Striking out: Good shows can't get an audience
The season without hits has now become the season without scripts.
The fall TV season has failed to produce any breakout hit series. In the most recent Nielsen ratings, the only new show to crack the top 20 was ABC's "Samantha Who?" and it did so by hanging on to only two-thirds of its lead-in audience from the top-ranked "Dancing With the Stars."
It's not that the new shows are bad (with one or two exceptions that are, or were, truly awful). I stand by "Reaper" and "Pushing Daisies" as fine additions to prime time. It's just that no show, with the possible exception of "Samantha Who?," has really captured the mass imagination. Plenty of shows are generating "buzz," but they're not bringing eyeballs to the TV -- at least not when shows first air.
Part of that is simply changing viewing patterns. More and more viewers are watching shows on DVRs or downloaded from the Web, so the networks have added the new "plus-seven" category to the ratings, adding in viewers who have watched an episode within a week of its prime-time debut. The CW, for instance, keeps insisting "Gossip Girls" is a hit by being one of the top shows downloaded by teenage girls. But even at that, viewership is not what it was in recent seasons. "Gossip Girls" is attracting a measly 2.5 million viewers on its debut.
The dearth of hits couldn't come at a worse time for the major broadcast networks. They were already trying to lure viewers back from the best, most popular summer ever on cable channels. They needed something to create a sensation and renew interest, and that hasn't happened.
Now comes the writers' strike. Hollywood producers are wagering that they can break the writers' resolve in seeking more residual payments for DVDs and Web downloads by hardball negotiating tactics, and the major film studios, who are in bed with the networks on this, are sitting relatively pretty with a backlog of scripts. The strike wouldn't affect movie releases until next summer at the earliest.
Yet TV shows are already drying up, starting with late-night talk shows. Soap operas will be next, followed by sitcoms and dramas in the new year. It's a risky negotiating posture for the networks, who may find that the audience never comes back to pre-strike levels, just as it never came back after the 1988 strike, when cable was just coming into its own. And it makes it almost impossible for a new series to generate any sort of momentum on the way to becoming a hit.
So let's quickly go over the TV season at what is approximately the midpoint of the fall, with an eye for surprises -- both pleasant and unpleasant.
Pleasant surprise: "Samantha Who?" Christina Applegate has been surprisingly engaging as a woman with amnesia discovering just how bad she could be in her personal past. It's a proficient sitcom, but just how much of its audience is thanks to the holdover from "Dancing With the Stars," which is pulling in 21 million viewers, 14 million of which are sticking around for "Samantha Who?" Could it stand alone? Not likely.
I will say this for the show, though: I stand behind my initial belief that, if it's a hit at all, it's in part because it strikes a chord with the U.S. collective subconscious, that the plight of a woman who has been bad and is now trying to decide if she's good or evil has parallels with American politics. Just as "Samantha Who?" is trying to come to terms with what she's done in the past, so too are U.S. voters trying to come to terms with what's been done in their names in Iraq. No other new series has that cultural resonance.
Unpleasant surprise: "Reaper" remains the best new show of the fall, and in addition to Ray Wise's Emmy-worthy star turn as the devil it has also found ways to expand its reach, through moral lessons on love and loyalty. But it still doesn't operate on the multiple levels of a "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," and its meager audience of 3 million is barely a hit even by the standards of the CW network. It might be better off teamed with "Supernatural" on Thursdays, moving the CW's most popular show, "Smallville," to another night.
No surprise: CBS' stylish, but vapid musical drama "Viva Laughlin" lasted two episodes before being canceled and replaced by a new installment of "The Amazing Race," which has already returned to the top 20.
Pleasant surprise: The stylish, whimsical "Pushing Daisies" has not been a one-shot wonder and has found ways to keep itself engaging, even if the tease between the pie maker and his childhood sweetheart is a bit cloying. The show has staying power.
Unpleasant surprise: Its time slot at 7 p.m. Wednesday is a cage match to the death. The new "Kid Nation" on CBS and "Back to You" on Fox haven't been able to separate themselves, not against the CW's "America's Next Top Model" and NBC's reality series "Phenomenon."
No surprise: The "Grey's Anatomy" spin-off "Private Practice" has been the top-rated new drama, even though it's a miserable, salacious new series. Familiarity breeds viewers if not quality. The remake "Bionic Woman" is even more muddled, mainly because Katee Sackhoff keeps kicking butt and suggesting it should be renamed "Bionic Women."
Pleasant surprise: CBS' "Criminal Minds," with Joe Mantegna replacing Mandy Patinkin in the best trade of the season, is beating both those shows in the ratings at 8 p.m. Wednesday. There is TV justice.
Unpleasant surprise: "The Big Bang Theory" has held its own in CBS' Monday comedy lineup, meaning we're sure to be getting more bad comedies about nerds. Worst of all, it's been thrashing the CW's far superior geek sitcom, "Aliens in America," by more than 5 million viewers.
No surprise: The CW's attempt to tap into the YouTube phenomenon, "Online Nation," joined "Viva Laughlin" as the first shows canceled. Why watch something with advertising that you can see for free and without interruption on the Internet?