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How To Kill A TV Show

It looks as though Channel Seven is trying to get one of it’s US drama’s to fail and die a slow death. Maybe they want Viola Davis to come out here and solve the mystery, although there isn’t much to figure out.

A recurring problem is that they refuse to fast track an American show. A majority of the shows we air here from overseas will start in September, but due to that being the season ratings are low in Australia, the networks will hold off on shows and air them in February “after the Tennis”.

This worked fine and well in the pre-internet days. Although over the past ten years people have got smarter. The internet allows us to communicate with the rest of the world, and when people started to realise we were getting the raw end of the deal, piracy started to rise.

Now there is stupid and incredibly stupid. Most times the networks are stupid. Every year they will advertise the hell out of the biggest shows they acquired from the states. Anyone remember that summer where every time you would turn on Channel Seven, they would be showing a ad for Revenge with Coldplay’s “Paradise” blasting through the speaker. Me too.

By the time February rolled around everyone was watching was watching Revenge. When Seven went to air season two the following year, there had been a massive ratings drop. Reason being many of the die hard Revenge fans would of been watching it on their laptops hours after the US in September the year before.

So that was being stupid, now Seven have taken it to a new level, in a bid to be what I’m calling “incredibly stupid”. This years big show Seven wanted everyone to know about was Shona Rhimes’ How To Get Away With Murder. Like always Seven decided it would be a good idea to wait until “after the Tennis”.

After a good four months of ad’s for the show, they finally got around to putting it on February 10th in a 9PM time slot. 9PM isn’t terrible, but 8.30PM is much better, due to a super sized MKR every night that wasn’t going to happen. The 8.30PM vs 9PM is a whole other story, so I’ll get back on track.

Even though the first episode was five months old by that point it still got decent ratings in Australia. Jump forward to around April and the show is put on hold for a month due to Easter. Every year they make the same mistake of stoping the flow of shows for two weeks, due to Easter being a non-ratings period. Can we scrap that idea?

This past week HTGAWM came back on our screens. The first season of Murder was a short on with only fifteen episodes, so by this time the whole first season has finished and is ready to be downloaded for your binge watching pleasures. The 10th episode (out of 15) aired this week at 9.45PM. An even latter start time will not help its case, and since it’s had a month off, many people have forgotten about it, and the ratings were nowhere in comparison to what it managed at the start of the year.

Seven has now decided to make the problem worse. The show is back off again for two weeks, will be replaced by Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares. It will return Monday the 1st of June, starting at 10.40PM. What a joke. If you felt not enough viewers tuned in at 9.45PM, why will they sit up an hour latter.

By the time the season final airs in Australia, it will be 18 weeks since it aired in the United States.

This is a constant problem with Australian television. If you are able to find a show that you like that isn’t about building, cooking, weight loss or dating, it’s more than likely that the show will either a) be moved from night to night constantly or b) have a terribly start time.

Okay so I think I just explained how to kill a TV show, was I also able to convince you why illegal downloading is so high in the land down under too?

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Pilots for the 2015-16 season that I would want to watch

ABC
-Drama
The Broad Squad
Inspired by true stories, the project follows the first four women to graduate from Boston’s Police Academy in 1978. Bess Wohl will write and executive-produce with Stephanie Savage, Josh Schwartz, Len Goldstein and Aaron Kaplan.

Kingmakers
When his sister is found dead during her freshman year at an elite Ivy League university, a young man adopts a new identity to infiltrate the school and its century-old secret society – consisting of privileged students, ambitious faculty, and high-profile alums – in order to investigate her death. Sallie Patrick will write and executive-produce.

Mix
A one-hour dramedy that explores the realities of modern-day families—multi-cultural, multi-generational, built through divorces, affairs and adoptions—set against the backdrop of a revered family restaurant at a crossroads. Jennifer Cecil will write and executive-produce with Le Train Train, Rashida Jones and Will McCormack.

