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Mid-Season

Checking in at Mid-Season: Fox and NBC

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Source: Wikipedia
Source: Wikipedia

After a quick glance over at Netflix for some new House of Cards, let’s resume our mid-season look at the state of TV. Today we’ll be examining Fox and NBC, and we’ll wrap this series up with some thoughts on other places around the dial later in the week.

Fox: In the last couple of years (and in an even more pronounced fashion this year), Fox has seemed to turn into NBC of the mid-2000’s: A network with a ton of critically acclaimed shows that no one really happens to be watching. This is a shame for a number of reasons, the most notable of which is that it seems to be putting out consistently better shows than the other major networks.

What’s Working: It’s been a strong season in terms of debuts for Fox. Sleepy Hollow became a sleeper hit right off the bat and Brooklyn Nine-Nine took home a pair of Golden Globes. Even their B-tier debuts, like Enlisted (a show that really needs to find it’s way to Tuesdays as soon as possible because it truly deserves a larger audience). Fox has also managed to find a Tuesday comedy lineup that is Fox’s strongest ever (Dads excluded).

Finally, Fox still finds strength in the perpetual motion machine that is it’s Sunday night block. The Simpsons, Family Guy, and Bob’s Burgers all saw renewals in the fall and American Dad will find a second life on TBS, as no conglomerate loves their Seth McFarlane reruns quite like the folks at Turner.

What’s Not Working: First and foremost, Dads was a total train wreck despite the network putting a ton of effort into advertising it, a pretty star studded main cast, and giving it the lead-off slot in said Tuesday comedy lineup. However, Fox’s real problem is actually the opposite of CBS: It’s older shows seem to be tailing off. This is particularly notable on Wednesday and Thursday, as The X-Factor met it’s maker earlier this month, while American Idol now lacks the cache it used to have as a TV powerhouse.

Another problem Fox did not see coming was the nosedive in the ratings The Following took. This is an issue as one could probably guess that The Following is one of Fox’s most expensive shows, yet it’s ratings have been on a downward trajectory from minute one this season as the show’s writing has only gotten worse over time.

Overall Prognosis: Fox is actually in a pretty decent place for the future and could very easily carry the next decade or so under Kevin Reilly’s leadership when the rest of TV reality comes crashing in on CBS and many of it’s flagship shows age out. Additionally, it’s the network least affected by CBS’s Thursday Night Football deal, as Fox’s schedule has been regularly disrupted for over a decade now courtesy of the MLB playoffs, so all it takes is some mild shuffling and a reserving the now open Thursdays (due to the end of the X-Factor) as it’s designated big November premiere night.

 

NBC: This year seems to be the year that NBC slowly corrected their ship. They’ve figured out how to leverage their trademark properties best, and the one-two punch of Sunday Night Football and The Voice are not only keeping them afloat, but helping to ensure the network doesn’t always stay a punchline.

What’s Working: I mentioned this before in the open but because they are so central to the network’s success, let me reiterate them again: football and The Voice. Almost everything the network does right comes from those two spokes, and unsurprisingly, the further away you get from them the weaker the schedule looks. NBC also managed to find a hit drama in the form of The Blacklist.

NBC has also quietly steadied the ship on Wednesday nights with Dick Wolf coming to the rescue and a strong block of cop procedurals from 9 to 11. Revolution’s survival is still a toss up, but considering the amount of effort the network is going to have to put into fixing Thursday it would require an insanely strong new drama to unseat it.

Finally, NBC has figured out another way to expand an event lineup that currently tends to be very sports-centric: The return of the musical special. The Sound of Music Live! pulled in an astronomical amount of viewers on it’s December 5th showing, and it’s not implausible to see NBC go to this trick two to three times a year in order to boost ratings.

What’s not working: NBC has done well with The Voice and it’s dramas, but it’s comedy block has fallen into near complete disrepair. After a year in which not a single comedy got picked up for a second season, NBC is perilously close to duplicating that feat for the second year in a row. A large part of this seems to be due to Bob Greenblatt copying the one network even more mismanaged than his: ABC. Family comedies are not working on the peacock, and the complete and utter failures of The Michael J. Fox Show, Sean Saves the World, and Welcome to the Family are certain proof.

