O-O

bicker

One of the key things I keep in mind in this regard is that unless Program X (which "was just like this") is still broadcasting new episodes, then I view another program doing "it" again as a godsend. I don't think things done repeatedly are necessarily "done to death". They've been performing Shakespeare for centuries and it is still packing folks into the park in the summers.

Aaron62

This thread is great, helping me get the DVR ready.

bicker

One way of looking at the Fall Schedule is timeslot-by-timeslot. I figure that the best ones to start with are the most competitive timeslots, those on the most lucrative night of television for broadcasters: Thursday. Starting at the beginning of the night....This timeslot has the distinction, in our house, of being the only timeslot, this fall, for which we have a significant conflict... and it is a four-way conflict, not just a three-way conflict. In past years, we've had as many as three three-way conflicts. I don't think the smaller number of conflicts this year constitutes a significant trend, because the overall hours of programming that we're interested in has increased, and, of course, the one conflict we have is a four-way conflict.

ABC moves Ugly Betty away to make room for Flash Forward. (Trivia: The book was Flashforward; I'm not sure why the television series is two words.) This has been billed as a show for folks who like LOST. If so, I don't know why they're presenting it at 8:00 (other than the fact that the only later slot that they legitimately could have put it in was Friday 9:00 pm, where they moved Ugly Betty to, but I suspect that the budget for Flash Forward wouldn't have been warranted by the prospects of a Friday showing). The premise of the series (see above) is great. I've just finished the novel, and I don't think the advertising blurbs for the show really do the premise justice (even assuming that the series will limit itself just to capitalizing on the first two thirds of the novel -- for folks who have read the novel, the reason for the division would be obvious).

(The next paragraph includes my own personal speculation about Flash Forward. However, having read the novel, what is written below might be considered by some to be a little more spoiler-ish than they would like. If so, then just skip the next paragraph.)

There is a lot of ground to cover, potentially, though it really depends on how broadly they're going to extend the scope of the show. I mean, theoretically, they could have guest stars each week, and delve into the flash each had, and play with the ramifications of it on their lives afterward. However, there is a set of series regulars, and I'm not sure (given their specific roles in the novel) how they'd weave those folks into what these guest stars deal with. So if they generally stick to the flashes of the regular cast, and the ramifications of those flashes, I'm not sure how far the series can go. Unless they introduce another device, that "resets" the premise, perhaps every season, or (similar to Heroes) twice per season. That could work, and actually there is some foundation for doing something like that in the final third of the novel.

CW moves Smallville away to make room for Vampire Diaries. This really puzzles me. Smallville is the best CW has, right? (It's surely the only program that they presented last year that my wife and I watch. ) Why spend so much money resigning the cast, and then move it away from the most lucrative night of the week to the second least lucrative night of the week? Very strange. And especially since, between the two shows (Smallville and Vampire Diaries), it seems to me that Vampire Diaries would be just as appropriate for Friday night. And Vampire Diaries cannot be anywhere near as expensive as Smallville is. Very very strange.

What they've said is that they want to build a big audience on Friday night, and they figure that Smallville will draw them in. Really? Okay, they know more about this stuff than I do, but I gotta wonder...

NBC is offering comedies, as they have for many years on Thursday night. Replacing My Name is Earl is Community, with Joel McHale (from The Soup) and even featuring Chevy Chase. We love The Soup and I cannot imagine that Community could be anything other than great fun. 30 Rock gets bumped for its cousins SNL and Parks and Recreation. Quite frankly, I could live without them.

Also in the timeslot is one of the strongest programs on any network, Survivor, on CBS, and veteran drama, Bones, on Fox. Survivor regularly won this timeslot last year. Bones held its own though.

Some critics specified both Flash Forward and Vampire Diaries as shows that could indeed be the break-out hits of the fall, despite being up against such strong competition. Time will tell.

As I indicated, we have a four-way conflict. Heck, we used to be big fans of Survivor and if it wasn't for so many other great shows being presented, we'd still be watching, so call this a five-way conflict. This is one kick-tail timeslot. We are going to end up recording Flash Forward and Bones. We'll have Vampire Diaries and Community in our Season Pass List, but they will only record when Flash Forward and/or Bones are reruns. As such, we'll actually get to see a few episodes of Vampire Diaries before it gets cut-off, and then after missing three episodes, we would be able to catch the next three (but won't -- we'll wait until reruns perhaps will allow us to fill in all the gaps). And for Community, we'll be reliant completely on reruns.

