LIFE could be the next big hit on television, if NBC wanted to…
If you’ve ever watched LIFE (and love it as much as I do), you probably know the amazing potential the show has. But, sadly, it seems NBC does not. Because while the show has everything it takes to be a hit, from the writing to the acting to the directing to the originality, it has great stories, characters with depth, humor, it could be a hit.
It could be, yet NBC thinks it’s a show worth of Fridays at 10pm. Now I’m happy as long as they aren’t as stupid as to put it off their schedule, but I’d love for the show to get the recognition it deserves, and I’m sure I’m not the only one.
Here’s a great post I found on a forum some time ago, written by a guy named Schmoker, about how things changed in TV land, expectations from the big networks aren’t the same as they used to be years ago (thank God, since watching TV is a completely new experience nowadays), and looking back at how the first season did in the ratings, an analysis of why LIFE could become a huge hit, if NBC wants it to.
I’m sure any fans of the show, or any TVoholic, will appreciate the read, and here’s hoping that NBC does, too. It truly is a great & wonderful read, I couldn’t recommend it more, really! Here you go (emphasis is mine) :
LIFE’s renewal shows me that the rules have changed on television. Actually, I knew they had changed as early as two years ago, but it’s nice to see that the suits at the networks are starting to understand. Gone are the days when any show is going to capture the entire nation’s attention. Even the top shows of the moment have much smaller viewership than those of the glory days of the 80’s amd early 90’s when it seemed as if viewship levels would never peak. In fact, even the hits of today would likely never have made it through two years in the old days.
NBC finally realized this and renewed LIFE and CHUCK. Today the model must be to find a show that can collect a moderate level of viewers and try and build off of that. If you get lucky and manage to capture everyone right off the bat, fine. But to ever really expect that to happen again is probably folly. We may look back some day and see that DESPERATE HOUSEWIVES was the last show to grab a Top Ten audience from Day One. It’s not that the shows aren’t as good as they used to be, but that it’s that much more difficult to capture people’s attention. Just getting them to sample one episode is an infinitely more difficult task. You can run promos until you are blue in the face, but since only half the people are actually watching your network as were 20 years ago (and 20% of them aren’t even watching the promos as they fast forward through all the breaks), you are never going to be able to drag as many people to the premiere as you once did. But as long as a new show levels off and maintains viewers from week to week, not much more can asked by the networks. Now they have to roll up their sleeves and actually do some work in order to bring more eyes to the party.
In some ways, it is actually a throwback to the old days when nets actually worked at building steady shows into hits, or at least stuck with modest performers so long as they continued to perform modestly. NBC in particular built shows such as CHEERS, SEINFELD, NIGHT COURT, and HILL STREET BLUES into hits by sticking by them through their difficult first years. In fact, some of these shows started off as bombs, but the people at the network would actually look at a show’s quality sometimes and decide that quality was worth fighting for. They didn’t fight for that quality because it was the right thing to do, either, but because they knew that if they could get people to sample, then quality would earn big bucks in the long run.
Personally, I think LIFE could be a huge success with a helping hand from the network, and with a little patience. And this isn’t just because I happen to like the show. I feel that I can recognize when a show is likely to be interesting to the masses. No matter how much I liked Joss Whedon’s verse, I knew that nothing could ever make a show like BUFFY or ANGEL or FIREFLY into a smash. They were too outside the box and too inside the beltway for that. Ditto for any number of shows I have watched over the years and said to myself, “Boy, I love that, but no one else is ever going to.”
But LIFE’s not in that category. LIFE is different. LIFE’s not breaking the mold. It’s only refining it. I watched the pilot with zero expectations, but by the end of it I said to myself, “This could be a huge hit if they could get anyone to sample it.” It has all the elements. There is the perfect blend of brain and heart being put into it. The stories tickle your head, your heart and your funny bone. The ongoing conspiracy is being held back as the B story and not being overdone. The A stories have been good, and sometimes they have been great. Oh, and they have Damien Lewis. I’ve never met anyone who has seen Damien Lewis in anything who didn’t instantly love him. Ask anyone you know who saw BAND OF BROTHERS. I’d bet anything they can instantly recall Lewis when you mention Major Dick Winters to them. People may not know his name, but he’s one of those guys who prompts total recall from people once they remember the character he played.
I’m one of those who feels there is just nothing to watch on television at the moment. Even the shows I follow regularly (and there are not that many) are nothing special in my opinion. In fact, if you asked me right now what the best show on television is, I’d say there is no best show on television. There is literally nothing that I can’t wait to watch any longer. But LIFE has the potential to be something special, and it’s already something very entertaining. I’m betting that if they stick with it (and give it the spot behind HEROES permanently) that LIFE will be a Top 30 show by the end this season, and a Top 20 show or better by the end of next season. The fact that the insipid waste of time that precedes LIFE hasn’t killed it off by now just goes to show that LIFE is clicking with the viewers who watch it. As BIONIC WOMAN ratings continue to fall off, LIFE’s retention gets better and better, causing one to believe that a significant portion of BIONIC WOMAN’s viewers are just marking time until LIFE comes on. For an unheralded 10 PM show to be able to withstand the implosion of it’s highly touted lead in is truly amazing.
Mark my words, if they work at it right, LIFE will become the next gigantic hit drama on television.
A-men to that! I couldn’t have said it better myself, or even as good as Schmoker did, but I wholeheartedly agree with everything he said there. Sadly, as the move of LIFE to Fridays at 10pm suggest, NBC doesn’t seem to realize what they put their hands on. Which is one of the reasons this site exists, to show them the love there is for this show.
And maybe we should also all send them the above letter, to let them know what those of us who’ve seen the show know : if they want to, LIFE could be the next big hit on television !
Who’s with me ??