Re: sf/f TV development news - 2012
You're ignoring the success of Revenge and Once Upon a Time at ABC.
Those two;s success still escapes me but then again I don't see what millions of people do in CSI, Desperate Housewives or NCIS.
All those examples are successes because they are squarely "on brand" for ABC and CBS. CBS has become the most successful network because they stick to their knitting: cop shows, sitcoms, reality TV that appeal to an older-skewing audience; by sheer numbers, they get the demo the advertisers want, despite having the oldest audience of all the networks.
CBS can advertise new shows efficiently because the ads are for shows that already appeal to people watching their network. This sets up a virtuous cycle. Contrast this with NBC, which hasn't found a brand identity. They can advertise new shows, but they haven't had a common quality that helps guarantee they will appeal to NBC viewers. So with each show that gets cancelled, more of the audience departs, seeing nothing similar to watch on that network - a vicious cycle, because with no audience, you've got no one to advertise to.
ABC is trying to create its own virtuous cycle, built around female-skewing soaps, broadly defined. They could be fantasy soaps, horror soaps, historical soaps, or murder mystery soaps, but as long as they've got that common thread, they can help set up the virtuous cycle that builds an audience.
The fact that the success of ABC and CBS mystifies you just means you aren't in the target audience for either. I'm not in the target audience for CBS, but I understand what they're doing and why they're smart to do it. As for ABC, I've got one foot and one foot out, and if they would only pick up
666 Park Ave, I'll do the hokey pokey.
Speaking of ABC, here's the update:
Beauty & the Beast is dead.
The fantasy slot is now a battle between
666 Park Ave, which has the upper hand, and
Gotham.
ABC is hedging its bets with its sole male-skewing pilot,
The Last Resort, which may get a limited midseason run. If it's too off-brand to find an audience, they can cancel it without having invested too much.
And it looks like we'll have the chance to check out yet another series about space aliens as your neighbors, creatively named
Neighbors.
For Barrowman fans, looks like
Gilded Lilys is out of contention - not being mentioned this late in the game is a bad sign. It's one thing for PBS to air fancy costume dramas that they don't need to pay to produce, and get 4M viewers, but for ABC to produce a series like that, they'd need twice that number.
NBC is done with pick-ups (no
Midnight Sun or
The Frontier)
Looking at their dramas overall, I'm still not seeing that common thread they need for a strong brand identity (male-skewing, to take advantage of their large sports audience):
Revolution - sci fi adventure
Do No Harm - doctor show, sci-fi-ish
Republic of Pirates (spring?) - historical adventure
Chicago Fire - firefighter drama (probably similar in structure to an episodic cop show)
Infamous - mystery soap, very ABC flavored
1313 Mockingbird Lane (spring?) - fantasy comedy, also more ABC-ish
This is actually very few dramas in the context of NBC's annual need to rebuild their schedule. They've picked up and renewed a lot of comedies, but frankly I find broadcast comedies so interchangeable that I don't see how an identity can be forged from them, unless NBC wants to be The Comedy Channel.
They should have picked up
The Frontier and started building an adventure-based identity, and start excluding fantasy-based soapy series that sound more like ABC's thing (while ABC continues to do the reverse).
