These days, defining a “television” show is tricky. Remember when you could tell if something was made for TV or not by the level of cursing allowed?
Well, the only way that still works is on the broadcast TV stations (the ones you don’t need cable for) like ABC or ION. How about the length of a show – you know it’s either a half hour, an hour, or a 2 hour special. Now we have Downton Abbey which doesn’t follow any tradition show length. At least it’s on an actual station. If you’ve been frustrated at not being able to find such things as Orange is the New Black in your TV Guide, that’s because it’s not on TV, it’s a series produced by Netflix. The only way it’s going to be on your television set is if you have a “smart” TV (which is connected to the internet).
or some kind of streaming device that lets you connect your computer to your television set.
As for those simple days of coming home, eating dinner and turning on the tube – those too, are over. Now you have to decide what to watch live, what to DVR, what not to bother DVRing because it’s “On Demand” and what you can pick up on one of broadcast networks players….or Hulu. Or maybe not even bother with any of it and click on your Netflix.
The biggest sign that television as we knew it is over are the Nielsen ratings. In its 63 year history, Nielsen has not felt the need to change the way in which they determine TV show ratings. Come this fall… they are changing. According to The Hollywood Reporter not only will Nielsen be looking at what shows viewers watch online, on XBox, and on our smart phones, but they will be incorporating the level of tweeting done about a show when it’s airing into the rating systems. This isn’t an experiment. Anyone in marketing can tell you about all the analytical tools there are tell you not only what the volume of tweets are about a particular brand or show – but whether the general outlook for the product is favorable or not. The film industry is already doing this to predict weekend box-office numbers – and it’s usually accurate – something many have thought the Nielsen have not been for some time.
If none of the above is shocking news for you, then perhaps you can understand why I found the Huffington Post Blog article “Hey, Save Our Show Campaigners: You’re Doing It All Wrong” to be so surprising. The basic ideas that author Maggie Fulong presents are: fans should just let go of shows and actors when the network decides it’s time for them to go. They shouldn’t express their anger or dissatisfaction to online TV reviewers, nor should they bombard networks with publicity stunts because these “campaigns” are a waste of time and energy that could be put into new shows.
Ten years ago, I would have agreed that fans were better off letting shows go because there are times when it just isn’t hitting with enough of a majority to make it viable on a network. However last season the fan campaign for Fringe allowed the show to get the time needed to wrap it up instead of abruptly ending. Then there are shows like Cougar Town whose numbers didn’t work for a broadcast network, but are fine for cable tv. Most recently, there’s been been the case of Arrested Development. Fulong describes the season’s reviews as “mixed” and an example of why it’s better not to bring shows back. Yet, according to Metacritic, a site that complies television reviews to rate shows, the season received generally favorable reviews.
Was there some drop in those Arrested Development numbers in comparison to previous seasons? Absolutely, but not more than one might expect with a show in its fourth season. Especially given the time gap between seasons three and four. TV critic for Time Magazine, James Poniewozik, puts it this way:
How good this season is overall depends on what you’re comparing it to. Overall, it stands up well next to any sitcom on air now; a few episodes were meandering slogs, but a few others are among the funniest, best-executed sitcom episodes I’ve seen this season.
This season, is the crux of the matter. Most of the general criticism was about the show not being shot the same way as it had been in the past. Being that there was seven years between season’s three and four, how realistic was that expectation? It’s a different time and social atmosphere, creatively, it really shouldn’t be “the same.” Then there are those reviewers who point out that the show received more acclaim and popularity when off the air – when people had time to watch and rewatch it at leisure and catch on to the comedic brilliance they missed when it was on-air. Two years from now this season may be thought of as one of its best…or not.
Reviewers and viewers alike, we all have our prejudices. I’ll out myself now as someone who doesn’t get the point of pretending to constantly follow people around and calling it entertainment. Yet, lots of people love it these shows and they have an audience. That’s the bottom line: is there enough of an audience for this product? Poniewozik noted that judging from the reviews and fan comments, Arrested Development did pretty well, and a majority of people who viewed it were glad it was done.
Because what we now call “television” is different from it was twenty, ten, or even five years ago, the issue about what’s a viable show and how much of audience is needed – is changing. When Showtime’s Homeland finale hit 2.7 million viewers it’s seen as a success. Unless it’s the CW (which, unlike the other networks it’s not broadcasted everywhere) a broadcast show with those numbers is going to get pulled fast. However, what tanks in one medium may thrive in another. Since viewers don’t care about the medium, just the show itself, it makes sense for them to let producers know there’s enough of an audience to try a different placement. In 2013 we live in multimedia interactive world. Judging by the mass of reruns everywhere the need for content isn’t going away, and with webisodes becoming more prominent the content demands are going to get even larger. (Have you seen Room 8? It’s hilarious!)
