

Zucker was a case of a man who had been promoted far above his level of incompetence. His history as Entertainment President is illustrative of this. His programming strategy seems to have consisted of throwing large amounts of money at established hits – most notably Friends – without giving the opportunity for new shows to develop to their full potential. When Friends finally left the air it was Zucker who came up with the "brilliant" idea of taking the least interesting character on that show, Matt LeBlanc's character Joey Trebiani – and building a show around him. Despite dismal ratings Joey stayed on the air for two agonising years. Meanwhile older shows were being buffeted in the ratings by fresher competition and the new shows that Zucker and his successors Kevin Reilly and Ben Silverman were rolling out were underperforming. The Reilly period did produce some good shows, a few of which are still on the air. Among the Reilly shows were 30 Rock and Chuck, and Reilly was also a vocal supporter of keeping The Office despite low initial ratings. In fact Reilly's contract was extended in February 2007. And then he was forced out of the company in May 2007, largely as a result of Zucker's machinations. Silverman's period as Entertainment President was an unmitigated series of disasters, both in terms of programming and his own behaviour. Silverman brought in shows that were totally out of step with what viewers of the broadcast were watching. His one season in full control of the network included shows like Crusoe, and Kings, and he was also responsible for the reimagining of Knight Rider and the American version of Kath & Kim. Zucker was also responsible for the whole Leno-O'Brien debacle. In 2004 he negotiated the contract that would keep Jay Leno as host of the Tonight Show until 2009 only, at which point he would be replaced with Conan O'Brien. As the time for the change grew nearer, Leno's ratings on the Tonight Show were incredibly strong. In an effort to keep Leno on the network and keep him from competing with Conan on a different night, NBC offered Leno the third hour of primetime five nights a week. The result was a disaster for Leno, NBC's primetime lineup (several third hour shows were moved to the second hour, and Southland, a show which was totally unsuited to the second hour was cancelled only to be picked up by the TNT cable network), and the Tonight Show franchise. The network's response was to buy Conan out of his contract, restore Leno to the Tonight Show and scrambled to find shows to hold down the third hour. 

I have spent a lot of time discussing some of the statements of Jeff Zucker over the years until it got to be a bit boring. My particular favourites were those times when Zucker set himself up as a wannabe Nostradamus, but turned out to be more of a Jeanne Dixon, without Dixon's ability to occasionally get something right.

• In October 2006, Zucker stated that NBC would no longer air scripted programming in the 8 p.m. time slot. According to a TVSquad article at the time: "Zucker says that advertisers just won't pay enough money during the 8 pm time slot to cover the costs of comedies and dramas. Instead, the network will air game shows and reality shows during that hour." That prediction, which was never fully enacted, saw the rise and overexposure of Deal Or No Deal, and lasted almost two seasons.
• In January 2008, during the Writers Strike, Zucker announced that Network Upfronts were a dying institution and NBC wouldn't be doing one: "Things like that are all vestiges of an era that's gone by and won't return." In another statement he said, "When people say the upfront, there are two things: One is the dog-and-pony show at Radio City and the second is the way we sell the inventory," Zucker said. "The way that we sell the inventory in an upfront selling period is not going to change. Whether we still need to do the dog-and-pony show is completely under review here and you can look for an announcement on that from us very soon."
• The decision to dispense with the Upfront process barely lasted as long as it took to say it, although what they did do was different from what the other networks announced, according to Media Daily News: "Breaking from the usual announcement of programming for the September-to-May season, NBC will instead lay out its prime-time schedule for the full 52 weeks ahead in April. Then it will hold smaller client meetings in New York, with the heads of NBC's entertainment operations, Ben Silverman and Marc Graboff, meeting with advertisers to discuss marketing opportunities for that 52-week lineup. Next, NBCU's sales team will fan out to New York, Los Angeles and Chicago for further meetings about the schedule and advertiser opportunities. Then comes the May 12 "spotlight event." The location will be announced later. NBCU said the "spotlight" will focus on more than just NBC proper to include the range of other assets that advertisers can buy throughout NBCU."
• At about the same time, Zucker was telling the world that Pilots weren't needed. In a speech at NATPE, Zucker stated: "Broadcasters can no longer spend hundreds of millions of dollars every year on pilots that don't see the light of day or on upfront presentations or on deals that don't pay off. And we can't ignore international opportunities, VOD (video-on-demand) or the Web....It's not about making less programs; it's about making less waste....NBC will order fewer pilots and start ordering more projects straight to series – 'those that our executives really believe in' – similar to the model for reality shows." That may explain what happened during the one season that Ben Silverman programmed for the network. In the end, NBC went back to pilots.
• Shortly before NBC finalized the deal to bring Jay Leno to primetime, Zucker mused about the possibility of turning either Saturday nights or the third hour of primetime over to the affiliates. According to him, "putting scripted programming on during the third hour of primetime is part of a broken programming model." Once the decision was made to put Leno into the third hour time slot he stated that "advertisers will respect the network based not on ratings but on corporate profitability." Leno flopped in the third hour and as a result NBC went back to the business of programming the third hour of primetime with scripted series.

