Did you hear about Jimmy Kimmel’s takedown of ABC execs at the ABC “upfronts” — where the networks present their new shows to advertisers — this week. From The New York Times’ Arts Beat:
[I]n a “Jerry Maguire”-like moment of clarity, Mr. Kimmel said, “Everything you’re going to hear this week is” nonsense. “Let’s get real here. Let’s get Dr. Phil-real here. These new fall shows? We’re going to cancel about 90 percent of them. Maybe more.”
If ABC is so confident in its new fall shows, he asked, why is it announcing them at the same time it announces the midseason shows that will replace those fall shows? “This show ‘Shark Tank’ has the word tank right in the title,” he said.
Kimmel got lots of laughs, apparently, but he’s absolutely right. I’m not sure I’ll bother watching anything new on network TV come autumn, because the only show that intrigued me was Kings, and of course it’s been cancelled. The 6 million viewers it garnered for its premiere? That was considered “devastating.” The show I’d consider it most similar to, in many ways, is Battlestar Galactica, which was a huge hit for the Sci Fi Channel and made everyone over there ecstatic when it garnered 3.1 million viewers for its series finale — its biggest viewership ever — and that’s when viewers who watched on DVR up to a week after the first airing are included.
I realize that the economics of the broadcast networks are different from those of the cable networks. But that doesn’t change the fact that the narrative series on cable are more interesting and that they seem to get more support from their networks, which means they won’t get cancelled when the first three episodes don’t perform as well as some marketing executive promised they would.
I’m not crying for American broadcast TV. If viewers are abandoning them, it’s their own fault.
Did you have an experience this season like I did with Kings? What’s your biggest disappointment of the just-wrapped TV season?
(If you have a suggestion for a QOTD, feel free to email me.)
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