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This part of the site contained articls relating to LOST and the Cast/Crew being mentioned in the media.
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Launching a broadly successful TV show is possible. No, really, it is.
We hear a lot about the fractured media environment, and most of us—network suits and civilians alike—have accepted the idea that smaller audiences are the new norm.
Mentalist Yet consider “The Mentalist,” the show starring Simon Baker as a sham psychic turned crime investigator. The drama, which bears all the hallmarks of the efficient CBS procedural factory, regularly brings in between 18 million and 20 million viewers. Partly due to the success of that drama, as of early February, CBS' overall viewership had actually increased compared to last season.
So are the other broadcast networks—whose overall ratings have declined—going to unleash dozens of “Mentalist” clones over the next year or two? Will we be living on a steady diet of miraculous cures on medical dramas and good guys catching bad guys on crime shows?
Forgive the tinge of irony: Nobody's knocking procedurals, or dramas in which one story is told over the course of one hour. Episodes of television that don't don’t require a degree in physics or an encyclopedic memory can be a beautiful thing. You'll find no bashing of "Law & Order" or "The Closer" here.
But in the last couple of years, “The Wire” has closed up shop, as have “The Sopranos,” “The Shield” and “Deadwood.” The future of “Friday Night Lights” is in doubt, and in a few weeks, “Battlestar Galactica” ends. “Mad Men” and “Damages” have ferocious fans but low ratings. And in a few months, NBC—the network that gave us “The West Wing”—is handing over a third of its weekday real estate to Jay Leno.
Lostjuliet What are the odds that compelling dramas such as these will get made by any network—broadcast or cable? Can it be that, as a piece in Entertainment Weekly asserted, the new Golden Age of television is ending?
Damon Lindelof, co-creator of “Lost,” isn’t worried. Asked whether a show such as “Lost” could find a home today, he responded, “Yes, I think it would. At least on some networks.”
He added that he has high hopes for pilots such as ABC's "Flash Forward" and NBC's "Day One," which are currently in production and are "are every bit as serialized and genre-tinged as 'Lost.'"
Although the TV writer/producers and executives interviewed for this story were somewhat optimistic about the future for challenging TV, several said there is a new note of cautiousness at the networks.
“I don’t think you can make any kind of sweeping generality based on any collective thought process" at the networks. What they are reacting to more than anything these days, is to the dwindling ad dollars,” said Tim Kring, creator of “Heroes.” “This has a huge ripple effect on every move they make. And my guess is ... that makes the climate a little more risk-averse than it was a couple of years ago, simply because they can’t afford the number of failures.”
As is the case with the beleaguered music industry, television networks are responding to rapid and revolutionary changes in how audiences consume their products. In the TV industry, that’s having an effect on what gets made.
LTM_05-Tim-table1_0228.rc.d "Sometimes early on, being a little more episodic allows more people into the room. And as the show goes on, by its nature, it might find itself becoming a little more serialized," said Matt Cherniss, executive vice president of programming at Fox. "But to abandon the desire to tell stories that are, essentially, the hero’s journey and to watch that journey take place—I think that would be irresponsible. There are a lot of versions of that are successful, whether it's a soap or a medical drama. They're difficult to do, but that's not a reason not to do them.
Fox debuted the standalone procedural "Lie to Me" this season, and it is also developing "Masterwork," an adventure pilot from "Prison Break" creator Paul Scheuring. "Masterwork" won't be nearly as serialized as "Prison Break," however -- it'll involve a weekly adventure as well as an ongoing quest.
"We're trying to have our cake and eat it too. We're trying to tell really fun, engaging stories over a long period of time but not do it in a way that's intimidating to the audience," Cherniss said.
As Fox attempts to find the next “House,” it’s also trying to cater to fans of Joss Whedon (“Angel,” “Buffy,” “Firefly”), J.J. Abrams (“Alias,” “Lost”) and Ronald D. Moore (“Battlestar Galactica”), who have created some of the most acclaimed dramas of the new Golden Age.
But when it comes to these writer/producers’ new Fox ventures—“Dollhouse,” “Fringe” and “Virtuality,” respectively—finding the right balance between procedural storytelling (think "Law & Order") and ambitious, "mythology-based" storytelling (think "Lost") hasn’t been easy.
Dh_08-eliza-mirrors-sitting_0616_djrV1 Last year, the pilot for Whedon’s “Dollhouse” was reshot and production was shut down for a short time so that scripts could be recalibrated. After all that, the ratings for the adventure drama, which debuted Feb. 13, have not been impressive.
But as Cherniss notes and as Whedon has said in interviews, the reshooting of the pilot was done at Whedon's request, not the network's insistence. And discussions with him have centered on how to make the show more accessible, not how to change its core concept, Cherniss said.
“We put it on Friday night because we thought that would be the best place for it to grow and allow it to be what it is, rather than trying to shoehorn it into being some other show just to fit a time period,” Cherniss said. “We have to let it play out and see how it does over the long haul.”
The two-hour pilot for “Virtuality,” which was written by Ronald D. Moore and Michael Taylor of “Battlestar Galactica,” is currently in limbo at Fox. This thought-provoking show (the script of which can be found online) follows a group of young space travelers as they engage in an exploration mission and star in a reality program along the way. It asks challenging questions about identity, media manipulation and the fragility of relationships.
Fox executives screened "Virtuality" in January, then went forward with “Glee,” a soap from “Nip/Tuck’s” Ryan Murphy.