But as previously mentioned, fan campaigns aren’t all about keeping a show on the air. Sometimes the outcry from fans is when an actor leaves a show. It seems silly for fans to complain because an actor is bored with playing a character or the two sides can’t come to an agreement on salary. It’s just business. The issue is receiving attention due to the recent departure of Cote de Pablo from the successful CBS show NCIS, but it’s one that has been around for a while, and has been around long before this particular instance.
If I thought fans were losing it just because an actor or actress is leaving a show I’d agree that “resistance is futile.” However, every actor that leaves a show doesn’t create a major fan uproar. When it does occur it’s usually when the actor is part of a “ship” – a relationship storyline. Furthermore, the actor is more often than not a woman.
From WOMEN DIRECTORS: Navigating the Hollywood Boys ClubHollywood is a business, and like the business scene in the US, women’s work and contributions are as notoriously undervalued There’s no conspiracy in these things – it’s built into the system. However, it’s the 21st century, and that system needs to change. Warren Buffet is quoted as saying “Women are an undervalued resource who are key to America’s prosperity” and wrote an essay on the topic for Fortune magazine. Warren Buffet! The man is like the Albert Einstein of business and investment! There’s also been a huge Dow Jones report that correlates a company’s success with having a mix of men and women in the managerial and executive positions. Don’t think it means that women are bringing the same ways of doing things as their male counterparts either! Studies, like this one from Caliper – an international corporate placement firm – have found that women at this level bring a distinctly different way of doing things. It’s the mix of managerial styles and ways of thinking that have shown to make the strongest companies.
What does this information have to do with Hollywood and the entertainment industry? Everything. The product of Hollywood is stories. A mix of ideas and ways of thinking from men and women is going to create a better overall story. Whether it’s a movie, television show, or high-end cable series, it’s always about what stories are going to grab people’s attention so that they want to watch.
As in most areas of business, the woman’s role on a television show is treated as being less important. It’s the young male demographic that networks value the most, and it’s that point of view that has driven the making of TV shows. Television has its own version of “chic flicks” called soap-operas – regardless of what time they actually air. If there’s a regular show with a romance going on the thought has been to keep the story about the chase, because that’s the exciting part. The idea that a non “soap-opera” show should value and hold in integrity stories of love and romance within a show’s larger structure is not a popular one.
On top of the general devaluing of women’s stories, in any series where there are clearly two costars, if one of them is a woman, she nearly always is making less than her male counterpart. Again, it’s not a conspiracy, which is something people hide. This is just…tradition. While the downsides of paying women less has been endlessly documented in articles and books, the folly of dismissing storylines seen as ‘soft’ or more appealing to women really hasn’t. This doesn’t mean it hasn’t been a problem. It just is rarely talked about or put into context. Let’s take a look at two examples of how this practice is more hurtful than helpful for a TV show.
The Truth is Out There….
The first example is The X-files, which ran on Fox from 1993 to 2002. From memory – and from Wikipedia – its creator and show runner, Chris Carter, was notorious for insisting that the Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) and Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) relationship was “strictly platonic .” Unfortunately for Carter, that’s just not the show he was writing. While he felt The X-files was about alien abductions and government conspiracy, viewers and reviewers alike were captivated by the relationship and dynamics between the two leads. To everyone but Chris Carter, Mulder and Scully were the heart of The X-files, the glue that held it all together. As summed up by The Archive of American Television, the show’s premise is: “A skeptic and a believer investigate unexplained phenomena and enjoy a heavy dose of sexual tension.” Note they don’t even mention aliens or government conspiracies.
No one would dispute that the first five years of the X-files were excellent television. After that point the view becomes arguable, both then and now. Season six marks the beginnings of the show’s rating decline. While no one involved will ever say this, a big problem with the show at this time stemmed from one major problem: the show runner’s vision of what the show was supposed to be – decidedly non-romantic.
That was fine in the beginning, but as the seasons went by, “the believer” and “the skeptic” grew both ideologically and emotionally closer, and sexual tension also increased. At the end season four, the X-files movie, Fight the Future was released. It was a bridge between seasons four and five, and in it Fox Mulder and Scully almost kiss. After four seasons and that film there was a general expectation that the relationship would move forward in some way.
