14 Comments Add your own

• 1. Rob  |  March 21st, 2008 at 6:18 pm

  There were more passionate viewers … that is until the networks brought on those fun four-month-long mid-season hiatuses that have killed the audience for more than a handful of shows.

  I mean seriously who was part of the brain trust that thought there wouldn’t be any audience erosion if you shelve a show for months at a time and expect people to just flock back? Was it the same brain trust that thought making a half-hour sitcom called “Cavemen” was a capital idea?

  At least Lost is still on … oh wait … they just went on a month-long mid-season break. Well … at least Battlestar Galactica is still on … oh wait … they don’t come back from their year-long break for another two weeks.

  Well at least I can still watch “My Fair Top Chef who lives with the Girls Next Door and wants to be a Supermodel in Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew.”

• 2. Charles  |  March 22nd, 2008 at 8:17 am

  FOX moves “House” around, has it take months-long breaks, and it’s audience follows it around, no matter what night it airs. And that’s considered to be more of a ‘mainstream’ show.

  Alias, ABC’s old show, was considered a cult hit and had many loyal, outspoken fans. It was moved around a lot. It lost it’s audience each time. I think that people CAN follow a show around, if people WANT to follow a show around. ‘House’ viewers do, ‘Alias’ viewers did not. And, obviously, ‘Jericho’ viewers did not.

  I think in the case of ‘Jericho,’ it’s kind of like young people at election time. They will raise a big stink, saying it’s time for a change and that they need someone they can get behind in office (Clinton, Gore, whoever), but come election day, they are the ones who stay away from the booths. They like the process, not the product.

• 3. John  |  March 22nd, 2008 at 8:36 am

  To be honest, I was stunned that people were able to get that show back on the air to begin with. Normally campaigns like that are not successful, and CBS sort of opened themselves up a bit by allowing this to happen. When they returned a mediocre show (not my opinion, just based on ratings) to the lineup they surely considered that the show might suffer from the same problems it did originally. My own opinion of the show was that it was very poor — and I think of myself as a huge fan of these sorts of post-apocolpytic dramas (The Stand, I am Legend, etc). I do enjoy shows with long running themes but given all the breaks I think it is better to wait for the DVDs to come out and then just watch them like that — otherwise the storyline is just too hard to remember.

• 4. discreet_chaos  |  March 22nd, 2008 at 1:07 pm

  Charles - I was just saying to my wife last night that during the writer’s strike and the period afterward, NBC has used the Law & Order franchise to fill nights and Fox have been using a similar strategy with “House”.

  I’ve seen most of the last couple of year’s worth of “House” and I’ve seen a lot of what came before, but during this period without a lot of scripted programming, I have to say that most of the time when I watch “House”, it’s because I’m flipping around and it’s the best thing that I can find.

  Perhaps all the “following” is rooted in similar thought.
  —

  BTW (Everyone): For a really groovy time, watch an episode of “Jericho” online, then watch the same episode with commentary. You’re not going to find anything too terribly deep in their conversation, but I do think that it’s an interesting use of the web. (Click my name)

• 5. ~bc  |  March 22nd, 2008 at 6:25 pm

  Being a fan of Jericho, I was excited they brought it back, but it took forever to see it come back, and even then I had trouble finding the actual first episode. And I was someone who followed the show before, the online campaign, and was actively awaiting its return.

  Now, they’ve shown like 5 episodes and can it again? People are just starting to figure out it’s on again. The people who run these networks are some of the stupidest people I’ve ever heard of. The sooner the internet puts these guys out of business, the better.

  Speaking of which, why don’t they make it into a web show? Or sell it to a cable network who requires less of an audience to consider something “a hit”? And can’t they raise the ad rates on that show, after having such a demonstration that it’s viewers are so passionate? Aren’t those the people want watching their ads? Shouldn’t they be able to make most money per quality viewer?

  I guess I’m too dumb to understand the business of TV. It’s just one less hour a week I’ll be watching TV.

• 6. ~bc  |  March 22nd, 2008 at 6:33 pm

  sorry, next time I’ll actually proof-read my comment; perhaps while not doing two other things.

• 7. Charles  |  March 22nd, 2008 at 8:43 pm

  discreet_chaos, that could be how House gets a ‘following.’ I never thought of it like that. (I learned my “something new” today!) Maybe that’s also how Deal or No Deal gets high ratings every episode. (Which is beyond me, those people yelling at suitcases. It’s not a versatile format!)

  ~bc, it usually costs a million or more to produce an hour for your average primetime show. If a network doesn’t get the eyeballs to match - or exceed - what they are paying for, they are going to can it. And unfortunately, I think the intense web campaign killed any chance of Jericho being picked up anywhere else. After all that attention and buzz, the show LOST viewers upon return? They didn’t even get any new people to watch in this (currently) deserted TV landscape? That’s a huge flag to network executives, for better or for worse. Why buy a show that has been canceled twice and can’t get an audience, despite the best efforts?

  Plus, you can’t raise ad rates for a show that loses viewers per week and expect to still get many clients. Why would they pay more when they won’t get a good return? It’s not like Jericho targeted rich clients anyways. (It’d have to be an NBC show to do that.) TV is… a weird business. It’s a horrible business, completely confusing and absolutely fascinating at the same time.

  I will say though, five consistent episodes is PLENTY enough to gain traction. By episode 5, Desperate Housewives was declared a bona fide hit. Ditto Lost. ER. And even with some lower-rated shows, like Bones or Pushing Daisies, five episodes is enough to give you a good idea of what ratings you can expect for your last fifteen episodes. Shoot, some shows are canceled after just one or two episodes!

  If TV (and the web!) were an easy business to understand, we wouldn’t have sites like Lost Remote…

• 8. Jason Parker  |  March 22nd, 2008 at 8:49 pm

  Well, I was rooting for Jericho when it came back, but I felt like this would happen.

  I felt like the show had a great premise and had huge potential, but suffered from merely ok acting and mediocre writing. The show was just way too melodramatic, all the characters are cliched and completely one dimensional, so is the town. A really good plot couldn’t make up for those shortcomings and that’s why I gradually quit watching. I suspect that I’m not alone.

  I’ll probably watch the series finale to get some closure, though. I hope its decent.

• 9. Dave  |  March 22nd, 2008 at 11:15 pm

  Nothing is ever truly dead or cancelled these days. Family Guy anyone? Adult Swim and DVD sales revived that thing from the Fox graveyard. Now, it’s bigger than The Simpsons (much to my disappointment because I used to love that show).

  Jericho could be good for a TNT, USA, or Spike…

• 10. Anonymous  |  March 23rd, 2008 at 9:53 pm

  Speaking of dead or canceled, LR could use a weekend editor…

• 11. Hussman  |  March 24th, 2008 at 6:10 am

  It’s a show I’ll miss, to be sure. Loved ‘Jericho’ when it launched, even loved it through its brief ’soap opera’ phase, and I’m loving it now, even though they’ve had to perform surgery with a machete on the sub-plots so they can wrap-up the major story line.

  Dave is right though. This show would work on Spike, but it would require the Rangers of Jericho to ride around the lawless stretches of Kansas rescuing scantily clad soroity houses…. not that there’s anything wrogn with that.

• 12. Don Day  |  March 24th, 2008 at 8:01 am

  Hey Anonymous… it was a holiday weekend. Chill.

• 13. wtf CBS?  |  March 25th, 2008 at 11:57 am

  so how did they promote jericho’s return?

  ads on tv…

  wonder why people didn’t come back?

• 14. Anonymous  |  March 25th, 2008 at 5:06 pm

  At least it wasn’t THIS Anonymous needing to chill.

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