MICHAEL FRANKLIN /
Union-Tribune photo illustration
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In television, nothing exceeds like success.
“CSI: Crime Scene Investigation” is a hit, and suddenly scientific crime solvers are elbowing each other off the screen.
This year, it's serials. More than a dozen continued-next-week serialized dramas will jump onto the prime-time schedule in the coming weeks.
Not surprisingly, some of them even share the same story lines. NBC has “Kidnapped,” Fox is airing “Vanished.” ABC has scheduled three serialized comedies: “The Knights of Prosperity,” “Big Day” and “Notes From the Underbelly.”
It's not hard to see where this avalanche came from.
A pair of snowballs started it all – HBO's “The Sopranos” and Fox's “24.” “The Sopranos,” beginning in 1999, got viewers hooked on the continuing melodrama of mob boss Tony Soprano and his endless peccadilloes.
Starting in November 2001, “24” offered a new model of television drama. It told its story in real time, with every episode representing an hour's time in a story lasting 24 hours.
Two years ago, ABC launched “Lost” and “Desperate Housewives,” two serials that were immediate hits. Fox added “Prison Break” a year ago.
Not that those serials were original ideas. (Hardly anything in TV is original.) “Peyton Place” was actually the first night-time soaper to become a hit, back in 1964.
Continuing sagas – “Dallas,” “Knots Landing,” “Dynasty,” “Falcon Crest” – dominated the ratings in the 1980s.
Some serials have failed recently. ABC's “Invasion,” Fox's “Reunion,” NBC's “Heist” and CBS' “Threshold” all flopped ignominiously, leaving fans forever wondering about questions that went forever unanswered.
But other than those disappointed fans, who remembers the failures? Certainly not the network executives and show producers who look only at successes for inspiration.
Nor do they think that viewers, once burned by cancellations of serials,
will be twice-shy when it comes to watching new ones. They won't refuse to watch NBC's "Heroes," "because (ABC) pulled `Invasion,'‚" Jeff Zucker, CEO of
NBC Universal Television Group, has said.
Industry execs are also thinking of something else: DVD sales.
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WHO MOVED MY CHANNELS?
In San Diego, the new CW network will air on Channel 69/Cable 5, the former home of the WB network. The channel's call letters will remain KSWB, but it will be dubbed “San Diego's CW 5.” The local UPN outlet formerly known as XUPN has become My Network TV 13. It has new call letters (XDTV), but it still airs on Channel 49/Cable 13. My Network TV 13 made its Sept. 5 debut with “Desire” and “Fashion House,” two English-language telenovelas.
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In the age of "Dallas," the weakness of serials was that nobody watched the
reruns. Once you knew who shot J.R. Ewing, there was no point in watching
again, or even catching a rerun of an episode you missed the first time
around. Unlike, say, "Law & Order," an evergreen that runs and runs forever in
syndication, "Dallas" had the afterlife of a dandelion. In the parlance of the
trade, there was no "back end" money in serials.
Today, fans buy DVD packages of complete seasons by the millions, and those
same fans return to watch the next new season as it unfolds. Not only is there
plenty of back end in serials, the back end helps stimulate the front end.
DVD sales last year, John Rash noted, helped boost excitement over "24,"
"so they had their greatest commercial and creative success in the recent
season."
Rash, senior vice president and director of broadcast negotiations at the
Campbell Mithun ad agency in Minneapolis, thinks that TV fans will find much
to like in the new batch of serials.
"The overall quality is good enough that there should be more successes this season than last," he said. "I think it's one of the better seasons of the last several years.
"In an industry that has a 99 percent failure rate, that's not like walking
into the Louvre. But the shows generally are more sophisticated, more
introspective and thus more interesting than they have been."
Traditionally, serials have had a difficult time building audiences over a
season. Viewers often think that once they've missed the first few episodes,
it may be too late to catch up. Fox's "Vanished" began last month, Rash said,
and "already those who haven't followed it will have difficulty keeping up."
Ed Robertson, a Vallejo author of several books on past TV series, said that serialization can get diehard fans so involved in "muddled, complicated"
stories that "you forget that the plot no longer makes sense."
But are there too many serials, more than the average viewer will care to
follow? Rash doesn't think so.
"Going overboard is in the DNA of network television," he said. "If they're
going to go overboard with a genre, this is a compelling and creative
storytelling device. The scripts are sophisticated enough that they may have
above-average success. This is a better direction in which to overload their
schedules than the forensic frenzy of the last few seasons."
Robertson believes there may be too many serials for the average viewer to
watch faithfully. "How many appointment series does the average person watch?"
he proposed. "Can you TiVo something and get caught up that way? It depends on
whether you can watch TV 50 hours a week, and sleep and work and have a life."
Robert P. Laurence: (619) 293-1892; bob.laurence@uniontrib.com. See past
columns, and read the Remote Control Web log at www.sosd.com/tvradio.
