Have you checked out the proposed new schedule for the fall? I certainly hope that this is just a beta. If not, service pack 1 for the season better be ready when mid season comes.

Seriously, every new television season we read about how the viewing audience is being eroded by name your reason here. It is no wonder that cable, satellite, and the internet are all taking a huge chunk out of the big 4’s viewing audience.

Over on AOL, a view of the shows that are being postponed for the mid-season are recounted. Many of these are new, and so simply being put off a little is no big deal. The ones like ‘Lost’ and ‘24′ are doing nothing to maintain viewer loyalty - after a while the habit to view is broken. This happens nearly every year when shows are pre-empted for sporting events. The number of shows that have died well before interest lulled, due to extended pre-emption are too numerous to mention. (One that always sticks in my mind is MacGyver, which was nowhere near being burned out, but lost viewers as it was lost to extended ABC coverage of Monday Night Football.)

It also seems that the networks have ceded Saturday nights to anything else, as every one of them have repeats of prior shows in the week. There is no new content planned for any Saturday night of the regular season. Note to networks: This isn’t a good idea, as most of what you offer is not that good the first time, and most who are interested have VCRs, DVRs, or computers that can record the first showing. The repeat view concept only works for the premium cable channels because the content provided sometimes needs to be presented at times when little ones are not in the room.

For me, NBC offers absolutely nothing of interest, again. I find this especially strange, as the NBC sub-networks, USA, SciFi, and Bravo, all offer much I like to watch.

ABC has made an enemy of me, after the summer disappointment of Traveler. It was the last in a long line of series wiped out by stupidity, and apparent lack of respect for the profit motive - many of the series’ I remember being canceled  were high in the ratings. I refuse to watch any episodic show on that network until it makes it through a complete season. 

I find very little new on ABC that demands I give it even a casual perusal. ‘Pushing Daisies’ looks to be a bad retread of ‘6 Feet Under’ and since the latter was possible on HBO, one wonders what could be accomplished, that would be worthwhile, with the constraints of the ABC censors.

Fox suffers the same stupidity as ABC, only on a grander scale. It refuses to give many shows a chance to air the number of shows originally completed.  This makes the sense belonging to those network heads come into question, as time has shown that many shows lasting year after year were slow starters.  On this network, the only thing worth viewing, until the return of ‘24′, is the brilliant ‘House’, which deserves a better network to gain more viewers. (Perhaps this is why USA network has same season re-runs.)

The offerings from the basic cable channels are, once again, outshining the efforts of the ‘big 4′. Shows like ‘Burn Notice’, Monk, Psych, Damages, Rescue Me, Nip/Tuck, The Riches, My Boys, Welcome to the Parker, Blowout, and Army Wives all rise well above the level of quality that shows up on the big networks.

Perhaps we should all stop referring to them as the ‘big’ networks.

I’ve always been a big watcher of PBS, and with ‘regular’ television giving so poor a showing this fall, I’m sure I’ll be watching it more and more. 

(as I look at this after the spell check, I am also reminded that I’m not reading as much as I used to, perhaps a return to more of that would be good)

Tags: network television, abc, nbc, cbs, fox, fall schedules