Maybe one last statement is worth considering. While being interviewed by PBS's Charlie Rose in January 2010, Zucker responded to Rose's statement that, "NBC is in shambles" by denying it. According to Zucker, "NBC Entertainment is responsible for 5% of the bottom line and 95% of its perception," and that he (Zucker) kept his job because the company was successful despite the failures of the entertainment division. Zucker forgot – if he'd ever known, which is doubtful – the idea of the "clean window train." In the days when people travelled more extensively by train than they do today, the railroads spent a great deal of time and money on their most important passenger trains. In fact they spent money disproportionately with the percentage of revenue that the passenger service brought in compared with the freight service. The railroad presidents knew or believed that the passenger train was the part of the operation that the public saw; it was the window through which the public, including people who shipped goods by train, perceived the railroads and so it needed to be a "clean" window. Zucker might have been right that NBC's Entertainment division represented only 5% of the company's bottom line, but he forgot that it ws ninety-five percent of what shaped the public, and the advertisers', perception of the company. Zucker's previous employers – General Electric – might have been focused more on the bottom line than on perception, but the new owners of the network weren't blinded to the value of how the network is perceived. And that probably explains why he's now out of a job.

On The First Day Of Christmas

On the first day of Christmas my true love – Television – gave to me...one massive line-up change.

For those of you who don't know – which may be a lot of you since I haven't done one of these in a couple of years – this little exercise is by way of an 'end of the year review/look forward at the coming year with increasing trepidation' series of articles. Now I'm going to be up front with you; I don't know if I've got twelve of these in me, and as it stands I'm really starting late. That's what stopped me last year; I had some ideas of what I wanted to write about but I kept putting thing of and putting them off until putting anything out there wouldn't have worked. The year before I just got sick. Well I'm feeling okay this year (knock wood or a computer generated facsimile) but I'm still procrastinating so as I say, we'll see how far this gets. Already I'm a day behind, so that's not a particularly hopeful sign.

One other thing; I'm using the idea of the song, The Twelve Days of Christmas, as the basis for this. You may think that it's late to do that, but it's only slightly late. The tradition of the Twelve Days of Christmas, as reflected in the song, refers to "Christmastide," the period between Christmas day and the Epiphany on January 6^th. The Christmas celebrations are meant to end on January 5^th, the eve of The Epiphany. Among the many traditions surrounding this period is that Christmas decorations are meant to be taken down on January 6^th. Of course like many of traditions surrounding the season, this traditions surrounding the Twelve Days Of Christmas have eroded or changed. My brother for one tosses out the Christmas tree just as soon as is practical (though what his new wife will think of that policy is going to be interesting). As for me, I start my personal Twelve Days of Christmas on Boxing Day (aka December 26^th aka the Feast of Stephen that they sing about in Good King Wenceslas) because like most of you I am too full of "fine provender" on Christmas to do just about anything let alone be creative, and because I am not one of those fools who leaves his home on Christmas night to stand outside a store to take a chance at buying something I really don't need at a bargain price. Okay there was the time that I bought my first DVD player but that's all. So now, on with the show.

As I said at the beginning, my first topic in what will hopefully be a twelve day series is a massive line-up change. Current received "wisdom" is that you don't move an established show from its established time slot...ever. This is presumably on the assumption that the TV viewer is stupid and will never find his or her show again if it moves to an unfamiliar time slot. This notion would probably have come as a shock to someone like Bill Paley and his assorted TV presidents over the years as well as other network CEOs and president, who moved shows around like chess pieces to fill holes and tried to exploit weakness with strength. Gilligan's Island had three different time slots during its three seasons: Saturday 8:30-9 (Season 1), Thursday 8-8:30 (Season 2) and Monday 7:30-8 (Season 3). The fourth season that didn't happen would have been the first time that the show stayed in its time slot. M*A*S*H had six different time slots in its eleven year run. In twelve seasons the original Hawaii Five-0 was seen in eight different time slots and moved during the season four times. But today the belief is that moving an established show to a new time slot is the kiss of death for that series, particularly if the show is older and particularly if the move is to a night or a time slot where the show is doing poorly.

Which is what makes the changes that Les Moonves and his team at CBS so surprising. After cancelling Cold Case, New Adventures of Old Christine, Accidentally On Purpose, Numb3rs, Miami Medical, Gary Unmarried and Ghost Whisperer, CBS unveiled the shows that they would be moving. These included CSI: Miami, moving from Monday to Sunday, CSI New York, moving from Wednesday to Friday, The Big Bang Theory, moving from Monday to Thursday and Survivor, moving from Thursday to Wednesday. This was a huge series of moves. Each of these shows were among the top twenty-five most watched network shows in the 2009-10 season. With the exception of The Big Bang Theory (which was usually up against Dancing With The Stars) each show won its time slot.

