$#!* My Dad Says is getting good ratings (and I’m watching the second episode now, and it’s pretty funny so far) so it won’t be going anywhere. Hawaii 5-0 I haven’t seen, but it’s also getting good ratings and is supposedly pretty decent, so that one’s probably safe too.
I’m placing my bets on Running Wilde. Poor ratings, poor content, and it’s on FOX.
This phenomemon is starting to come home to roost. For a decade or so, networks have been feasting on the cheap ratings grabbers of reality television, but this was shortsighted. A non-trivial portion of a network’s bottom line is driven by syndication fees, and reality shows have zero syndication appeal.
As someone upthread posted, House reruns draw good ratings, so the money they sunk into making it in the first run keeps printing more money in reruns. How about Survivor? Anyone ever see a Survivor rerun on a network? Or even basic cable? Even though I’m a big reality show fan, particular the big 3 on CBS, (Survivor, Amazing Race, Big Brother,) I take an inordinate amount of satisfaction from the idea that sucking on the reality teat may end up costing networks money in the long run.
And booooooo on My Generation being cancelled. I loves me some Kelli Garner.
Next Top Model and Project Runway sure get a lot of repeats.
Third show down - Outlaw. You know it’s a bad show when NBC cancels it that fast.
Ha! Bow to me! I am a prophet. I canceled recording last night. 
This is exactly what happened with Dollhouse. In season 2, the ratings were fairly dismal (3 and change million viewers, which apparently is nothing in TV) and reruns of House shown in Dollhouse’s place during sweeps did better, which meant an automatic death sentence for Dollhouse.
I never watched it, and the preseason descriptions made me think: OMG WTF are these people thinking?
I was a little disappointed when Lone Star got cancelled. I didn’t like the way the pilot ended, but I liked the rest of it enough to give the show a chance. I didn’t bother watching the second episode, though, once I knew it was getting cancelled.
I’m kind of relieved that Outlaw is getting cancelled: I might have kept watching it for a while longer, but I wasn’t crazy about it. Now I can happily delete the unwatched episode on my TiVo and cancel the season pass.
I am a definite fan of Terriers, The Defenders, and Detroit 1-8-7.
I’m on the fence about Blue Bloods. Family dramas rarely interest me for long, but I’m not ready to give up on it quite yet.
I think the next season pass to get cancelled for me will be Hawaii Five-0. It’s getting great ratings and reviews, but it’s just not doing it for me (much as I love Daniel Dae Kim and Grace Park): so far the two main characters are boring/annoying, and all of the dialogue is predictable. I’ll watch the ep that’s on my TiVo, but if I don’t see any improvement I’ll probably stop recording it.
I haven’t bothered with any of the other new shows.
Maaaaan, I had high hopes for this show, since it’s really the first show to bring brown people aside from Kal Penn into mainstream TV.
Running Wilde is in a lot of trouble. It’s losing 50% of the audience from Raising Hope and finishing fourth in its time slot.
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Urgh, really? Not surprising. I love Will Arnett and the daughter, but the Felicity girl is irritating. The writing is only so-so. There are some genuinely funny moments in it, but they usually surround David Cross or Will Arnett and nobody else. The neighbor guy is funny too.
I think the Whole Truth is going to be next. I haven’t watched the new Law and Order though. That’s the other possibility.
Yeah, if you ignore Tom on Parks & Rec, Abed on Community, Kelly on the Office, etc etc. I don’t watch 30 Rock, so maybe they blow this theory, but seems like a “brown person” is pretty much required for any sitcom on NBC.
For the “big 4” it’s nothing, but for cable or the CW that wouldn’t be bad.
30 Rock has Jonathan, who is the assistant to Alec Baldwin’s character Jack. So NBC already had a South Asian on each of its four sitcoms.
BTW, regarding Running Wilde, I thought that the episode this week was really funny.
They’re all minor characters though - minor enough that they didn’t occur to me. Tom is extremely Americanized anyways; I can’t recall him ever referring to anything culturally or religiously brown except his skintone offhandedly. Abed had the gag with his dad and sister that was fairly spot on. Kelly is a drama queen and only the Diwali episode seasons ago had anything to do with being brown.
Anyways, I think Outsourced is more like the first generation of Indians in America show. The show’s obsession with arranged marriages is bizarre - two of my cousins have now chosen their own husbands, and my family isn’t exactly “progressive”. Many kids of immigrants I know of will have arranged marriages in America, and the laughs and gags are closer, I feel, to how it is here than there (obviously the writers are writing about what they don’t know or what they know second-hand).
Is that what you want? That if a character is of a certain race or culture, they make constant references to it? Doesn’t that make their characterisation “the whatever one” instead of the character who is incidentally whatever?
I think having few references to their {race/culture/gender/orientation/religion} makes for better characterisations.
:rolleyes:Obviously I don’t want it to be a big lovefest for Indians. It would be nice to be portrayed in a positive - and accurate - light once in awhile though. The more they’re brought to the forefront as normal people, the less I have to answer whether or not I have to wear a sari at home and how I get by by being a vegetarian.
I don’t think a network gets money from syndication/DVDs/etc. unless they are the production company. But contracts can get complicated. A production company might take less money from a network in order to get the show on the air, hoping to make it back later. Plus a show can have several production companies involved, all splitting up fees in byzantine ways. (And of course there is the occasional situation of a network’s production company making a series for another network. E.g., Scrubs was made at ABC studios when it was still on NBC, which is part of the reason it was picked up later by ABC. At that point, ABC knew they were going to get a lot of money from syndication/DVDs and having some more episodes would help.)
Note how many scripted shows are appearing on basic cable now. The reruns and DVDs for these can really bring in the dough. It’s surprising how the broadcast networks don’t view scripted shows the same way.
You usually need something like 90+ shows to make it in syndication. 3 episodes doesn’t do it.
Might make a tiny amount of sunk cost back putting those plus the unaired episodes on DVD, but no net gain is possible.
Sorry, The Whole Truth fans.
Guess Rob Morrow & Maura Tierney will have to make due on Numb3rs and ER residual checks for awhile.
I’ve been watching that. I like the leads. I like the gimmick where they trail the separate sides (and the way their paths can intersect). And I like how, at the end, they show us that justice has been done; I mean, I’m not against gritty legal drama, but comfort-food viewing is nice, too. But it never rose to must-see viewing, either. I’ll probably go ahead and follow it through the end of its run.
Yeah. Things are tough for everybody these days. {shakes head in a gesture of pure compassion for the actor and actress} 
The Whole Truth sounded a lot like the show Justice, which was on FOX (although it seemed like such a CBS show) a couple years ago, but I didn’t start watching it because I heard over and over that it was terrible. Looks like I won’t be starting now either!
Amazingly, ABC has axed 2 shows, to FOX/NBX’s 1 and CBS/CW’s 0. How in the hell are Running Wilde and Better With You still officially alive? Then again, if Parks & Rec is getting a third season, and drivel like Til Death and According to Jim survived for YEARS, then I guess I’m overestimating this country’s average viewer.