|
Main Page |
 Abrupt Exit: What Does It Mean? The abrupt announcement Tuesday that ABC Entertainment President Steve McPherson is resigning from the network caught much of the industry in a whirlwind. McPherson was scheduled to lead the presentation of ABC's new fall shows to the Television Critics Association tour in a matter of days. The Hollywood Reporter's Kim Masters reported Wednesday McPherson is the subject of an extensive internal sexual harassment investigation by the network. Quoting an unnamed source, Masters reported ABC has been conducting the probe into McPherson's behavior for three weeks. She went on to quote sources saying the allegations involve harassment of "several women, including some executives and on-air talent. The inquiry expanded to include email." The probe is also said, according to Masters' story, include an alleged incident at a company retreat. An attorney for McPherson, Tom Hoberman, told the trade publication the alleged actions were "situations which can easily be misinterpreted or misrepresented." Thus explains the suddenness of the resignation, details of which will probably continue to play out in the broadcast media over the next several weeks. In short, McPherson is judged as is any network programmer. Network television, in general, is a what have you done for me lately? business. McPherson took over after the rocky leadership period of Lloyd Braun, whose signature effort was to tell The New York Post he was canceling Who Wants to Be a Millionaire in prime time before he told host Regis Philbin. He is credited with championing four major hits for ABC: Desperate Housewives, Lost, Grey's Anatomy and Dancing with the Stars, the latter of which is the only type of game/contest show which stuck under McPherson's watch. He spearheaded Ugly Betty, which in its first season became the first ABC show to neutralize Survivor, but America Ferrera faded gradually over four years, much as most teen-focused dramas do. However, Lost has ended its run. Betty is over. While Grey's and Housewives are in no immediate jeopardy of cancellation, neither is the blowaway hit of its early years. CBS's Undercover Boss made significant inroads in the spring against Housewives. Grey's now regularly loses the head-to-head race against CBS and is now being clipped in 18-49 age viewers by NBC. Dancing with the Stars remains ABC's most-watched show. I personally have no problem at all that the median age of Dancing viewers is 59 but you know the industry's obsession is with younger audiences. Within the advertising community, having Dancing as your top show is akin to 1968, when Gunsmoke (with the then-oldest demographics in television) again became CBS's highest-rated show. McPherson's alleged explosive temper, particularly inside the company, is probably another contributing factor to his downfall. If so, he is not the first to have a professionally fatal temperament. Lest anyone forget CBS's Jim Aubrey in the mid-1960s, known as "The Smiling Cobra" of network executive suites, was brought down amidst a sea of arrogance and personal behavioral issues, despite the fact that he still had CBS on top. However, the fact is: McPherson has developed but one major hit in the last three years (the Wednesday night sitcom Modern Family) and that alone is not enough to stop the slide ABC has been on since the writers' strike of 2007-08. Network brass want to know where and when the next Housewives, the next Grey's, or the next Dancing will find a way to their schedule. Heavens, they'd take the next Millionaire if it would do what it did 11 years ago. One of the issues some analysts suggest started McPherson's slide was his inability to deliver sufficient standby programming during that strike of two years ago. ABC was so reliant on scripted shows that the network failed to build a reserve of fresh game or contest shows to patch the holes. NBC still had enough life in Deal or No Deal and 1 vs. 100 to plug some of its holes. CBS had the strength of Survivor and The Amazing Race, though a regular season edition of Big Brother fizzled. McPherson inserted a spinoff of Dancing with Dance Wars: Bruno vs. Carrie Ann, a milquetoast format centered around two of the Dancing judges, and managed less than half of the average rating of Dancing with the Stars. He tried reviving a modest summer success, the Canadian-produced Just for Laughs (a knockoff of Candid Camera), to disastrous regular season results. He purchased Duel from former Fox program chief Gail Berman and McPherson's predecessor Braun. Positioned as ABC's week-long Christmas season entry in December 2007, Duel---another adaptation of a European format---laid an egg. One trade publication even quoted McPherson as saying he believed Duel could potentially be the next WWTBAM. While Florida nurse Ashlee Register won one of the biggest quiz show jackpots in the history of television, the format of Duel was far too complex and plodding for casual game show viewers. Host Mike Greenberg, plucked from ESPN2's Mike and Mike in the Morning, was---by direction of the producers---as wooden as a cigar store Indian, a direct juxtaposition to his lively, humorous, entertaining