So how has it worked out? Well, it's a bit of a mixed bag. In this chart I compare the Yearly Ratings for the moved shows with the Ratings for the week of November 15-20, the last week before the US Thanksgiving holiday. (It might be more accurate to compare the ratings for the comparable week in 2009, but the Yearly rating is easier to get.)

Show		Original Time Slot		2009-10 Yearly Ratings		Position	Current Time Slot	Rating Week of November 15-20	Position
CSI: Miami		Monday 10-11		12.653 million		24	Sunday 10-11	10.44 million	25
Big Bang Theory		Monday 9:30-10		14.14 million		12	Thursday 8-8:30	13.09 million	12
CSI: New York		Wednesday 10-11		12.662 million		23	Friday 9-10	10.24 million	27
Survivor		Thursday 8-9		12.469 million		25	Wednesday 8-9	12.01 million	17

 

As you can see viewership for each of the shows that moved was down. On the other hand each of the shows is winning its time slot. Three of the four shows are in the top 25, while the fourth show is in the top 30. Another way of looking at this is by comparing the performance of the various shows in their time periods from last year and on night during the specified time this year. Again, I am using the week of November 15-20 for the 2010-11 data.

Time Slot	2009-10 Show	2009-10 Audience	2010-11 Show	2010-11 Audience
Monday 10-11	CSI: Miami	12.653 million	Hawaii Five-0	10.34 million
Monday 9:30-10	Big Bang Theory	14.14 million	Mike & Molly	12.15 million
Wednesday 10-11	CSI: New York	12.662 million	The Defenders	9.43 million
Thursday 8-9	Survivor	12.469 Million	Big Bang Theory $#*! My Dad Says	13.09 million 10.13 million
Sunday 10-11	Cold Case	9.86 million	CSI: Miami	10.44 million
Friday 9-10	Medium	7.79 million	CSI: New York	10.24 million
Wednesday 8-9	N. A. of Old Christine Gary Unmarried Accidentally On Purpose	6.7 million 6.65 million 5.5 million	Survivor	12.01 Million

 As we can see it's something of a mixed bag. In all cases the relocated shows are outperforming the shows that were in their new time slots last year. Even Big Bang Theory is doing better than Survivor did in the previous year, although the overall rating is down from last year because the second half of the hour isn't performing as well as the first half hour. On the other hand all of the relocated series are down from their last season number: CSI: Miami down 2.2 million; Big Bang Theory down 1.05 million, CSI: New York down 2.4 million, Survivor down 450,000. On the other hand, when you look at the time slots – excluding the Thursday 8-9 period of course – you can see that the new shows aren't performing as well as the shows that they replaced: Hawaii Five-0 down 2.31 million from last year with CSI: Miami; Mike & Molly down 1.99 million from Big Bang Theory last year; The Defenders down 3.23 million from CSI: New York. Nevertheless, the swap has to be regarded as a qualified success, when you consider that Hawaii Five-0 is the most popular new drama on the air. Maybe expectations need to be tempered somewhat.

One thing that may be worth looking at is whether this sort of thing would work for any network besides CBS? It's a question worth considering. CBS has a distinct advantage over the other four broadcast networks in that they have – in Baseball terms – a deeper bench than any of the others networks. Last season CBS cancelled show which, had they been on any other network, would have had ratings that guaranteed renewal. Even the weakest of the new CBS shows in this chart – The Defenders – won its time slot most weeks. And the changes haven't stopped. The Defenders will be moved permanently to Friday night replacing Medium and will in turn be replaced with new series Chaos at the beginning of April. Blue Bloods will be given four weeks in The Defenders' Wednesday slot before being replaced in that time slot with the Criminal Minds spin-off Criminal Minds: Suspect Behavior. Established series Rules of Engagement will be replacing $#*! My Dad Says on Thursday night with new series Mad Love replacing it on Monday night.

I think that it may be that CBS is able to pull off something like the massive shift of established shows that they made this season because of the depth they have in good shows. Sure, we're seeing other networks switching shows around now, at mid-season, but the whole thing smacks of desperation. NBC will have a full night of comedies on Thursday nights starting in February. Has any network every tried that when the third hour was not some sort of hour-long dramedy? ABC will be following suit in April with the added element of desperation being that one of the half-hours is going to be repeats of Modern Family, new episodes of which will be shown about an hour and a half earlier. FOX will be moving Fringe to Friday night, but that's part of their only real tactical move this year, which is putting American Idol on Wednesday night to confront Survivor, beyond which Fringe hasn't been doing well on Thursday night despite being paired with Bones. I've been told that we are likely to see about four hours of CBS shows cancelled at the end of this season despite the fact that the network is in a dominant position in terms of winning time slots and nights with both new and established shows. The reason is, logically, that this is the way that the network refreshes itself, the way that it stays on top. A network is, I suppose a beast like a shark which has to keep moving to stay alive. It is perhaps something that one of the people featured in my "Second Day of Christmas" post should have paid attention to when he was in charge of a network.