Scheduling kept ‘30 Rock’ from getting its due
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By MELISSA OLSON
Thursday, September 6, 2007 2:29 PM CDT
For the Herald
When I was in elementary school, my television viewing was all about ABC’s special TGIF lineup. Every Friday night, my sisters and I would spread out a towel in the living room, put down a couple of formerly-frozen pizzas, and watch Family Matters, Sabrina the Teenage Witch, Boy Meets World, and so on.
The shows changed, the pizzas changed, but every fall we knew that there would be a two-hour block of kid-friendly TV to enjoy with our Tombstone — and that we’d have to keep the dog away from the pizza.
Then, when I was in high school, I was obsessed with Must-See-TV on Thursdays. Friends, Will and Grace, Seinfeld… must See TV was awesome, if for no other reason than the security — every single week, we knew we could count on a guaranteed two hours of 30-minute comedies.
Every Monday, you knew it was coming. And every Thursday morning, you knew what you were doing that night.
But all those years I was enjoying network programming, I had no idea just how much thought the networks put into planning it.
There are analysts and experts whose entire job revolves around putting TV shows in the best possible order to achieve the best possible ratings. They create special blocks of programming like the ones I just mentioned, organized around a theme or target audience. And it’s great when it works.
But TV programming is kind of like chess — there’s not only an offensive game. There’s defense, too, and in this case that means putting certain shows up against other networks’ programs to achieve maximum results.
If you’ve got two powerhouse hours of TV in a row, it might be a good idea to put one of your stars up against another powerhouse playing on a different network on a different night and time. If it works, it takes ratings away from the other network.
Of course, if it doesn’t work, it means taking ratings away from yourself.
And that’s just one possible move. You can also move your weak players against another network’s powerhouse, in order to push your own ratings even lower, so you’re more justified in canceling your low-rated show. Or you can use one of your strong players to prop up weaker shows.
Kind of fun, right? Yeah, all the strategic planning can be entertaining, and fantasy football has nothin’ on second-guessing network execs.
But like any other corporate war, there are an unfortunate number of casualties involved in network scheduling. Sometimes really great shows are overlooked entirely because of their terrible time slots.
One of the shows that kept getting overlooked last season was “30 Rock,” Tina Fey’s comedy about behind-the-scenes life at a Saturday Night Live-like fictional sketch show.
Fey created “30 Rock” after serving a number of years as head writer (and ‘Weekend Update’ anchor) on SNL, so it’s safe to say she knows what she’s doing.
And after a bit of an uneven start, “30 Rock” gleefully erupted as the best new comedy of the 2006-2007 season. Every episode is a perfectly-crafted little madcap comedy, filled with hysterical facial expressions and extraordinary one-liners (Tracy, the nutty star of the show-within-the-show, solemnly advises an intern, with just the right delivery, to “treat every week like its Shark Week.”)
The show is full of detail and creative exuberance, and every single time I watch it makes me wish I was even close to that funny.
The only problem is… not that many people are watching. And this time, I’m willing to bet that it’s not Tina Fey’s fault. Last season, NBC put “30 Rock” up against ABC’s highest-rated show, “Grey’s Anatomy,” and CBS’s highest-rated show, the original “CSI.”
It’s hard to stand up and be counted when you’re surrounded by giants. And just like that, “30 Rock” became a prisoner of the ratings war.
Ten years ago, they would have had to cancel a show like “30 Rock” for its underperforming ratings. But luckily, television is changing, and network scheduling is becoming less crucial to a show’s success.
Now we have the Internet, we have iTunes, we have TiVo, and we have TV on DVD. In the great network war, we’ve been given the power to make our own decisions.
Missed “Heroes” last season? No problem. Just go rent the DVDs.
Always wanted to check out “How I Met Your Mother?” Just go to the CBS Web site for free downloads.
And if you’re interested in checking out my favorite new show from last year, well, on Tuesday, the first season of “30 Rock” was released into video stores everywhere.
In fact, this week there were a bunch of new TV on DVD releases: Desperate Housewives, The Office, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Nip/Tuck, Prison Break, Robot Chicken, etc.
Some of it’s brilliant, some of it’s OK, but the cool thing is, you can now bypass the whole TV schedule mess entirely.
Scheduling has been around as long as there have been multiple networks. But TV is changing, and we’re getting more and more say in what we can watch, and when.
As the fall season approaches, think about what you want to watch. And then find your own way to do it, despite how the marketing geniuses try to set things up for you. And remember, my friends, to keep on living every week like its Shark Week.
Melissa Olson was born and raised in Chippewa Falls. She graduated from the University of Southern California with a degree in film and television, and works in Madison for the television program Discover Wisconsin. E-mail comments and questions to Melissa at mfo.usc@gmail.com.
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