TV Ratings (Wednesday 2nd November)

[Professor Zoom]

Oh come on! You know you can't compare cable and broadcast. Put Breaking Bad on broadcast and (even assuming they don't censor the hell out of it, which of course they would), it wouldn't get anything near survival-level ratings. There's a good reason that there are no shows like that on broadcast.

No one knows what kind of ratings it would get, because simply put, no one has put a show like it on network. Maybe NYPD Blue, with the language and the nudity come close. That lasted 10 years.

I think the networks are afraid to put something like that on, because they would get HAMMERED in the press by the Family Council for Blah Blah Blah, and they would neuter it, etc. Afraid of the FCC. Fear rules the executives...

But, what if they didn't? What would happen? Putting a show in a place that a LOT of people might find it? Who knows?

But yeah, Mad Men is boring. And it doesn't even get good ratings by cable standards. It would be a catastrophe on broadcast.

Actually, you're wrong there. it gets good ratings, even by cable standards, AND it also gets people watching who have a lot of disposable income, in other words, the best kind of audience.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

No one knows what kind of ratings it would get, because simply put, no one has put a show like it on network.

I can guess. The complexity and moral greyness of it would appeal to the same audience that already subscribes to cable, and it would get about the same audience as it already gets on AMC, which is survival level because that audience is worth more per person due to revenue from cable subscriptions. The broadcast audience isn't worth as much per person. And that explains why cable is better than broadcast (if what you're looking for is niche programming rather than LCD stuff).

Breaking Bad demands that the audience watch every week or become hopelessly lost. It presents a morally grey cosmos without a neat, satisfying resolution every week. Those elements do not appeal to everyone. There's no reason to believe a show like that could survive on broadcast, not when cable is full of shows that are like that and provide healthy competition.

The broadcast networks seem to have accepted this as the fact of life, because they're very leery of trying out show that have any cable-ish elements. Pan Am is more reminiscent of cable than the vast majority of broadcast pablum, and look at the ratings. That's not an incentive to keep experimenting with cable-ish elements on broadcast.

 

[Professor Zoom]

Breaking Bad demands that the audience watch every week or become hopelessly lost. It presents a morally grey cosmos without a neat, satisfying resolution every week. Those elements do not appeal to everyone. There's no reason to believe a show like that could survive on broadcast, not when cable is full of shows that are like that and provide healthy competition.

Huh. Sounds like Lost. Or a less funny version of Desperate Housewives. Or even the new Once Upon A Time. All of those shows demand you watch every week or your lost, especially Lost. And Lost is also ambiguous, and certainly Desperate Housewives is morally grey... just in a comic way.

I think the elements which you listed ARE NOT network killers. What IS a network killer: the actual story itself, a chemistry teacher dying of cancer, making METH. That's what would have a network scared... because the first question would be, how do we LIKE the guy...?

Edited to add: AND, I would bet the business model is also a part of why they wouldn't put a Breaking Bad on network. Personally, I think one of the reasons it's the best show on TV, it does a limited number of episodes per season. 13 episodes wouldn't work on network. Though, Lost started doing 16, in order to run break free, but that was well after it was established.