Emma
10-18-2006, 08:29 PM
<img src="http://www.fanbolt.com/forums/images/avatars/heroes/101806heroes23.jpg" width="85" height="85" vspace="5" hspace="5" align="right" border="0" alt="Heroes, NBC"> One month into the new fall TV season and the shakeout has begun. The networks are happy. Overall viewership is up thanks to burgeoning hit shows like “Ugly Betty” and “Heroes.”
But the networks are nervous. A lot of the other new series are fizzling and fading, kicking off an early start to schedule shifts and time-slot swapping.
And one lonely network - the new CW - may be suffering an identity crisis.
Except for “America’s Next Top Model,” many of the CW series from “Gilmore Girls” to “Everybody Hates Chris” are doing worse than a year ago in their previous network homes of now-defunct WB and UPN.
How sweet and sour it is. That’s TV in the land of a thousand channels.
And now let’s get busy with key channel-surfing developments, Captain Video’s lowdown on the early weeks of the 2006 TV season:
The Big Surprises: “Heroes” and “Jericho.” The former is NBC’s most pleasant fall success, a comic book superhero odyssey with heart, humor and the ability to appeal to viewers beyond the sci-fi and fantasy geek audience as it builds toward unqualified hit status. “Heroes” is already renewed for a full season. But CBS’s “Jericho” - the grimly downbeat story of a rural Kansas town in the aftermath of a mysterious nuclear attack - may be an even more unlikely success story. It’s been averaging a very impressive 11 million viewers at 8 p.m. Wednesdays, giving the Eye a ratings prize it didn’t really expect.
<a href="http://www.popmatters.com/pm/news/article/6655/fall-tv-numerous-misses-a-few-surprise-hits/" target="_blank">Click here for more!</a>
But the networks are nervous. A lot of the other new series are fizzling and fading, kicking off an early start to schedule shifts and time-slot swapping.
And one lonely network - the new CW - may be suffering an identity crisis.
Except for “America’s Next Top Model,” many of the CW series from “Gilmore Girls” to “Everybody Hates Chris” are doing worse than a year ago in their previous network homes of now-defunct WB and UPN.
How sweet and sour it is. That’s TV in the land of a thousand channels.
And now let’s get busy with key channel-surfing developments, Captain Video’s lowdown on the early weeks of the 2006 TV season:
The Big Surprises: “Heroes” and “Jericho.” The former is NBC’s most pleasant fall success, a comic book superhero odyssey with heart, humor and the ability to appeal to viewers beyond the sci-fi and fantasy geek audience as it builds toward unqualified hit status. “Heroes” is already renewed for a full season. But CBS’s “Jericho” - the grimly downbeat story of a rural Kansas town in the aftermath of a mysterious nuclear attack - may be an even more unlikely success story. It’s been averaging a very impressive 11 million viewers at 8 p.m. Wednesdays, giving the Eye a ratings prize it didn’t really expect.
<a href="http://www.popmatters.com/pm/news/article/6655/fall-tv-numerous-misses-a-few-surprise-hits/" target="_blank">Click here for more!</a>