Broadcasters' Fall Season is Still Out of Focus
By Ed Martin TV / Video Download Archives
It’s Tuesday, September 2, and I still can’t answer the question, “So, what does the new television season look like?”
I have seen four of CBS’ new series, which were provided to the press way back at the beginning of June: The half-hour comedies Worst Weekand Gary Unmarried, the hour-long comedy The Ex-List and the procedural crime drama The Mentalist. I have also seen the new Fox thriller Fringe and its comedy Do Not Disturb. I have not seen NBC’s reality effort America’s Toughest Jobs, which debuted on August 25, though to judge by the ratings for its first two outings, few others have made time for it, either.
As far as broadcast’s new arrivals of Fall 2008, that’s it. ABC has only two new series, and the media has yet to see either one. (ABC’s lone new scripted offering, Life on Mars, has been through multiple behind-the-scenes changes, recasts and reshoots since it was picked-up back in May.) The CW hasn’t sent out any of its new series, either, and in fact has turned its refusal to provide the press with the two-hour premiere of the season’s most eagerly anticipated new show, 90210, into a publicity stunt that generated a mountain of coverage, much of it negative. (Will this ploy pay off? We’ll find out tonight!)
Collectively, NBC’s new shows remain a deep, dark mystery. Knight Rider, My Own Worst Enemy, Kath & Kim and Crusoe were announced back at the beginning of April. But the network did not have rough cuts to show during the 2008 Television Critics Association summer tour, which ended in late July, and six weeks later we still have seen nothing.
How much of this can be blamed on the Writers Guild of America strike, which ended in February? I can’t say, but six months have gone by since the industry returned fully to work, and surely that has been enough time to finish some of these shows.
In almost 20 years of covering television for the advertising industry I have never experienced anything like this. Nor have I ever seen cable come on so strong at the start of a broadcast season. FX will begin the final season of The Shield tonight and launch its gritty new biker-drama Sons of Anarchy tomorrow. HBO on Sunday will unveil its flashy, trashy, adults-only vampire series True Blood along with the fifth-season premiere of Entourage. Showtime’s Weeds continues to roll merrily and madly along, and Dexter will be back with us in a few weeks. TNT’s The Closer remains at the top of its game, now paired on Mondays with the brand-new Steven Bochco legal drama Raising the Bar. (The first three episodes of this show don’t add up to much, but I’ll give Bochco time to find his mojo.) AMC’s Mad Men has not yet reached the middle of its second season and remains the best show on television.
Fortunately, instant publishing makes it possible for everyone to very quickly catch up on a piece by piece basis. Many of these shows will receive limited coverage in print publications with significant deadlines, especially those that publish special fall preview editions. But Web sites can get the word out in hours with virtually no lead time. Tomorrow at this time there will be hundreds of reviews of 90210, whipped up by critics who resent being made to watch it tonight and write instant reviews as if it were a Super Bowl commercial or an Awards show.
On the plus side, with the exception of ABC’s heavy hitters, review copies of season premieres of returning series have been pouring in. NBC has provided the first half of the two-hour Heroes season premiere, and it’s sensational. (This is the hour that rocked the San Diego Comic-Con in July.) Several episodes of NBC’s Chuck, Life and Lipstick Jungle have already arrived, as have the two-hour season premieres of Fox’s Prison Break (which was telecast last night) and Bones (a must-see treat scheduled for tomorrow night) and two upcoming episodes of House (both of them quite good). The CW last week sent out the first three episodes of Gossip Girl, each one tastier than the one before. (It may not have been a smart idea to debut the second season of Gossip Girl and the fourth season of Prison Break on Labor Day, even if the holiday had not brought with it the distractions of great weather throughout much of the country, extreme bad weather in Louisiana and the surrounding region, the continuation of the U.S. Open and the start of the Republican National Convention.)
CBS, which has been way out in front of the broadcast pack since last May, has already made available the season premieres of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation (one of the most emotional episodes in the history of this franchise), CSI: Miami (with a surprising resolution to last May’s shocking season-finale cliffhanger), Criminal Minds (a nail-biting thriller), Ghost Whisperer, Cold Case and The Unit.
Ed Martin
Ed Martin is the chief television and content critic for MediaVillage. He has written about television and internet programming for several Myers publications since 2000, including The Myers Report, The Myers Programming Report, MediaBizBloggers a…
