Are the broadcast networks committing suicide? From “Dancing With the Stars” and “Kid Nation” last fall, to the current hype-o-rama for mid-January’s “American Idol” return, it seems the only shows people are really talking about on old-line networks such as CBS and ABC anymore are reality shows — most of which look like something that might well have aired on, well, cheesy cable channels.
First, there is “The Celebrity Apprentice” (tonight at 8 on Channel 9). That one “stars” the likes of Kiss camera-hog Gene Simmons and offed “Sopranos” crook Vincent Pastore. NBC follows that Sunday night with a revival of syndication’s old cheesefest “American Gladiators,” which critics mocked in the early 1990s when it aired in weekend daytime on second-rate local stations.
Meanwhile, formerly cheesy cable channels such as FX, TNT and TBS are increasingly casting off network reruns and replacing them with their own ambitious scripted series — many of which look like something that might well have aired on, well, those “prestige” broadcasters.
It isn’t just highbrow premium-cablers like HBO and Showtime, producing critics’ top-10 contenders these days. Even AMC and Sci Fi are doing it. When it came to water-cooler series in 2007, people were talking about “Mad Men” (AMC), “Damages” (FX), “Dexter” (Showtime) and “The Closer” (TNT). Even lavish miniseries, such as Sci Fi’s “Tin Men.” The networks are in trouble.
If 2007 accelerated that trend — the stuff airing on MyNetwork (formerly UPN) barely rises to the level of trash half the time — then 2008 may well cement it for good.
The writers strike is only part of the problem. The networks were already thinking “outside the box,” which might be construed to mean trying not to think at all. NBC last month announced plans to turn over a two-hour block of prime time to the producers of cable docusoaps “Ice Road Truckers” and “Deadliest Catch” to present their own unspecified unscripted shows.
Of course it’s true the television medium has changed, evolving from a three-network game to a free-for- all among hundreds of channels.
But the networks aren’t simply unfortunate victims in all this. They keep voluntarily abdicating nearly all the long-term advantages they had, which were many, in favor of luring eyeballs fast with flashy trash or luridly hawked mediocrity.
It might be easier to be a rerun repository, too, than to chance the high stakes of high-quality, big-budget and brain-requiring dramas, comedies, miniseries or movies. (CBS’s soon-to-air Western miniseries, “Comanche Moon,” is all the more noteworthy because it’s so the exception these days.)
Of course, that’s pretty much all that has set the broadcast networks apart from, well, everybody else. Hard to believe they’re giving that up to give us psychics (NBC’s “Phenomenon”), lie-detector tests (Fox’s “The Moment of Truth,” bowing Jan. 23), teens caring for tots (NBC’s “The Baby Borrowers,” due Feb. 18) and summer time-filler “Big Brother” three nights a week in, embarrassment of embarrassments, the February sweeps (CBS rushes it back Feb. 12).
