The Death of Network Television as We Know It
I swear, pretty soon this will be about corporate America, but...
An item in the Life Section of the Wednesday USA Today really caught my eye. It said that ABC has "yanked low-rated family sitcom Complete Savages...From its Friday lineup and will substitute repeats of 8 Simple Rules." Roll that around on your tongue for awhile and then ask yourself, "Is This The Sign I've Been Looking For?"
If that happens to be a sign that the world is about to end, then the answer is, I think, "no." But as for the future of network television, well that's another matter. Who knew, for example, that there was even such a show as Complete Savages? But more to the point, if the only thing ABC has lying in the bank is repeats of 8 Simple Rules, it ought to get out of the entertainment business--yesterday. Frankly, I thought that 8 Simple Rules was cancelled after John Ritter died, not that it was much to watch even with the deceased Mr. Ritter. Whatever talent he once had (and you can make your own judgments by checking out his career-defining work each night on Nick at nit reruns of Three's Company), by the time this painfully unfunny and achingly unrealistic look at parenting hit the airwaves it was not exactly making me forget McLean Stevenson's masterful work in Hello Larry. And now it's the fall back for another failed sitcom? How bad does that make Complete Savages?" and how come the programming director who let this dreck on the air still has a job? Anyone? Buehler?
The truth of the matter is that network television is barely relevant anymore. Who among us doesn't think that Desperate Housewives on HBO would be far superior? But while the networks barely stay above the ever rising quicksand when it comes to the one-hour drama (what's next, CSI: Akron?), they've pretty much stopped trying in the sitcom department. From what I can tell, NBC, for example, has exactly 3 sitcoms on its regular schedule: Scrubs, Committed, and Joey. God help us if Committed gets cancelled and replaced with back-to-back episodes of Joey. And the network heads continue to scratch their head and wonder why they lose market share to televised poker.
An item in the Life Section of the Wednesday USA Today really caught my eye. It said that ABC has "yanked low-rated family sitcom Complete Savages...From its Friday lineup and will substitute repeats of 8 Simple Rules." Roll that around on your tongue for awhile and then ask yourself, "Is This The Sign I've Been Looking For?"
If that happens to be a sign that the world is about to end, then the answer is, I think, "no." But as for the future of network television, well that's another matter. Who knew, for example, that there was even such a show as Complete Savages? But more to the point, if the only thing ABC has lying in the bank is repeats of 8 Simple Rules, it ought to get out of the entertainment business--yesterday. Frankly, I thought that 8 Simple Rules was cancelled after John Ritter died, not that it was much to watch even with the deceased Mr. Ritter. Whatever talent he once had (and you can make your own judgments by checking out his career-defining work each night on Nick at nit reruns of Three's Company), by the time this painfully unfunny and achingly unrealistic look at parenting hit the airwaves it was not exactly making me forget McLean Stevenson's masterful work in Hello Larry. And now it's the fall back for another failed sitcom? How bad does that make Complete Savages?" and how come the programming director who let this dreck on the air still has a job? Anyone? Buehler?
The truth of the matter is that network television is barely relevant anymore. Who among us doesn't think that Desperate Housewives on HBO would be far superior? But while the networks barely stay above the ever rising quicksand when it comes to the one-hour drama (what's next, CSI: Akron?), they've pretty much stopped trying in the sitcom department. From what I can tell, NBC, for example, has exactly 3 sitcoms on its regular schedule: Scrubs, Committed, and Joey. God help us if Committed gets cancelled and replaced with back-to-back episodes of Joey. And the network heads continue to scratch their head and wonder why they lose market share to televised poker.
posted by Gary Benz @ 4:35 PM
2 Comments:
At 12:59 PM,
Anonymous said…
The irony is that as TV technology improves, there is less and less worth watching. Where have all of the screenwriters gone?
At 1:11 PM,
Gary Benz said…
The decent screenwriters have been driven off by "reality" programming. It's the law of adverse selection. Those not good enough to get a job writing anywhere else remain writing television.
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