Despite Expectations, Bionic Ratings Sag
Wednesday October 31, 2007
Some cynical TV writers have already started writing off the Fall 2007, thanks to the swift cancellation of Viva Laughlin, the ratings falloff for the high-hype, high-expectation Bionic Woman, and the lack of a break-out new show on the order of last season's Heroes – not to mention the looming writers' strike, which could have a corrosive effect on scripted TV.
"Anybody want to buy a TV season?" mused AP television writer Frazier Moore this week, going on to say the new season just wasn't performing well. The main quantitative support for his naysaying was Bionic's drop in ratings from 13.9 million to 7.8 million viewers over five weeks. Beyond that, he wondered whether viewers would sustain interest in the high-fructose Pushing Daisies, likening watching the show to "gorging on pie" week after week. Meanwhile, More said, last year's Heroes pop-up set the stage for a string of supernatural shows (Journeyman, Reaper, Moonlight, and Bionic Woman), none of which are catching fire.
Another AP writer, Lynn Elber, wrote similarly about the supposedly lackluster new season. Noting a lack of water cooler hits (and again citing Heroes from last year alongside onetime buzz-generator Desperate Housewives), Elber blamed a reported 10% drop in network viewership over the same time lat year on a lack of compelling TV. Answering one ad-buyer's rhetorical question about whether there was any must-see TV on this season with "a resounding no," Elber catalogued the new shows this season and censured all of them for failing to produce a magazine-cover breakout star like Heroes's Masi Oka, though Lee Pace of Pushing Daisies got passing notice.
I'm not sure what's in the water over at the Associated Press TV bureau, but I do know one thing: the best way to make sure that the new season is a failure is for all the TV journalists to assure each other that it is. Call me kooky, call me an iconoclast, but I'm not ready to write off this year just yet. Even on the shows I've criticized for derivative concepts (Chuck from Jake 2.0, Journeyman from Quantum Leap, etc.), I've been seeing fresh writing and unexpected depth and development (Dan Vassar is already becoming a lot more complicated than Sam Beckett ever was on Leap, frankly). I'm looking forward to almost every show I'm covering this season, and that's a pleasant surprise.
"Anybody want to buy a TV season?" mused AP television writer Frazier Moore this week, going on to say the new season just wasn't performing well. The main quantitative support for his naysaying was Bionic's drop in ratings from 13.9 million to 7.8 million viewers over five weeks. Beyond that, he wondered whether viewers would sustain interest in the high-fructose Pushing Daisies, likening watching the show to "gorging on pie" week after week. Meanwhile, More said, last year's Heroes pop-up set the stage for a string of supernatural shows (Journeyman, Reaper, Moonlight, and Bionic Woman), none of which are catching fire.
Another AP writer, Lynn Elber, wrote similarly about the supposedly lackluster new season. Noting a lack of water cooler hits (and again citing Heroes from last year alongside onetime buzz-generator Desperate Housewives), Elber blamed a reported 10% drop in network viewership over the same time lat year on a lack of compelling TV. Answering one ad-buyer's rhetorical question about whether there was any must-see TV on this season with "a resounding no," Elber catalogued the new shows this season and censured all of them for failing to produce a magazine-cover breakout star like Heroes's Masi Oka, though Lee Pace of Pushing Daisies got passing notice.
I'm not sure what's in the water over at the Associated Press TV bureau, but I do know one thing: the best way to make sure that the new season is a failure is for all the TV journalists to assure each other that it is. Call me kooky, call me an iconoclast, but I'm not ready to write off this year just yet. Even on the shows I've criticized for derivative concepts (Chuck from Jake 2.0, Journeyman from Quantum Leap, etc.), I've been seeing fresh writing and unexpected depth and development (Dan Vassar is already becoming a lot more complicated than Sam Beckett ever was on Leap, frankly). I'm looking forward to almost every show I'm covering this season, and that's a pleasant surprise.
Comments
Maybe the reason the ratings have dropped for Bionic Woman is too much reliance on fighting at the expense of character development.