And I’m not just talking low-level competent like “Oh yay! I can manage a hot dog stand because I know how to put sausages in buns and take money from people who have no idea they’re eating Mister Ed.”
I’m talking TV competency, the sort of skill and pride in a job that made the TGIF (Thank God It’s Friday) programming go so well on ABC when it was actually doing well. When you had shows like Family Matters, Step By Step, Sabrina, Boy Meets World, and a couple of others lined up in a nice and neat little row and all you had to do was sit in front of the telly with some food and not move to your bowels said so.
Sure, the shows weren’t that brilliant (especially by today’s standards) but the programming was there. The same sort of programming that the Australia’s ABC — a version of the BBC complete with mostly BBC programming (to really show how Australian we are, of course) — has geared up on Wednesday nights. You get The New Inventors, Spicks & Specks, and The Chaser as well as a usual dose of British comedy afterwards, and the light-heartedness of it does wonders. It helps that the shows are great shows. Good ideas, good direction, scripts, people, etc.
But the programming of a show will make or break it’s chances to survive in the world.
And you NBC are guilty of being among the worst programmers in the world.
You now compete with our Nine Network who don’t even know what they’re playing half the time.
NBC, you have Heroes. It is a great show and Tim Kringe should be bloody proud of it. The acting, the writing, the direction, the effects… it all comes together and doesn’t fail, even if some of the episodes border on being mostly useless throughout parts. But hey, you can’t be perfect.
And then you have Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip.
Now Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip is a different sort of a show from Heroes. Heroes is about people discovering they have mutant and superhero abilities. Studio 60 is about people on a Saturday Night Live or sketch comedy show.
As such, Heroes targets people from 6-80 OR mildly put, anyone who ever thought they could be or wanted to be a superhero.
And then you have Studio 60 which being an Aaron Sorkin drama — the same man responsible for The West Wing — targets people in the 16-60 bracket OR mildly put, people who want to see what’s usually a light-hearted take on a situation or setting that they might have an interest in that can from time to time become very serious.
Now Studio 60 is a great show. It does have some problems. It has a brilliant cast, great characters, excellent scripts, music, and direction. Aaron Sorkin, Thomas Schlamme, and all of the others who had a big part in making The West Wing the masterpiece that it was have a hand in making Studio 60. Where Studio 60 fails is the one-dimensionality of some of the stories. Romances go nowhere even though they spread over several episodes, and it’s a shame about that as the main romance on the show literally consumes many of the episodes while running other stories. While the episodes still find a way to work, you’re still left with a bad taste in your mouth because episode after episode, nothing is changing. It’s like being on one of the old car traveling sets where the landscape moves on a conveyor belt, but the people don’t.
Someone should’ve actually kicked Aaron Sorkin in the pants and told him to stop dreaming about love because we’re getting a little sick of it. Let’s see some substance.
Sorkin however is more or less becoming part of his own subtext of the show, sadly.
One of the things Studio 60 did very well was to underline and show the back-end element of running a TV station, complete with the NBC-like NBS. You had the head of programming, the head of that one, the head of that previous one, the board, with all the directors and producers and writers, actors, and other crew all having to talk to them to make the show work, to make the numbers work, and from the outset — from the beginning episode — Sorkin let you know through his characters that TV had become a diluted and stupid cesspool of random crap being spewed from left to right more or less making dumb people dumber and smart people turn to terrible TV, the Internet, or maybe to start reading a book. It was the TV speech that we all have wanted to make at one point when flicking channel to channel as we search for something to engage us to be on while the network executives could really care less as in the end it’s all about making money.
A few months ago, Studio 60 got shelved. It wasn’t doing too well in the ratings, or rather, not in the immediate ratings.
You see, there’s a new class of ratings. There’s TIVO ratings. This new rating system records what people have set their TIVO’s to record so they can play them back at a later date. Studio 60 did well in the TIVO ratings and not so well in the immediate ratings.
And there’s probably a good reason for this.
Remember how I mentioned the difference between Heroes and Studio 60 earlier?
Well, the oh-so-intelligent bigwigs at NBC decided that Heroes would be on followed by Studio 60.
Sure. Because [i]that[/i] makes sense. Superhero followed by drama.
WRONG. What the hell NBC?! You wanted to make an impact in the television world by putting two new shows on in a row even though you were completely disregarding any logic for regular TV programming?! Top job, because you shelved Studio 60.
Shelved is the word I’m using as around 18 episodes or so in, NBC put the brakes on Studio 60 as they were about to replace it with a new show to see if people would latch into that and pull more ratings for NBC in that later time slot. The new show had a great crew behind it and promised to be special.
The Black Donnellys.
It was canned about eight episodes into the show. Sorry… six episodes. Well, NBC… you’ve obviously got a great programmer there.
What’s next? The Wedding Crashers, a part of everyone’s least favourite and over-used section of the television world of that falsified phrase “reality TV”.
Proving reality is much more grim than scripted “reality TV” paints it as, The Wedding Crasher’s too was just axed after two episodes. Two.
Yeah. Go NBC. You’ve gone from a show that could’ve done well to a show that wasn’t doing well to a show in a part of television that even the first show you pulled — Studio 60 — made fun of before that last show was even put on air. Go you. You’re doing so well. Well enough to know that you’re replacing that show with Law & Order: Criminal Intent, another show which is failing to pull the market you want (or at least not like it used to).
There is one thing you might want to actually pay attention to for a minute, NBC.
Have I got your attention? There won’t be any messages or advertisements so sit in your seat with some popcorn and take notes:
Instead of looking for ways to line your pockets with your already failing schedule, try finding someone who can program the shows you have that are good in a fashion that will work for the shows. When the programming works with the shows and not with a dollar sign, people are more likely to watch them. It’s just like the radio.
So a lot of people like Studio 60? Put it on a night with a program that works with it so people don’t have to change the channel and they can stay on yours watching ads that earn you revenue.
Further, give things a chance.
America may be the make it or break it place of fast hurried opportunity for dumb-struck moguls, but at the moment NBC, you’re looking dumb-struck yourselves by not knowing how to best manage the content you’re programming.
Shows like The West Wing didn’t start off that well either and yet you let that run until it died at seven seasons. And seven was a good number for The West Wing as we would’ve just seen the same show over and over again. Blade on Spike TV was pulled for a good reason: the next season would’ve been the first season in a different city (plus the cliffhanger wasn’t something that would’ve made people give a damn, really).
However, you should expect the people to just start lining up for your shows just because you air them. You need to have patience because right now NBC, you look foolish, greedy, and clueless as for how you should run your network.
Shows need to run for a bit longer before you decide what gets the axe.
If you’re comparing a show’s success like Studio 60 to that of Heroes, you really are a bunch of fools. Try comparing it with the first season of The West Wing, and then factor in that people also have lives. Hard to believe, I know, but pay attention to the TIVO ratings as well as people are still watching the show just not when you want them to, because ultimately this has a lot to do with control.
Doesn’t everything in the end?
You want people to stay tuned into your network with your ads and your line-up so you can make more money. But to do this successfully, you need to [i]control[/i] your programming much better so we want to tune in.
This is me, a 23 year old Australian, telling NBC how to run their channel.
Geeze, someone get me a suit and I’ll make the decisions.