How do you see this timeslot working out for you?

HTNut

We're looking at Community and Flash Forward for sure right now. Haven't gotten around to researching what else we want to watch yet but need to soon!

bicker

The upfront negotiations are almost all completed, now. Most networks are facing 10% less revenue than past years, some as much as 15% less.

Some of that will come out of profits, but they cannot take that much out of profits before the credit starts evaporating. So expect to see a lot more cost-cutting in response to advertisers seeing less value from their commercials. For example, it was revealed this week that Heroes will have to trim $300K of cost from every episode.

I think commercial avoidance and commercial ineffectiveness are going to continue wreaking havoc on the industry.

Aaron62

Just a couple of articles on that too from my feeds

CBS TV Revenue Down 10% - 2009-08-06 16:39:53 EDT | Broadcasting & Cable

Entravision Revenue Down 23% - 2009-08-06 09:52:53 EDT | Broadcasting & Cable

That's a lot! They do have a big cast though.

bicker

Wow.... down 23%. I hadn't seen that one.

bicker

Okay, first off, I'm confused: Is Community on at 9:30 pm, or at 8:00 pm? The answer is "yes". The first three episodes are at 9:30 pm, then the show switches to 8:00 pm, for at least two episodes. That doesn't help me, very much. Besides being confusing, the second hour on Thursday is almost as crowded with great programming as the first hour on Thursday is. And one thing I didn't mention earlier: No matter how good a half-hour comedy is, it is still just a half-hour, so unless it is paired with an equally good half-hour, it's own value is halved (in my mind). I dunno... maybe we'll catch Community in reruns, maybe once they move it to Sunday morning 2:00 am. It should be noted that this has been The Office's and 30 Rock's timeslot, so I suspect that they're just showing the first few episodes of Community there to let it gain some audience from The Office.

So the only big change in this timeslot is that Fox has moved Fringe here from Tuesday. I suppose there is some question about what they're going to do once Kitchen Nightmares returns. Practically-speaking, Fox's winter schedule is already full, and that's assuming American Idol won't go beyond two hours a week (and it typically did). We'll see.

I like the pairing of Bones and Fringe. Smile for an hour and then get creeped out for an hour. And with Nimoy returning for some episodes, this season, I think Fringe really can take off. Not in a Grey's Anatomy kind of way, but surely at least in an X-Files kind of way.

Speaking of Grey's Anatomy: Of course, that's the program that typically wins this timeslot. I don't see any reason for that to change this season. Yes, the show is getting old, but they just ditched two original characters and they've recently added some new characters (including Arizona and Owen). With some other shows, you might worry about that being a sign of fading, but AFAIC that could be a godsend for Grey's Anatomy. Capshaw and McKidd are better actors coming into Grey's Anatomy than Pompeo, Dempsey, Chambers, Knight, and Heigl. While I simply must have my Meredith and Derek romance serve as the foundation of the series, a good source for continued interest in the series can come from these new characters AFAIC.

We've never watched any of CBS' CSI series. I'm sure we'd like them well-enough, just like I'm sure we'd like NBC's L&O series (none of which we've watched, either) well-enough. And I don't have any significant objection to these cookie-cutter series. I suppose I figure that one day I'll be a crotchity old man, with my only solace the shows I watch on television -- it'll be nice to have almost 500 CSI episodes (so far), and over 900 L&O episodes (so far), that I will be able to watch as "new to me". (At my current rate of television watching, it would take me about a year and a half to get through all those episodes, assuming I watched nothing else.)

My wife and I tried twice to get into Supernatural. It is absolutely, positively the exact type of show we "should" like. We simply couldn't. I have no idea what the problem is. Maybe we just cannot get the Hardy Boys out of our heads -- I don't know. I think CW knows that they cannot win this timeslot, so they're not even going to worry about how good Supernatural does. They're probably happy enough that they have a show that they can legitimately claim is high quality filling this slot within which they have no real chance of ever winning a big audience.

I don't call this timeslot a conflict, because only three episodes of Community will be broadcast in this timeslot (and I think two of those will be before the other shows premiere). So with two tuners in the DVR, we'll be recording Fringe and Grey's Anatomy.

bicker

It just occurred to me that what I consider a timeslot conflict differs from what other folks call a timeslot conflict. We have a dual-tuner DVR, so recording two programs at once is the rule, not the exception. If a conflict is whenever there is more than one show we want to watch in a single timeslot (which seems like the more reasonable definition, for normal people, y'know), then we actually have nine timeslots with conflicts.