“We’re looking for the best way for the audience to access [‘Virtuality’],” said Cherniss, who added there’s still a chance the space drama could land on Fox’s schedule next year. "There's a lot of discussion about whether the whether the pilot as it currently stands is the way to go on that, or whether there are some adjustments that can be made. ... But it is a project that we remain really intrigued by and excited about."
But "Virtuality," which incorporates reality-TV footage, virtual environments, relationship drama and intriguing mysteries, may just be too ambitious for a broadcast network. As Warner Bros. Television president Peter Roth told TV Week recently, the thinking is that in troubled times, "viewers might gravitate toward the comfort food of heroism and escapism in straightforward, easy-to-follow storylines."
Before you cry into your Dharma beer, it's worth recalling that when "Lost" was being developed, ABC viewed it as -- gulp -- a procedural. As humorist Dave Barry would say, I am not making that up.
"'Lost' was never, as far as the network was concerned, initially designed to be the serialized show it has become," said Jeff Pinkner ("Fringe"), who was an executive producer of the island drama. "They always thought that, in its own way, it would be [more] standalone."
And in its first seasons, "Lost" offered viewers not just action and adventure and the first glimmerings of its ultimately labyrinthine mythology, but also "a self-contained short story dealing with one character's emotional journey every week, which didn't require having seen anything before," Pinkner said.
104_thearrival_observer2 Pinkner is now an executive producer of “Fringe” has been a modest success for Fox. But that show also had its own share of growing pains as it has attempted to balance a burgeoning mythology about a phenomenon called the Pattern with more standalone storytelling.
You might think Fox executives would have recoiled at the idea for "the Observer," a mysterious character who has briefly appeared in every "Fringe" episode and who has been a hit with the show's fans. Wrong. When the writers pitched that concept, executives loved it, Pinkner said.
But he also said that the network initially wanted to cut an engaging bar scene between Olivia (Anna Torv) and Peter (Joshua Jackson) in a December episode -- a moment that was key to the relationship between those characters.
"The hardest thing to calibrate is the serialized element—when you’re getting too inside and too unwelcoming and when you’re being too obvious and playing toward a new audience as opposed to honoring the people who have been watching,” said Jeff Pinkner, executive producer of “Fringe.”
That mix is something that cable networks are having to reconsider as well. The show that put FX on the map, the densely plotted “Shield,” ended last fall, and the network recently commissioned two new pilots for possible airing in 2010. “Lights Out,” the story of an ex-boxer in financial trouble, would be a more serialized tale if it gets picked up. An untitled adaptation of an Elmore Leonard story by “Boomtown” creator Graham Yost would feature more stand-alone episodes.
“Our problem—and I think this would be the problem of an AMC or a Showtime or an HBO—we can’t just do a case-of-the-week stuff,” FX President John Landgraf said. “We have to make more adult, more original, more idiosyncratic, higher-risk, edgier shows. When you look at case-of-the-week [programs], it's very hard to find something that hasn't been done before.”
D20080630_043_R1C FX hasn't backed away from ambitious storytelling -- in fact, colliding timelines is one of the signature elements of the network's Glenn Close legal thriller, "Damages."
"Damages" is averaging about 1.1 million live viewers in its second season -- a significant dip from its Season 1 ratings -- but that number rises to 3.1 million when the viewership of every airing of an episode is added together. And the viewership of each Wednesday airing of the drama shoots up by 64 percent when Nielsen Media Research's "Live+7" figures, which track DVR use, are added.
But as Landgraf points out, anyone who watches "Damages" more than three days after it airs is of no interest to advertisers.
"I'm really glad [viewers are] enjoying it and I'm glad they're buying cable -- I hope -- in order to get it, but it doesn't pay the bills," said Landgraf, who added that viewers’ tendency to surf the Web while watching TV was another factor in declining ratings for dense dramas.
“As the experience became a two-screen experience, you started to see the serialized dramas tail off in terms of their ratings potential. I don’t see that changing any time soon,” Landgraf said. “I do think that serialized TV is much harder to succeed at than it was seven or eight years ago.”
ABC is trying to get into the procedural game—it launches the detective series “Castle” March 9—but it isn’t going to stop trying to find the next “Lost.” Hence the network's development of a "V" remake and the sci-fi thriller "Flash Forward."
Castle "I'll be completely honest with you, I would love to have some procedurals on ABC," according to Jeffrey Bader, executive vice president of ABC Entertainment. "But we're ABC. A lot of shows that we end up having in development end up being more serialized in nature," and that roster of ongoing-plot shows includes medical dramas such as "Grey's Anatomy" and soaps such as "Brothers & Sisters."
“To launch a show that is completely different from ‘Grey’s Anatomy’ is hard,” Bader said. “But we will continue to try.”
One reason to try? ABC wants to get more men to watch its shows, which currently skew toward female viewership. And the network sees NBC’s abandonment of the third hour of prime time as a “huge opportunity.”
But one thing is clear: The next big thing probably won’t be a “Mentalist” clone.
“History says that probably won’t happen,” Pinkner said. “The next show that comes out will come from a different place.”
And it's still possible to get networks to make shows that come from a different place, according to Shawn Ryan, creator of "The Shield" and executive producer of CBS' "The Unit," who has numerous projects in development at cable and broadcast networks.
"There’s always going to be cracks in the system, shows that aren’t the obvious choices at development time but that get to make their show, under the radar a little bit," Ryan said in a 2008 interview. "And then the network screens them, they go, 'Oh, look what we have here.'"