NBC is still very low rated all around, and Sundays still seem to be a lost cause when football is not in season, often relying on a mix of Dateline and spackle to fill the lineup. Thursdays are a mess too, (mostly because of the comedy debacle) but I could see a resuscitation if they find two more passable comedies and anchor around Hannibal.

Overall Prognosis: NBC is in a very weird place. For half their lineup, they seem to be doing all the right things, and for the other half the peacock looks like a barren wasteland that seems to only succeed in padding the episode count of Community and Parks and Recreation (I like both of those shows but it says a lot about NBC’s ability to develop comedies in a post 30 Rock, post Office world that the two shows the network keeps trying to kill keep living on).

Next Time: We hop around the dial, looking at the CW and anything on cable worth my attention.

Checking In On The Networks At Mid-season: ABC And CBS

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With the Olympic break gutting away many premieres for the next two weeks (the one notable return I’ll discuss later this week), let’s take the opportunity to see how exactly the major networks (and cable) have been faring midway through the season.

ABC: It has to have been a fairly disappointing year overall for ABC after the wholesale changes they made over the summer (especially on Tuesday nights) only to see no real advancement in positioning relative to the other networks in addition to an alarmingly high number of new shows tanking with incredible speed.

What’s working: On the positive side, ABC’s Tuesday revamp seems to have taken some hold, with Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D being the strongest non-NCIS show on Tuesdays. Similarly it’s lead outs The Goldbergs and (especially) Trophy Wife have attracted some critical acclaim, even if Trophy Wife is struggling in the ratings. Fridays, with their mix of Shark Tank and family comedies also seem to be a strong point for the network, seeing how reruns of Shark Tank have become the network’s go to emergency fill over the past year.

What’s not working: Outside of Tuesdays from 8-10, ABC’s newer shows have been an unmitigated disaster. Once Upon A Time In Wonderland was not only painfully cheesy but stuck in the Thursday at 8 death slot from the get go. The Assets tanked so horribly it got eaten by the Shark Tank in two episodes. Super Fun Night ended up being not only a bad fit despite having a bankable star and a Modern Family lead in, but also evident from minute one why CBS didn’t even bother to pick up the pilot.

The biggest hole for ABC, however has been that third hour on Tuesdays. If Thursday at 8 is known as the alphabet’s death slot, then Tuesdays at 10 have to be it’s stillborn slot, as not one but two new premieres (Lucky 7 and Killer Women) have died incredibly swift, painful deaths. A good chunk of this is likely related to the fact that the network continually insists on putting understated shows immediately behind two of the most cartoonish hours on television (I don’t see how anyone could buy Trophy Wife as a viable lead in for a grim slice-of-life drama like Lucky 7).

Overall Prognosis: It feels like ABC is swiftly becoming the new NBC, only without all the amusing backstage drama that makes mocking the peacock so much fun, with it’s often bizarre scheduling decisions and inability to use it’s anchors to promote it’s other shows. There are a lot of new shows being rolled out after the Olympics, so there is still one last chance to salvage what would otherwise be a rough year.

 

CBS: The realities of network TV have slowly been applying to CBS after a few years of ultimately ending up in their own orbit. For the first time in a decade, CBS actually seems fairly vulnerable, as it’s numbers are much more in line with the other major networks.

What’s working: Despite all the doom and gloom I mentioned in the opening paragraph, it’s important to remember that CBS still has two of the most venerable juggernauts on broadcast airwaves in NCIS and The Big Bang Theory. The network still has a fairly deep bench all around whether it’s on the comedy side (Mike and Molly), or the drama end (in a most dire scenario, the network could easily spackle with most of it’s Friday or Sunday dramas). The best move CBS has made actually hits next year: it’s acquisition of half of the Thursday Night Football package. This move gives the network eight weeks of fairly steady ratings and allows it to debut it’s comedy lineup right in the heart of November sweeps, where high ratings matter most.

