Desperate Housewives had some of its lowest ratings ever this past Sunday night. Now it could just be it was easter and people were doing easter dinner and didn't tune in, it could be the Masters was on CBS and people just stayed put or it could be something else. Like a lot of shows Desperate Housewives tends to run off three or four episodes and then disappear, this is hard on the viewer as they don't know when the new shows run. If I was a network executive, I try to run my shows on arcs with as little interuption as possible. Sure if the Super Bowl hits your night you don't run the show but outside of those big events, the networks need to run the shows on a continuous arc. I find myself more and more just waiting on the dvd's of my favorite shows and then watching when I want, no commericals, a sense of continuity with the show. I find the shows much more enjoyable. Networks need to wise up to changing viewing, there is a lot more to watch and do than 30 years ago and if the networks keep running shows like they did a long time ago they will continue to lose viewers. Is Desperate Housewives as good as Season 1? No. This brings me to problem #2 with shows and that is they only seem to plan for a season rather than have a show mapped out for a number of seasons with a predetermined finish point and end game. I saw this with the OC. They used up all their good ideas the first season and they did not seem to have any kind of a gameplan past the first episode of season 2. Is it sad when your favorite shows end? Absolutly, but like Seinfeld, I would rather have them end prematurely than a year or two too late. 24 is one of the smartest shows on tv right now, all the episodes run in a continuous arc and there seems to be a legitimate gameplan for each season. My favorite shows right now:
1. Entourage - though it is a show that is best watched as a season rather than each week, it drives me nuts that after commercials the episodes are about 20 minutes.
2. 24 - Maybe the best show on tv, they got it down.
3. The Unit - a great show.
4. Friday Night Lights - another show that is always good but NBC has made a mistake moving it around to different nights and you never know when its a new show.
5. Two-A-Days - nice to see a reality show that is more or less actually reality.
The shows I miss the most, the OC when it was new and actually good, Seinfeld, it was always funny, The West Wing, it had it all and it usually made you think.
TV, I suspect will change dramatically in the coming years to suit viewers changing ways.
You can read more about the Housewives and viewership here:
No comments:
Post a Comment