Television Networks Changing Things Up

Bill Carter's article "New on the Networks: Safe Formulas From the Past" presents a really interesting look at how the networks are doing (not good) and how much they're scrambling to change things up this winter/spring in an effort to bring ratings back up.

It's not a surprise to anyone who's been paying attention to television lately that the ratings of all networks are considerably low so far this season. There's talk of the writer's strike having an influence on this, and that may be, though I think that at least some of it can be attributed to bad writing and repetitive storylines. Viewers are willing to stay with programs through periods of bad writing (unless you tick off a whole group of people, like the gay community) because they believe that things will probably start to get better, but many shows have continued to flounder to the point where they're losing more and more viewers as weeks progress. There has been a lot of shuffling of schedules already this year, but now more changes are being made.

According to the article, networks (specifically ABC and NBC, which have lost the largest percentage of viewers) have decided to throw out programs that go in new directions and are therefore considered "risky," and instead use writers who have had great success (like those of the shows "ER" and "NCIS") because this is safer.

On some level, I understand this - it's easier to go with what's safer, and these writers have had a lot of success in the past. The potential problem I see with this, though, is that people are getting tired of the same old thing, and that's what's being created (there's a new spinoff of "NCIS," for example). There can only be so many cop shows and so many hospital dramas - people NEED something new. We'll see how this decision plays out, but I feel like it could backfire.