Fall TV lineup reflects major changes in industry

By Maureen Ryan

Chicago Tribune

Weird.

That's the only word to describe the fall TV season, which is the biggest casualty of the 100-day writers strike.

TV executives often talk about wanting to shake up the way they do business. And TV critics and viewers often wish networks wouldn't load each fall season with more new programs than any sane person can absorb.

This year, both wishes were granted. Thanks to the strike, which began in November, fewer new shows were made for fall.

We're getting remakes of foreign shows ("Eleventh Hour," "Kath & Kim," "Life on Mars"), remakes of old shows ("90210," "Knight Rider") and remakes of classic literature ("Crusoe" and "My Own Worst Enemy," a Jekyll and Hyde tale).

Even the most high-profile offering, J.J. Abrams' "Fringe," seems, at first glance, to be an amalgamation of ideas from shows such as "X-Files" and "Twilight Zone."

Is it time for the broadcast networks, which have given us this buzz-free fall, to exit stage left? Should they cede the tube to more adventurous cable networks? That's what Mark Harris argues in a provocative recent piece in Conde Naste's Portfolio .

By surrendering to the relentless niche-ification that the digital age has brought, cable networks, which identify and pursue specific slices of the TV audience, are operating at an advantage, Harris argues.

"Broadcast networks want everyone," Harris writes. "And the business of wanting everyone has never been worse."

This fall's lineup reflects major changes in the industry, some of them permanent. Altogether, the networks have cut in half the number of new shows they're introducing. Cable channels are putting their new series and old hits - such as Showtime's "Dexter," HBO's "Entourage" and "True Blood," and FX's "Sons of Anarchy" - in direct competition with the network series, rather than in the relative safety of summer and spring.

Still, the networks have put significant thought and marketing dollars behind the new fall season. NBC peppered its Olympic coverage with relentless promotions of its lineup, reminding us how long we've waited for "The Office" to return. The CW has sent high school bands sheet music for the resurrected "90210" theme song. ABC launched a tongue-in-cheek campaign for "National Stay at Home Week," which happens to coincide with the start of its fall season.

Until this season, networks produced dozens of pilots, those elaborate and costly first episodes of potential new series, only to relegate most of them to the dustbin. Fall lineups were overloaded with new shows, many of them yanked at the first sign of flagging ratings.

This year, networks didn't order pilots at all, opting to pick up series based solely on their scripts. While CBS filmed pilots, executives say the timetable of approving scripts, giving notes, shooting, and editing was dramatically condensed. CBS has five new shows, NBC four. ABC has only two new series and is using the fall-season buildup to promote several series that debuted last year but disappeared after the strike.

"That era is over," says Jonathan Taplin, a communications professor at the University of Southern California, referring to the old days of development largesse. "It was financially a joke. They spent so much money, and so little of it actually ended up on the screen, that I think that probably the accountant side of the networks prevailed in terms of rationality."

But before we plan the memorial service for the broadcast networks, I'd like to point out two things.

First, cable networks are not infallible. On Monday, TNT debuted a tepid legal drama, "Raising the Bar." Its creator, Steven Bochco ("L.A. Law," "Hill Street Blues"), helped rewrite the network-TV playbook with his earlier series. Trouble is, his show feels like a broadcast-network legal drama from the '90s, not like "The Closer," TNT's most successful show.

Second, I have three words for Harris: The "Lost" pilot. What cable network would have spent more than $10 million on that, as ABC did. Perhaps "Lost's" success is an anomaly, but that was one attempt to woo "everyone" that worked out OK.

Much as it pains me, I come not to bury the broadcast networks, but to praise them.

Cable is indeed having a well-deserved moment in the sun-the returns of "The Shield" on FX and "Dexter" on Showtime have been the most anticipated September events in my house. But the game is more fun when all teams are giving their best.

As long as the broadcast networks are around, they're going to be giving people money to make TV shows. Many resulting programs will be bad, but every year there are gems.

So is there a treasure in this year's muddled mixture? That remains to be seen.

Stay tuned.

The Boston Globe contributed to this report.