persona in the early morning. The quiz lost viewers with every passing night and finished fourth in its time slot on at least two of the evenings. McPherson actually revived Duel the following spring, just after the strike ended, for five weeks in a less complicated, less lucrative format on Friday nights. Greenberg was given freer reign to inject his natural boyish enthusiasm. However, viewers whose tastes were of the Christmas edition, never returned. A flirtation with bingo in 2007 led to National Bingo Night, a five-week Friday night experiment. The format led to one of the most ambiguous disconnects with viewers in modern television history. Internet users playing along with downloaded cards shot ABC.com to the top of the weekly online page ratings. However, the television show ran fourth in its time slot every week. The reasons were evident to everyone but the ABC executives who forced their ideas on producer Andrew Glassman. On the air, National Bingo Night, which appeared to be a conglomeration of Price Is Right-style games played by audience members, never actually showed the progress of a contestant playing bingo, even though the studio audience ostensibly was playing the game. The host, Ed Sanders, a pickup from ABC's Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, had enthusiasm but possessed a vocal accent that viewers complained was difficult to understand amidst the frenetic game play. Because of the fluctuation between the television ratings and the online participation, McPherson announced he would give Bingo another shot at Christmas but ultimately scuttled the idea in favor of Duel. After the writers' strike, viewers did not return to ABC in the large volume numbers of the period before the walkout. McPherson's schedule relied too heavily on aging series and most of the newcomers could not gain serious traction. Also in the game show category, McPherson commissioned a pilot for Deal or No Deal and the series was actually announced for a six-week run Wednesdays at 9 on the ABC schedule in the spring of 2005. McPherson, at the eleventh hour, for reasons which still puzzle insiders, pulled the plug on Deal two weeks before its scheduled premiere. NBC picked up the option. With Howie Mandel hired as host and a Christmas week five-night blitz, Deal became the Peacock Network's biggest hit. McPherson did make game show fans happy early in his tenure when he brought back the WWTBAM package as Super Millionaire (with a $10 million jackpot) in February and May 2004 as a series of week-long late evening specials with Philbin back as host. The premiere, Feb. 22, 2004, scored a 10.4 rating and all but two of the nights won their time slots during the two-sweep series. The 18-49 age ratings, which sank toward the end of the original network run, climbed as high as a 5.0. Yet, McPherson mysteriously did not try Millionaire again until last summer's 10th anniversary specials in August. Despite a fair amount of on-air publicity, the format appeared to be more of an old home week visit with past winners and no contestant threatened the $1 million jackpot. The 6.9 average rating was well below the 12.1 average of the August 1999 launch and the Tuesday night episodes ran third in their time slot. Another attempt to add celebrities at the end of each show, no doubt forced by McPherson and his program staff, did nothing to boost the show's performance and served predominantly to anger hardcore fans of Millionaire. Published accounts indicate McPherson's explosiveness with his ABC superiors and the internal probe were a significant factor in his departure and those may well have been a catalyst for the abruptness of the timing of his resignation. However, had ABC not been on a downward slide----and that includes the ratings of its three remaining daytime soap operas, network brass may have given McPherson a shade more rope. Already, game show fans are e-mailing to ask if McPherson's quickly-named successor, former ABC Family chief Paul Lee, will be a champion of game or contest shows. Don't hold your breath. Lee comes from a network he revamped into what some critics regard as a "cool" channel for teens to watch. He did so by developing shows which go against the grain of the name "family" in ABC Family. If you have ever seen Secret Life of an American Teenager or Pretty Little Liars, you know those are not the kinds of series that have won the heart and soul of moms and pops with traditional values. Yet, ABC Family has become the top cable network in ratings for 18-34 age women. That is what Lee will be expected to deliver at big ABC. In short: Lee has never developed a game show. I wouldn't wager on him starting now.  