FOX
I’ll be spending much of the next few days at the network “upfronts,” in which Fox, The CW, ABC and CBS will present their next-season shows to advertisers in hopes of garnering the few remaining advertising dollars. (Cable upfronts have been held on and off over the past several weeks.) In between presentations, I’ll be on deadline for Time, so while there may be a lot of news, posting here may be spotty—I’ll post some upfronts updates when I can.
In the meantime, several programming decisions have already been leaked. Among the ones that interest me: Dollhouse (yay!), Better Off Ted, Castle and (puzzlingly) Scrubs will all return for another season. No final word on Chuck yet, though NBC has promised a decision this week. has reportedly been picked up, but for 13 episodes and on a tighter budget.
The Dollhouse pickup was the big shocker—and by me the most welcome—and the most notable for what it says about how the network TV business works today. Mo Ryan has an insightful post laying out how Fox’s decision to keep the show may herald an era in which the decision to keep shows alive is no longer just about ratings. Because as far as live-TV viewing is concerned, Dollhouse has none. But
* Joss Whedon has reportedly agreed to bring the show back on a lower budget
* Dollhouse gets an unusually high ratio of DVR-to-live-TV viewers, boosting its overall numbers
* Shows like it, with small but very dedicated audiences, are monetizable in other ways, such as through DVD sales. (The classic example is Lost, a decently-rated show on TV, but regularly a top seller on DVD. As J.J. Abrams once told me about that aspect of the business end—the plastic they press the DVDs on doesn’t cost $50.)
Because I am a man with a hammer to whom everything looks like a nail, I’ll add one thing: this is further proof, as I’ve been writing lately, of how the “decline” of the broadcast networks can make for better TV. Smaller audiences and more creative—unfortunately for the talent, cheaper—budget arrangements can mean that shows survive that a few years ago would have been too tiny for broadcast. If Firefly had debuted in 2009 instead of 2002, we’d be celebrating its second-season pickup today.
By the end of the week, we’ll have a better sense of the trends that will be shaping TV over the next year. And it will be downright fascinating—in a year in which ad spending is predicted to drop by as much as 20%—to see how the networks pitch their shows, and their medium itself, to Madison Avenue. I’ll keep you posted.