There are talks that Chuck is coming back in late October or early November. The execs seem happy with it.
Chuck starts after Heroes finishes. As for shows not workin' out in the midseason, someone better tell the producers of 24 that they've been on borrowed time for...what? the last three seasons (not to mention the year gap)?
Tru dat. All the Southland fans have the sympathy of this Tru Calling fan. It seems like a lot of actors are coming out on this issue. Richard Belzer mentioned it during his interview on Tavis Smiley this week. Tina Fey touched upon it briefly in her Emmy acceptance speech when 30 Rock won Best Comedy. I think it's weird that everyone is treating it as such a tragedy that NBC has occupied its 10pm timeslots with The Jay Leno Show. In the meantime, FOX, the CW, UPN, & the WB never had any 10pm programming to begin with, yet no one is talking about that.
Yes but NBC did and that's what matters. 10 PM have us shows like Hill Street Blues. No one cares (in this debate) what the other networks do or have done. The fact remains NBC had a key timeslot, one that has produced great TV art over years, and they've squandared it on Tonight Show Lite. The end result of this is studios and producers are going to start abandoning NBC when they come up with new programming. Advantage: the other networks, some of whom might even end up with the same sort of 10 p.m. goldmine that NBC used to have. Alex
I think that is already happening, everyone would much rather try ABC or CBS, even Fox where they screw you over because they have more viewers. I think NBC is already where ideas go to die because the other networks rejected the ideas. it would explain why EVERY show on NBC is trash.
Out of your four examples, two don't exist anymore (UPN & the WB merged to form the CW, remember?). Leavin' just FOX and the CW...FOX started out as a light network, that, back when it first hit, I couldn't even get 'cause I lived too far from D/FW! And the CW had to be created from two other light networks - I still remember when I was in college and could watch the WB programmin' durin' the week and UPN programmin' on weekends, 'cause that's how the one channel both networks used scheduled it. NBC has alwasy just been NBC and its days as a network go back longer than any of us do!
That's the thing though: there are certain days where Leno does kinda well (above 6.0) then there are days he does poorly (below 5.0). I noticed he does well on Mondays
Maybe he should be a once a week show, and not five fucking days a week. I haven't noticed much changes with SVU, there are still some scenes that should be seen after 10 p.m. I was just thinking the other day, I bet people who work on new shows hate hearing that NBC picked them up.
And yet some other networks have been having success with NBC's castoffs, like Medium on CBS & Scrubs on ABC. I know that UPN & the WB merged into the CW. I'm just mentioning them because they are still part of modern TV history. As for FOX, I realize that it started out as a minor league network akin to the CW, UPN, & the WB. However, no one will dispute that FOX is a major network now. So why don't they expand their lineup to include 10pm programming? (Certainly I would prefer an extra 5 hours of FOX programming over the endless news broadcasts that are currently on here on FOX10.)
^ I don't know about everywhere else, but everywhere I have been & watched television, the ten o'clock (or nine, for those in the CST) hour is filled with the local newscast. When they first started, I remember it bein' promoted as knowin' the news an hour sooner or something... So, that's why FOX doesn't have network programmin' durin' that last hour.
Medium should have never been canceled by NBC, and it only was because they got rid of the 10pm shows. Scrubs is not close to a success, like 5 million people might watch tops. It's only still going so ABC gets rerun money.
^ Medium is, thankfully, going strong and building off it's lead in. The producers have also gotten some pretty good digs into NBC too since the move. I read an interview where one of the producers, Caron I believe, said that CBS has put more ad dollars into Medium over the summer than NBC did for the entire run.
But that's only a local thing. Back in the early 1990s in Arizona, FOX was on channel 15. Back then, channel 15 didn't have a local newscast. Instead, the 9pm (10pm for you coasties) slot was filled with reruns of Star Trek: The Next Generation. Currently in Arizona, CW6 fills that timeslot with reruns of Friends & The King of Queens while My45 has reruns of Family Guy & King of the Hill.
No, you have no other venues for a gritty show. Bravo? USA? Fox did the same thing a few years ago to a pilot called Faceless. They wanted to make it, but felt the need to remove all sex, drug use, and smoking. Sure, you don't have any of that on FX, no not at all. http://ithinkthereforeireview.blogspot.com/2008/11/faceless.html
A lot of affiliates would bolt; the 10 o'clock newscast is too entrenched, and there's a lot of jockeying for ratings glory with the local newscasts. That's the troubling aspect of the Jay Leno experiment; NBC is willing to take low ratings for the show (because it's cheap), but the local channels are bleeding ratings on their local newscasts because of the weak lead-in. The question isn't how long NBC keeps Jay Leno at 10, the question is how long until the affiliates make some sort of public backlash at NBC.
That has already happened. The NBC station in Boston threatened not to show Jay Leno and do a 10 pm new because they thought more people would watch. NBC said if they did that they would strip the network of their NBC name and form their own network to show NBC shows. I guess the Boston channel back-downed.
Leno also doesn't cost a thing compared to a scripted drama. NBC has already said they're going to keep Leno as is for several seasons regardless of how poorly he may do because it's cheap.