The Ever-Changing Wasteland
Posted on | May 20, 2004 at 8:12 pm | Comments Off
The TV networks have finished announcing their fall schedules, and it looks like things are really changing in that landscape as they move more and more toward year-round programming and less toward traditional fall premieres. I think this is a good thing, as there is no reason all the new stuff has to start at the same time of year. That’s not how HBO, Showtime, and the cable channels work, and it works pretty well for them.
Here’s a good summation of the schedule:
TVPicks.net Fall 2004 Schedule Grid Preview
Two of my favorite shows, 24 (on Fox) and Alias (on ABC), are not starting their next seasons until January. And it sounds like those seasons will run straight through May without reruns. Though I will be sad to wait that long for them to start, I believe it’s a good idea to do it this way, especially on serial shows like these two. It’s important to not have a 5-week gap between episodes where you can’t remember what happened in the last one. (I pretty much watch only serial shows, so I’d like them to do this with everything I watch.)
I am also happy that “bubble” shows like Arrested Development, Tru Calling, and Enterprise will be returning. Tru Calling definitely picked up toward the end of the season as it acquired more of a direction and an overall story arc. And though there’s a lot of things I don’t like about Enterprise (it’s sometimes hard to think of it as Star Trek at all), the third season has been pretty exciting.
I’m glad to see that CBS is doing more Amazing Race, since it’s pretty much the only reality show worth watching. Even Survivor has gotten stagnant.
I don’t think I’ll be checking out most of the new shows, as they seem to be the same old variations on existing ones. I’ll have to give Joey a try, even though the last couple of seasons of Friends were pretty wretched. But that’s probably it for the comedies. The only drama I’m really interested in is Lost, which is from JJ Abrams (the creator of Alias) and is about a group of plane crash survivors stuck on a weird island – sort of an updated Land of the Lost for adults. I don’t hold out much hope it will be a hit and survive the season though.
The good thing about not having many interesting new shows is that I can devote less time to watching television in the first place, which is always a good thing. Since some of the shows I was watching have been canceled (Angel, Friends, etc.), that also helps.
Latre.