I used to watch a lot of television. There were several shows every night that were interesting and/or funny. However, this season, and the past few seasons, I find myself with nothing to watch four nights out of the week. Now, while this is good for me because I do more reading and exercising, as well as finding other things to do outside the house, it’s probably bad for the people who make television shows. I don’t see commercials that sell me stuff I don’t need and I’m not buying the shows when they are released later on DVD. The best new medium, downloadable episodes, are overpriced and the people who make the shows don’t get any revenue sharing for what they have created without a fight.
One show that I watch, and enjoy far more than the original, is Battlestar Galactica. When it premiered three years ago I was skeptical. I enjoyed the original series in all its cheesiness and had fond memories of watching it as a kid. However, this reimaging was refreshing, intelligent, and just plain good science fiction. I’ve been hooked ever since. I even watched all ten webisodes that aired on The Scifi Channel‘s website even though they aren’t necessary to pick up the story. They do, however, flesh out the story a little bit more to understand why Duck, Jammer and Gaeta are doing what they do (If you live outside the USA, try Youtube to see them, since they’re free and there’s no residuals coming in.).
Battlestar Galactica has made TV interesting and continues to get very good reviews but, as with most shows I like, they are too high brow and require too much thinking for most of the television viewing audience. ABC seems to think that all your shows must have kids thrown in for it to be successful. CBS thinks that over dramatization and showing blood and guts is what works, while NBC has recently announced that they believe reality shows will cost less than quality TV so they’re cutting back on the shows that have been their bread and butter for the past twenty years.
NBC is also trying to keep even more of the profits by denying the writers of Battlestar Galactica, The Office and Heroes their rightful residuals from their recent webisodes. CBS is in a similar prediciment with shows, such as CSI, but so far their have been no complaints or lawsuits. ABC caved earlier this year to the makers of Lost and renegotiated contracts to provide for the new technology. Ronald Moore, executive producer of Battlestar Galactica made sure, on his blog, that the writers for the webisodes were credited. He has now refused to make any more webisodes until the matter can be sorted out. Online TV streaming is a serious matter and needs to be addressed quickly before those that do the creating are shut out of payments that are rightfully theirs.
NBC is a good example of what’s wrong with American television in the 21st century. They seem completely inept in what their doing and happily tell people everything is alright. The Scifi Channel, which is a subsidiary of NBC, canceled their once popular Farscape over disputes of how much a show should cost to produce. They used their “out” clause to back out of a fifth season and, in its place, put the horrible Tremors: The Series, which lasted only one year. Bonnie Hammer sited that television viewers don’t like to watch serialized shows and Farscape was too much of a serial and costing them more and more money. However, she never took advantage of a new medium, iTMS. It could have been a huge launching pad for such a show with a worldwide audience. She did, however, receive a nice promotion.
The Scifi Channel went further by juggling their schedule around, causing Battlestar Galactica’s ratings to slip a bit last year and, this year, they’ve announced the cancellation of Stargate: SG1, despite it having solid, though slightly lower ratings this year, it’s tenth overall. MGM, who created Stargate: SG1, is prevented by The Scifi Channel from promoting the show to other networks in the hopes of keeping it alive. The Scifi Channel will not negotiate on the matter. Instead, MGM will most likely be forced to go the direct to video or online route, shutting The Scifi Channel and NBC out of any further profits.
This of course, doesn’t even begin to relate to how The Scifi Channel doesn’t air much science fiction on their channel anymore. They’ve opted to go for the quick cash and bring wrestling into the fold. The last couple of years, they have also put far too much horror on the channel, believing that fans of science fiction must be fans of horror as well.
Yesterday, Reuters ran a story that NBC is cutting 700 jobs, roughly 5% of their workforce. Instead of building long-term success, as they have for twenty years, they have fallen into the rut of the quick buck,, leading to their slip to third in the overall ratings. Cutting jobs will only force them to continue down the cheapest route to supposedly higher ratings.
If the major television stations continue to snub the creators of their shows, we will be left with programming hours full of wrestling and climbing for dollars. The refusal to pay content creators their rightful payments and the fundamental lack of understanding of their viewing audience will only cause ratings to slip even further. They will, indeed, be the creators of their own demise as talented people, such as Ron Moore, take their content online, eliminating the need for their outdated mode of watching television.
