Tuesday, October 6, 2015

The TV Book of Life Part 1

God has bigger fish to fry so, as an elder in the TV game, I have been asked to enter the new shows in The Book of Life. We are in the Yom Kippur of the TV season where we are getting ratings on the third week of several new series. Yeah there's all this delayed viewing bullshit and the other ways to spin these numbers but, trust me, the TV execs who make these decisions know.
Of course there are other variables that go into these decisions and I will factor those in as well.

The new shows will be entered in four different pages of The Book of Life:
BUY THE DELI PLATTER AND PAY A SHIVA CALL (stick a fork in it, it's done)
WILL CELEBRATE THEIR B'NAI MITZVAH (will get to 13 on the air)
SET A PLACE AT THE SEDER TABLE (should finish full the season)
SEE YOU AT NEXT YEAR'S KOL NIDRE SERVICE (there's a second season)

Today I enter three shows in The Book of Life. This is a heavy responsibility.

MINORITY REPORT (FOX)
Some shows wind up on a schedule for all the wrong reasons. That's Minority Report. When a network makes a big deal of getting a show like this it's destined to get on the schedule in spite of all the evidence shouting at you to move on. FOX keeps going down this path over and over and over again and virtually every time suffers the same consequence. I wish I could say they have learned their lesson but there's more coming down the pike.
BUY THE DELI PLATTER AND PAY A SHIVA CALL

LIFE IN PIECES (CBS)
CBS is the king of the "my shit doesn't stink" approach to their schedule and this show fits into that category. Ratings OK (who says lead-ins don't matter)  and the network is desperately trying to get a single camera show to work on their multi-cam schedule so....
SET A PLACE AT THE SEDER TABLE

BLINDSPOT
Again lead-ins matter and imitation is the greatest form of Television. At some point this show may turn into an eye-roller but for now it's up to NBC to figure out how not to fuck it up.                      SEE YOU AT NEXT YEAR'S KOL NIDRE SERVICE

I'm closing the book until tomorrow when I enter the fate of The Muppets and Scream Queens

Zay Gezunt



2 comments:

  1. This is great...thanks for the view into television scheduling!

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  2. I hope 'Blindspot' sticks around. It's the only one I've added to my watch list from the new crop of shows.

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