All the hoopla surrounding Michael Grade vacating of the BBC Chairman’s desk to take a cab over to ITV is making the task of blogging on this business we call telly rather tricky. Let’s get some perspective people - clearly the biggest story of the week is eluding us all. Haven’t you heard?
Malandra Burrows is out of I’m a Celebrity!
Oh. Hang on.
To give everybody time to process what’s going on over at Broadcasting House, it might be time to cast our eyes across the Atlantic for change of scenery. We have so many cable channels in Blighty now that they all need to pick up shows here, there and everywhere to prop up the schedules. There simply aren’t enough hours in the day to fill the airwaves with original home-grown fare, so schedulers are forced to go shopping across the pond. That’s no bad thing, but inevitably, as the demand for imported fare increases, the US TV schedules might start to look as over fished as stocks of Atlantic cod.
How many shows can ITV2/3/4, Living, Bravo and even Five proclaim to have taken America by storm, and just happens to be arriving in the UK on that very channel? More often than not, most of these shows rarely make a splash in the ratings, and we’re only taking the word of the UK broadcasters as to their popularity credentials.
For some frame of reference as to what is doing the business in a bums-on-seats kind of way, here is the US television top 10 for the w/c 20 November:
- Desperate Housewives - ABC, Sunday, 9pm: 21.43m
- CSI: Miami - CBS, Monday, 10pm: 18.54m
- Grey’s Anatomy - ABC, Thursday, 9pm: 18.51m
- NFL Post Game - Fox, Sunday, 7:25pm: 17.59m
- NFL Post Game - Fox, Thursday, 7:21pm: 17.19m
- CSI - CBS, Thursday, 9pm: 17.17m
- NCIS - CBS, Tuesday, 8pm: 17m
- Deal Or No Deal - NBC, Monday, 8pm: 16.97m
- Criminal Minds - CBS, Wednesday, 9pm: 16.56m
- Heroes - NBC, Monday, 9pm: 16.03m
Source: Neilsen Media Research
Now, Lost fans, don’t be worrying - the show is on season hiatus, hence its lack of showing in the list. In terms of the UK broadcasters, Five is clearly the winner here, with four of these big hitters among their overseas portfolio - the CSI powerhouse, NCIS and Grey’s Anatomy. Channel 4 might have played shrewdly in dumping Lost and keeping the top-rated Desperate Housewives, and BBC 2 will, on the basis off Heroes’ first showing in the top 10, have high hopes when the break-out hit of the year debuts in the UK in the New Year.
So, there’s nary a Prison Break, Invasion or Supernatural anywhere in sight. It doesn’t stop the shows being good, but it does stop me from believing a throaty announcer telling me just how popular their big new purchase is. Kojak, anybody?
Invasion was cancelled and only ran to one season so won't be in this year's list, surprisingly enough. Supernatural is on The CW which is a minor network catering mainly to teenagers (somewhat like our Trouble, which picks up almost everything from The CW that the other UK networks don't want), amongst whom it does very well. Ditto Kojak, which was awful and on the USA Network, best known for quirky stuff like Monk and Psych as well as crud like Nashville Stars (American Idol but with country and western).
As for Prison Break, that's a Fox show and Fox doesn't quite have the affiliate count of the other networks (still!), so its ratings are somewhat capped in comparison with ABC, NBC and CBS's. Prison Break's a top-20 show though and its premiere episode came somewhere like sixth as far as I remember.
Heroes won't be on the Beeb till it completes its run on SciFi, which has the pay-TV rights.
The US ratings system is also more complicated than ours, so Lost can get higher viewer counts in the Neilsen Media Research ratings and yet still get beaten by Criminal Minds overall.
Everyone I talk to about Lost has been remarking that no one in their offices/workplaces and social circles talk about Lost at all now that it's only on Sky. One of my friends pointed out that there used to be such a buzz about the show that everyone would charge into work all excited and be gossiping about it the next day - but now those few who can get Sky are being told not to talk about it, so those who have friends etc who might be able to record it don't get spoilt. I think this could well be a bit of a quick death for Lost in this country bar the few fans who have access to Sky or the internet (which is surprisingly few in my circles). I think they've shot themselves in the foot with this one.
As for other American shows, it's good to finally get some of the shows that are gosspied about a lot online, but they do seem to pick up the high profile ones instead of the cult ones. And all the good ones they do get over they seem to screen at ridiculous times of the morning or every day, so you can bearly keep up unless you neglect to have any kind of social life (see the first season of Veronica Mars for an example of that, and now they're showing Joan of Arcadia at like 2am which doesn't make any sense to me).
And to top it all off - the TV channels that do bag some great shows aren't listed in the Radio Times so I always miss them! FX consistently has interesting shows I want to watch on and I never catch any of them thanks to the Radio Times omitting it. I know I could get the information online but who logs onto the internet everytime they want to know what's on?