Yet Carter still insisted that the relationship was platonic, and in season five their relationship was completely stalled. Had the series ended in season five, Carter’s show would have been frustrating, but fine in terms of not allowing the relationship to continue in it’s development. Originally, he had planned on the show only being five seasons. When Fox asked him to keep it going, there was already some disillusionment and disinterest on the part of the fanbase. Carter tried to find ways to make the formula different with more humorous episodes and overtly playing with the idea of the characters’ romantic interest, but without letting the interest get romantic. The problem with the latter is that he’d been covertly doing this for five seasons – there was nothing new in it at all. By the end of season six, the ratings were clearing slipping, and online chatter was revealing fans increasing disappointment.
Season seven was shot to be a possible series finale in part because it wasn’t clear if Duchovny or Carter would return for an eighth season. Gillian Anderson wrote and directed a stand-alone episode called “All Things” which implied that at some point in time Mulder and Scully had slept together. At the time it was ambiguous enough for Carter to say that the duo were still strictly platonic. Then season seven finale, “Requiem” has a scene with Mulder and Scully spooning in bed, which the actors chose to play as though they were romantically involved – despite Carter’s insistence that it was platonic. At the end of “Requiem” Mulder is kidnapped by aliens and Scully is pregnant. Had that been the end of the series, fans could have inferred that the child was Mulder’s.
That didn’t happen. During season seven Duchovny had a lawsuit against Fox about syndication and residuals, and in terms of the show itself was demanding more money. He was also tired of the X-files, stating in various interviews that he was bored with show, and wanted more time to do other projects. It wasn’t just the call of movies that had him wanting out. He’s quoted as saying “Creatively, though, I’d reached the end of my rope as an actor.” (Chicago Tribune). In the last moments Fox settled the lawsuit with Duchovny for a reported 20 million dollars, gave him a large raise, and agreed to sign him for only 12 episodes in season 8.
Unfortunately Fox & Carter still didn’t get where the show’s magic was. They thought the series could “relaunch” itself with different characters – because after all, the show was plot-driven, not character-driven. With Duchovny signed on for only twelve episodes, season eight brought the show “Agent Dogget” and an attempt to make him the show’s center, and ignoring the characters and story arc of Mulder and Scully(Examinations, by Tom Kessenich) The show’s ratings continued falling. The episodes with the highest ratings were the ones that featured Mulder and Scully. At the end of season eight Mulder and Scully finally kiss – a choice that was not in the original script, but created by Duchovny and the episode’s director, the late Kim Manners (Wiki_”Existence”_(The_X-Files). Manners also had directed Requiem.
Duchovny was done with The X-files – despite the raise. This interview clip from June 2001 shows just how annoyed Duchovny was with how the show had been dealing with the whole Mulder/Scully relationship.
It’s obvious that for him, the situation of how Mulder and Scully’s relationship was being handled was beyond ridiculous. Viewers thought so too. In season nine, with no Mulder for Scully, ratings went from falling to plummeting. The show managed to bring Duchovny back for the series finale in 2002 – at a reported cost of 2 million dollars. Perhaps if the story hadn’t been stalled, Duchovny would have found more areas to explore as an actor, and not been chased away by, “too many aliens.”
A more recent example is House. For those who don’t know about the show, (anything’s possible) House was a medical drama that ran from 2004 to 2012. The show revolved around the title character. Gregory House MD, was a brilliant, unconventional, sardonic, antisocial, and addicted to vicodin. doctor at a fictional New Jersey teaching hospital. He was the head of diagnostic team of residents and the tea specialized in figuring out was wrong with patients whose illnesses seemed a mystery. Revolving around the character were the three interns, his best friend Dr. James Wilson, and his boss/nemesis, Dr. Lisa Cuddy, The actress Lisa Edelstein portrayed Dr. Lisa Cuddy for seven of it’s eight seasons.
Unlike the X-Files, this show was always about House – the way Scandal is about Olivia Pope,( it’s about her, it stars her, everything leads back to her – and it’s an ensemble cast.) One of the dynamics within the show House was that between Cuddy and House, which quickly got the nickname (shipper name) “Huddy.” It was sharp, adversarially, with a underlying sexual tension. This is from an interview done in 2006 by the show’s co-executive producer, Garrett Lerner .
“Lisa Edelstein can do absolutely anything, so, she’s fantastic. You know, she can stand up to House, give it right back to him. She can be tender, she can be hurt, she can be strong…I think she’s probably [the favorite character for] a lot of people I’ve talked to. It’s a powerful role.”[29]
If you’re interested in the thru-line of the House and Cuddy relationship, you can read about it at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisa_Cuddy.
