I'm trying to avoid the serial dramas because the odds of them being cancelled are too high (things are already looking bad for Kidnapped, Missing, and Friday Night Lights) and there is little point in becoming invested if the show never makes it to the ultimate payoff. If they are successful, I'll watch them later on DVD.

Of course, this is self defeating since if everybody takes my attitude the show will have bad ratings, getting it cancelled.


As far as the season so far, I'm already growing tired of Heroes' conceipt after just two episodes but I'll hang in for another couple before deciding what I think. The writing on Studio 60 is good but the situation is boring so I don't know if I'll be sticking with it for long (and the ratings aren't promising, though NBC will likely protect their investment in Sorkin and give it extra trime).

If The Nine doesn't make it I'll be shocked. It's similar in some ways to Lost, which is a pretty damn good lead-in. Even my mom likes it, and she's about as middle America as it gets.

It may be good, but the problem is with the genre (serial dramas). They have a very poor historical record for success no matter how much people like them.

Because of their format, if you miss a couple episodes you feel lost and once a viewer feels lost they just stop watching. And year to year you tend to only lose viewers since hardly anybody wants to jump in mid-story.

24 solves this by starting a new story every season. Lost is a surprising exception to the rule. But I link the more illustrative example will not be Lost but Murder One (remember that?) where everybody who watched the show loved it. It was the critical golden child. It started out to high ratings and quality wise people felt it improved as the season went on. But week to week it slowly shed viewers.

Who knows, I hope the new age of Tivo/DVR and DVD distribution will help these type of shows be successful that never could have before but the TV executives can't yet rely on that and keep or lose their jobs based on the overnight ratings, not the combination of live viewers, difficult to measure time-shifters, and year later DVD watchers.

If it gets too expensive, American dramas might shift to the English model, which is similar to what HBO does: Shorter seasons, fewer episodes.

They've been trying that too, without too much success. Particularly with an explosion of summer series or split seasons. Pretty much all of the networks have taken a stab at year-round programming and have been pulling back from it.

But I would love to see them package shows like NBC tried in the late '60s with the Mystery Movie wheel. Rather than the same show in the timeslot every week, each week cycled through Columbo, MacMillan and Wife, and McCloud. It would probably be easier to keep an audience for a serial drama if it were on every two weeks instead of every week.

I believe the episodes are available online for a bit after they air, which, with TiVo, might make it more sustainable. I think that those sorts of changes - plus the swift movement of seasons to DVD - make success more likely than in the past.

I think it would help, although I realize with ratings etc it won't, if a series like Lost had a finite number of episodes. So you knew for instance that there would be 25 and then that's it. It would be easier to commit. With it being so open ended I think there's more reason for people to drop off after the first season and thereafter.

Not to mention the ability to watch the video for free (with commercials) on-line or download to one's iPod (for pay).

But the first requirement is that the programming executives be given credit for that stuff and so far that isn't the case. They are still fired and hired based on the broadcast ratings and therefore if a show isnn't generating those, it is probably going to get cancelled.

But it can't hurt. Still though, don't get your hopes up that Kidnapped or Missing will make it to November.

I think part of what has kept Lost strong is that Abrams has consistently stuck to his claim, even after the show's runaway popularity, that he's got a specific plan (I don't remember if it was 5 or 7 seasons) and that he will end the story by then. Unlike, say X-Files where they orignally had a 3 season complete story arc...that they threw out the window the instant they sniffed success.