Though cable TV has been grabbing the spotlight in recent months, holiday cheer is spreading at the big broadcast networks.The good news: More new shows are sticking than in recent years; just a few have been yanked because of low ratings. The bad: Another fall has come and gone without producing a blockbuster cultural phenomenon.
"There's a lot of good, not a lot of great," says CBS program planning chief Kelly Kahl. "But given where we've been, a lot of good is a good thing," he says. With last fall plagued by the lingering effects of a writers' strike, "there was a void of quality shows coming out of last season."
Overall TV usage is down slightly from last fall, when the election heightened interest and drew crowds to cable news. But the overall picture for the big broadcast networks has brightened: Combined, the five are up 3% from last fall, slowing years of steady erosion. Big growth for NFL games and the World Series also helped.
CBS' NCIS: Los Angelesand The Good Wife, paired on Tuesdays, are the top newcomers this season. Fox's Glee and ABC's Modern Family, FlashForward and V opened strongly, though ratings for the two fantasy dramas have trailed off in recent airings.
Fox won its first November sweeps race among younger viewers and is up 18% this fall.
"It's generally a stronger season," says John Rash of Minneapolis ad firm Campbell Mithun.
Only ABC's Hank, CBS' Three Rivers and CW's The Beautiful Life were canceled after a handful of airings, though ABC's Eastwick and Fox's Brothers are on their way out. "You're looking at fewer cancellations than you've seen year-to-year," says Brent Poer of ad firm MediaVest in Los Angeles, but few shows "are reaching the cultural zeitgeist" on network TV.
The new ratings math is that shows considered modest successes would have been canceled a few years ago. "It's far riskier to replace them than to stick with something you know," Poer says. Networks need "to put time and investment into some of these shows to build an audience, because there's not a lot in the pipeline to replace them," a function of cost-cutting at CW and NBC, where The Jay Leno Showis faring poorly compared with the dramas it replaced.
In past years, serialized shows such as Lost and Heroes suffered from long breaks designed to avoid excessive repeats. But the networks will again test viewer loyalty by stalling the returns of FlashForward, Lie to Me, V – and after tonight, Glee – until March or later. "It's a problem when you lose momentum," says Shari Anne Brill of ad firm Carat USA. "It's quite a bit of a wait for a show to come back."