-Comedy
Chev & Bev
A comedy starring Chevy Chase and Beverly D’Angelo as two baby boomers who are fun, relevant and living a selfish retirement when their world is turned upsisde down and they are suddenly left to raise their grandchildren. Brad Copeland will write and executive-produce with Aaron Kaplan.

Untitled Dan Savage project
Based on the life of boundary-pushing columnist Dan Savage, a picture perfect family is turned upside down when the youngest son comes out of the closet. What seems like the end of their idyllic life turns out to be the beginning of a bright new chapter when everyone stops pretending to be perfect and actually starts being real. David Windsor and Casey Johnson will write and executive-produce with Savage, Brian Pines and Dan McDermott.

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My 2014-15 TV Schedule

Okay, let’s imagine I had time every night to sit and watch as much television as possible. And imagine that I actually lived in America (one can dream). Well this is what my week would look like.

SUNDAY
08.00 – The Simpsons (FOX)
08.30 – Brooklyn Nine-Nine (FOX)
09.00 – Resurrection (ABC)
10.00 – Revenge (ABC)

MONDAY
08.00 – Gotham (FOX)
DVR – The Voice (NBC)

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I’m still LOST

Last week Lost showrunners Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof came together for a panel discussion with former cast members, to celebrate the ten years that have passed since the show debuted, at PaleyFest. Stars Josh Holloway, Ian Somerhalder, and Jorge Garcia shared stories from the set, as Cuse and Lindelof once again shot down the idea that the characters were dead the whole time. Other items discussed were how the original Pilot would of worked, how little each cast member knew about there own episode (Yunjin Kim, who played Sun Kwon, knew only that her character could understand English while shooting the first episode), and the Nikki and Paulo situation. Cuse then said something, which I completely agreed with.

“Lost was a show about people on an island in the middle of nowhere, but metaphorically they were lost in their lives [and in need of] purpose and redemption,” Cuse said to a packed Dolby Theater in Hollywood. This is something I realised long before the series final, titled “The End”, was shown on television sets all around the world. The flashbacks, which could sometimes take up to one third of an episode, weren’t there for no reason at all.

The series final, which was watched by 13.5 million households, left viewers with many questions regarding the events they had witnessed during the groups stay on the island. One in particular that was brought up was who was shooting at Sawyer and Juliet’s group while they were on a canoe out at seas, during the period of time when they were suffering another island time shift. The events occur in the season five episode “The Little Prince”. Lindelof reveals, that a scene was written for the finale season, which would of explained it, but thought it would be much cooler to keep it to himself. “We wrote that scene, and it was going to air in the final season, and it definitely answered who was on the outrigger. But all the writers … thought it would be much cooler not to answer. … The scene exists on paper. Years from now, for some excellent charity, we’ll probably auction it off.” Okay, I’m all for donating to charity, but can this auction be now so I can find this out. If it was important enough for someone to be shooting at Sawyer during the time shift, then it’s important enough to tell us why it was happening.

Cuse thinks answering every single mystery would be “didatic and boring”, but I beg to differ. As I said I understand the meaning of the show, but they also added a Sci-Fi element to the show to hook viewers in. If you’re going to grab our attention for six years, please explain what was happening. The first season averaged 18.4 million viewers, all hooked into what the monster was, and what was the purpose of the hatch, and how Locke could suddenly walk. Before the panel, Exodus (Part 1) was aired, which (along which the second part) I would class as, not only one of the best episodes of the show, but one of the best hours of television that I have witnessed. At the end of the second part,
M. C. Gainey as Tom, then credited as “Other”, delivers the chilling line, “We’re gonna have to take the boy”. Walt is snatched from his father’s arms, and the raft Walt, Michael, Sawyer, and Jin were traveling no his blown up. Twenty two days later in island time, Walt and Michael are reunited, and in exchange for Jack, Kate, Sawyer, and Hurley, they leave the island together. But it was never fully explain why the Others wanted Walt. I know they will most likely never answer every little question that each individual fan has, but I’m dying to know this one.