What’s not working: Mondays at 10 have become have a gaping hole in the schedule for CBS. Much like ABC’s Tuesday anchors, it’s pretty clear that the network can’t find a good fit for the slot and is using it as a dumping ground for mediocre-to-poor shows like Hostages and Intelligence. This is a huge problem as Mondays are quickly becoming a bright spot for other networks (particularly NBC and Fox), so with the removal of Monday anchor How I Met Your Mother in march, CBS’s viewership could erode most drastically on that night.

Speaking of erosion, it’s a real problem CBS has to start worrying about in the future. I’ve mentioned numerous times how CBS’s line up is starting to really show it’s age (think about its’ core shows and most of them date back to the Bush administration with half of them being in his first term and Survivor actually launching while Clinton was still president). Unfortunately, the network cannot seem to find new anchors to replace it’s existing ones: The Crazy Ones is not pulling it’s weight and neither is Mom. With the likely removal of Two and A Half Men to go with the end of How I Met Your Mother, CBS will only have Big Bang to prop up it’s newer comedies and will have to rely on shows like 2 Broke Girls , Mike and Molly, and the still fairly untested The Millers to carry the ratings load.

Overall Prognosis: CBS still rules the roost, but it also still needs to find some shows to carry it through the future, as even its’ juggernauts slowly become fossils (Big Bang Theory is in season seven, NCIS in season twelve, CSI in season fourteen.). That being said, the network is still making the right moves to continue to buy more time, hoping the network can strike gold (particularly on the comedy side of the ledger) at least once more.

Next Time: Part two of this series comes next week. Later this week, I take some time to look forward to season two of Netflix’s House of Cards. 

With the New Year Comes New TV | Best New TV Shows

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New Year’s Day always has a slightly bittersweet feel to it due to it being the end of a month of holiday parties and light work loads. Pop culture also tends to lag into the new year, the result of shorter season orders, the movie dumping ground, and the (often accurate) assumption that people are not gonna spend money on music after the spend-a-thon that is the holiday shopping season.

This year, however, we hit the ground running on mid-season due to Sochi’s Winter Olympics displacing the brunt of the traditional February sweeps period, pushing other events like the Oscars and Grammys out of February (The Olympics eat up three of the four weekends in February, while TV’s largest event – some football game being played in New Jersey – eats up the fourth). This is particularly notable as CBS and NBC both are pushing out new slates of episodes from their comedy lineup tonight, while ABC trots out The Taste for a new season while also debuting it’s new show The Assets.

This time around, the mid-season schedule trots out the return of a number of old favorites, be it a competition show like American Idol (a show that schedule prognosticators for next year will be eyeing like a hawk as it’s success has major ramifications on Fox’s fall slate for 2014-15), comedies such as Archer, Community (a personal favorite, and one that has danced around the cancellation ax twice already), and dramas such as The Following (a permanent half-season fixture due to an episode cap in Kevin Bacon’s contract) and House of Cards (dropping on Netflix Valentine’s day).

The displacement is also going to create two waves of new shows, one wave in January, and a large spring wave that looks to pick up around the tail end of February. Amongst the shows receiving the most hype in the January window include the legal dramedy Rake (with Greg Kinnear), HBO’s True Detective (with big names such as Woody Harrelson and Matthew McConaughey), and Dick Wolf’s Chicago PD. Notable later debuts include Crisis and Mixology (which gets the Modern Family lead-in despite not really fitting with ABC’s family comedy Wednesdays).

In terms of event TV (a word that will be thrown around quite a bit this year), this mid-season is packed to the gills, between the Golden Globes (1/12), the Grammys (1/26), the Oscars (3/6), the Winter Olympics (2/7 until 2/23), and some football game that everyone watches for the ads (2/2). As with last year, I will be live blogging the three aforementioned awards shows right here on Manhattan Digest.

In addition to all of the above, we also will see NBC attempt yet another changing of the guard at late-night, this time deposing Jay Leno from The Tonight Show for current Late Night host Jimmy Fallon. Seth Meyers will then move into the 12:30 am spot. Hopefully for all parties involved this goes considerably more gracefully than what we got when the peacock tried the same maneuver five years ago (a maneuver that NBC is still feeling the sting of today).

Next Time: Regular reviews pick back up Tuesday, with ABC’s new drama Killer Women.