House is another show that chose to drag a will they/won’t they storyline past it’s expiration date. In its 5th season the show tries to focus the audience’s attention on two new characters’ romantic pairing while keeping House and Cuddy at status quo. The individual show rankings in season five go from 2 to 18. The highest ranked shows are the ones that involve Cuddy, House and her dealing with adopting a baby. At the end of that season they choose to have House hallucinate a relationship with Cuddy where they slept together. A segment of the fanbase was furious about this – but that was at the end of season. Season five’s overall rank dropped from its season four placement of 7th to 16th. In season six, the first three episodes hit number one, but then start to drop quickly. In this season, House isn’t acting like House, Cuddy is engaged to the private investigator House had spying on her in season five (Yes, it’s as strange as it sounds.) and the show ratings drop from 16 to 22. In the last episode they finally decide that they should try putting House and Cuddy together.
The operative word is try. Aside from maybe the season opener it becomes obvious that the couple is being set up for failure, and they break up in episode 15. The ratings were slightly lower than those in season six, but after the breakup they sink into single digits to numbers the show has never hit before. Season seven is ranked at #44.
At this point Fox was trying to decide whether to cancel the show or not, and cost was big factor. There were three contracts up for renewal: Robert Sean Leonard who played best friend Wilson, Omar Epps who played House’s former intern now administrator Former, and Lisa Edelstein. Here’s the problem: according to Deadline, in an effort to cut cost, the producers of House decided to cut the three actors salaries, but then decided to only cut the salaries of Edelstein and Epps. Yep, the woman and the African-American man. Now, Epp’s role of Eric Forman never was as strong or central a relationship to Gregory House in the way that the characters of Leonard and Edelstein were, so I can see why that call was made about Epps. It’s the decision to devalue the role of Cuddy to the House franchise that was a big mistake, and to me makes little sense unless it came out of the mindset that the Cuddy/House relationship was not as important to show as Wilson or adding other characters. I say this because the pay cut they wanted Edelstein to take was seventy-five thousand dollars. Yet the show show created two new characters and kept the character of “Thirteen” who was barely there and had little connection to anyone, making the whole cost-cutting effort seem more symbolic than anything else.
Granted, they’d made such a mess of the relationship – starting back in season five, that trying to fix things would have been a a major overhaul. Like The X-files, House had chosen to go in various directions to avoid the relationship issue until they were backed against a wall. How they were planning to clean it up is something we’ll never know because Edelstein didn’t take the paycut. She walked away, releasing only this statement:
After much consideration, I am moving onward with a combination of disappointment at leaving behind a character I have loved playing for seven years and excitement of the new opportunities in acting and producing that lie ahead.
Well, the fans of the show that were invested in Cuddy/Huddy were upset. They campaigned, complained, and even took out an add in Variety to support Edelstein – and they kept the salary issue in the discussion. Did it bring her back to House? No. What did happen is ratings for House continued to plummet and its cancellation was announced mid-season. Meanwhile, Edelstein got a multi-episode story arc on CBS’s awarding show The Good Wife. She’s been acting steadily since in TV movies and guest spots shows such as House of Lies, Scandal and most recently another multi-episode appearance on Castle. Having fan support gave her more visibility, which no doubt helped make her transition out of House easier – despite the fact that she’s never been nominated for one of those bright shiny TV Academy trophies. The fans campaigning for Edelstein and voicing their unhappiness with what was done was, made a difference for the actress. I don’t think anyone would say it was a waste of time.
In this new age of television and social media, the on-line reviewers sit in a new place in terms of the industry. While fans can send messages to networks, the reviewer is a person who’s work is directed to television viewers and is in a special kind of dialogue with them. When interviewing actors and writers for shows, many send out Twitter blasts asking fans what questions they’d like the interviewer to ask, and we routinely ask them to comment on what their thoughts are in terms of the shows we write about. Collectively, reviewers have a certain level of influence in the industry. TV shows do screenings and allow interviews in the hopes that a good review will bring people in to watch their show, and create a positive buzz. Like it or not, reviewers are a part of the publicity machine.
The fact that fans now have access to fire back their own opinions is part of what drives the on-line blogging industry. Sometimes the level of back-chatting can get tiring. Particularly if it’s about a show you don’t personally care for. I even get that when the people you have to talk to in order to have interview access for shows are the same people whom the fans are upset with, it’s better to just keep out of it. What doesn’t make sense to me is saying fans shouldn’t voice their ideas or opinions. For one, it’s biting the hand that feeds you. If you’re a blogger, you want readers to engage with your writing. More importantly is this:
“It is a biological fact: there is no growth without irritation.” – Dr. Linda DePass-Creque.
If fans want things to be approached differently on television, they need to make it clear what isn’t working for them. Expressing that to the television show producers through letters, publicity stunts, on-line campaigns, and to the people who write about those shows are the ways they have to do so. After all, no one is going to “take a meeting” with a fanbase.
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