There are fewer new episodes of scripted shows, yet mid-season replacements aren't seeing a ratings surge. Even American Idol is down from last year.
Which goes to show we won't watch just anything. It's easy to be snide about the taste of the general public in looking at the ratings charts, but the fact remains: we make conscious choices with our remote controls. We don't just consume whatever the TV industry wants to throw at us, even when it happens to be the only new thing on the air that doesn't involve dancing celebrities, Donald Trump, or Simon Cowell.
The Wire, in its fifth and final acclaimed season, was off to a slow start in the ratings, and they're falling each week. October Road, which debuted well last year, is registering dismal ratings now. Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, dropped to 8.6 million last week after its football-stoked debut of 18 million.
8.6 million is bordering on failure for an American network drama. Translate that to the Canadian population and it works out to about 800,000. And during this US writers strike that started with Canadian producers crowing about how American networks were showing interest in buying their series, and continues with them pointing out that they stand to benefit from the lack of competition on US networks, Canadian dramas are faring no better, proportionally speaking.
January is the first time in my (short) memory that we've had anything approaching a Canadian television season, with more than a show or two sprinkled randomly around the schedule. Besides shows like Heartland and Da Kink in My Hair that launched in the fall and were still airing new episodes, we had CBC with four new scripted shows: The Border, jPod, Sophie, and MVP; Citytv's premiere of Murdoch Mysteries; and Global presenting The Guard.
The Guard is the ratings champion so far at 800,000 for its series premiere. Global sent out a media release trumpeting its win over the more-ballyhooed CBC slate, which was a refreshing change from them sending a Canadian TV website a media release trumpeting the fact that House squashed Intelligence in the ratings. So bragging about 800,000 viewers for its Canadian show is a good start for a Canadian network, I guess.But those ratings are not good. In fact, they are bad. These are new, expensive, well-publicized shows airing in primetime, in prime television-watching season against very little competition thanks to that writers strike. I hope positive word of mouth builds and turns some of them into hits, but they're not there yet, no matter how much the networks try to spin it that way.
CBC at one point floated 1 million viewers as their target for a hit show, and it's not as arbitrary a figure as some would say. 1 million viewers would put a show at the low end of the top 30 programs in Canada. Top 30 is not an unreasonable measure for a hit. The current crop of shows, the great white northern hopes, have not managed to crack that list.
What does not making the top 30 mean? None of these supposedly successful new Canadian shows managed to beat Dr. Phil, Jeopardy and Access Hollywood, The Ghost Whisperer, Las Vegas, or the on-life-support ER, never mind repeats of certified hits like CSI.
They have, however, managed to beat Intelligence, The Jane Show, and Whistler. So this is how we define Canadian ratings success: not sucking as much as the last crop of Canadian shows.
Some will blame the audience for not giving anything Canadian a chance, ignoring the fact that they have, and do, and three current shows are proof of that. Corner Gas and the Rick Mercer Report regularly make the top 20, and Little Mosque on the Prairie occasionally peeks its head into the top 30. These are shows that scream Canadiana and don't seem to frighten the Canadians.
But finger pointing is easier than looking in a mirror.
Jim Henshaw holds that mirror up in his latest post. He's got a lot to say about what's wrong with the industry, that makes it hold mediocrity up as success. He's talking about quality rather than ratings, mostly, but our points are similar. If this is what the Canadian audience is being sold as success, no wonder we're hugely skeptical that our industry is even capable of recognizing excellence, never mind creating it. It's good enough seems to be their motto.
How do you achieve success when you don't have the guts to define it? There's something wrong with an industry that sets the bar for success at 1 million then is smugly satisfied with fewer than 800,000. There's something wrong with a public broadcaster that can't decide whether to nurture low-rated but quality shows like Intelligence or abandon them for higher-rated shows that are still neither critical darlings nor popularly successful by their own measure.
I can't speak to exactly what's wrong with the industry. I can only speak for what's wrong with the audience: we haven't seen anything to take our minds off the lack of our favourite shows yet. The industry can raise its voice in explanation, but the audience will be too busy speaking with our remotes to listen.