No More Mark Burnett Ten years ago, Mark Burnett became a major player in network television by showing how greedy, deceptive and mean the human race can be. From the moment Rich Hatch and Sue Hawk invaded our screens as two of the most abrasive non-actors in television history, Survivor inscribed the testimony that mean-spirited people add up to ratings and profits on network television. Thus was born the era of the game opera. Four years ago, HGTV launched a summer contest (I know, the Television Academy refers to them as "reality competition" shows) series. Design Star featured a series of weekly eliminations leading to an ultimate winner earning his or her own weekly show on HGTV. Only one champion, first season winner David Bromstad, still has a regular series on the home design network. Year two winner, Kim Myles, faded after last year. Subsequent champs Jennifer Bertrand and Antonio Ballatore both quickly fizzled. Ballatore even had two shots, including a midseason re-formatting of his The Antonio Project. The first four years, HGTV's Clive Pearse of the now-canceled Designed to Sell was the energetic and upbeat host and even when telling defeated contestants they had to go, Pearse did so without an abrasive tone. From 2006-08, the eliminations were determined by home viewer vote. Last year, HGTV host Vern Yip was joined by former Trading Spaces colleague Genevieve Gorder and Divine Design diva Candice Olson as judges. The veteran trio became the final arbiters each week. The show was shot on video tape and the competitive design challenges had a live television feel. The judges had a tone more of a parallel to the former Dream Job panel on ESPN, offering honest and direct evaluations but without a bitter, acerbic taste. As often happens with a four-year-old show, the ratings went into a slight decline last season. So what does HGTV do? Turns the whole production over to Mark Burnett. So what do we have now? If you didn't already realize this was a design show, you'd say you were watching The Apprentice. Design Star is now shot with a film filter. The competition is now structured with the focus on creating conflict and contrived drama, rather than on design talent. The show is edited now with quicker, crisper soundbites that more frequently bring out the testiness of the players with each other, rather than a positive, healthy competition. Vern Yip, one of the friendliest and most easygoing personalities on television is now Donald Trump Lite. Vern is now the centerpiece of the evaluations and his responses are now edited to reveal less upbeat energy and more caustic, incisive commentary. Without the credibility of Pearse or a strong replacement as host, the entire show's shoulders largely hang on viewers accepting Yip as the opposite of what they remember of him from Trading Spaces and his first HGTV venture, Deserving Design. So far, Vern is so out of character, he appears to be scripted. Design Star is sorely missing Pearse as a buffer between the contestants and the judges. As for his two female counterparts, if I were Candice Olson, I would have mailed in my comments on at least two of this season's shows. Whether the Canadian 6-foot-5 Olson, one of the most energetic of HGTV's design emcees, just cannot bring herself to beome caustic, on two editions this year, her verbal remarks were edited completely from the final evaluation while Yip dominated the project grading. Gorder, who presides over both Dear Genevieve and Battle on the Block, has her moments----but clearly this has become Yip's show. As hard as Burnett appears to be coaching Vern, the 41-year-old Atlantan just cannot be another Trump. As if Burnett has not done enough to Apprentice-up Design Star, the losing contestant is shown on the city street outside the studio, rolling his or her suitcase toward an awaiting car. When you take a show that had a perfectly entertaining texture and turn it over to a producer who reworks the format so thoroughly that a viewer can identify every element of his hand on the production, you've gone overboard. This year's Design Star is now down to five finalists and I could not care less who wins it. The show is much too dark and too negative for my tastes. I want Design Star, not The Apprentice. An hour earlier on Sunday nights, HGTV's sister channel Food Network offers its annual The Next Food Network Star. While the competition there is spirited and the judges---led by the popular Bobby Flay---lay it on the line, a viewer comes away from the cooking playoffs without feeling as if the contestants have been investigated by Eliot Ness and The Untouchables. The Next Food Network Star is still fun television. Ironically, the show is produced by CBS (through its Eye Too Productions subsidiary). Let this serve notice to Scripps Networks: you may think you've added the Crown Price of Reality with Burnett but he has ruined Design Star. Don't get the same idea next year with The Next Food Network Star.  Think Music Still in the Wrong Key? Yep. Still sounds like the Clydesdales rounding a snowy curve at Christmas. :-) TheGameShowFix.com is a non-incorporated news website. The material used is the creation of the webmaster, unless otherwise noted. Use of stillframes from broadcasts is part of fair use news arrangements. Any reproduction or other use of the accounts published here without the expressed written consent of TheGameShowFix.com is strictly prohibited. At no time has TheGameShowFix.com or its predecessor, TVgameshows.net, ever been offered for public sale, such as in a stock offering or any financial transaction. Any attempt to engage in such practice is illegal and strictly forbidden. |
|