One rumor had NBC opening up a second night of comedy, that was supported by the number of comedies pilots picked up.  Said rumor had the comedies going up against ABC Comedy Wednesday where only “Modern Family” is a truly solid success.  Why NBC considered putting comedies on the only night ABC had comedies, a bigger mystery.  In the end it didn’t matter, as comedy stays Thursdays-only, for now.  “30 Rock” is finally being yanked out of its post-”Office” time slot which it never deserved getting the ratings bleed.  “Parks and Recreation” is already filming season 3, due to Amy Poehler’s pregnancy.  Those episodes won’t be seen for nearly a year, however, as it is absent from the fall.  Given that “Community” is a black ratings hole, and “Outsourced” won’t be strong, P&R as well as other mid-season comedies could be seen sooner rather than later.  Also noticeable, NBC is keeping Thursday all-comedy, scheduling hour-long comedy “Love Bites” in the 10 pm timeslot.  That should be strong.  (sarcasm intended).

Mondays remains action-adventure night.  “Chuck” stays at 8 and actually gets a fall berth for once, leading into “The Event” at 9 and “Chase” at 10, where NBC is hoping to fill the void left by “24.”  Given how weak a performer the perennial bubble show “Chuck” is, it’s questionable using it as a lead-in, but its fans won’t complain.  Now if only they’d multiply.  That wasn’t a judgment on “Chuck’s” quality, just an eyebrow raise at how poor a performer it is yet is being used to prop up a troublesome night.

“Parenthood” is also a bit of a surprise.  The show was never intended as a 10 pm drama and it definitely doesn’t feel like one.  After the crash and burn of “The Jay Leno Show,” that’s just where “Parenthood” ended up, and while it has struggled with weak ratings in the total viewers column, given how small its overall audience is, it makes its above-average (for NBC) demo performance that much more impressive.  So, rather than shift too much around, NBC is taking the if-it-ain’t-broke-don’t-fix-it approach and leaving it right where it is.

In summary, here is a list of shows canceled by NBC from the 2009-2010 season:
“Heroes,” “The Jay Leno Show,” “Law & Order” “Mercy,” “Trauma.”

And here is the NBC fall schedule, as you’ll probably be ignoring much of it, come September.

Sundays

7:00 – Football Night in America
8:15 – NBC Sunday Night Football

Sundays (starting in March)

7:00 – Dateline NBC
9:00 – Minute to Win It
10:00 – Celebrity Apprentice

Mondays

8:00 – Chuck
9:00 – The Event
10:00 – Chase

Tuesdays

8:00 – The Biggest Loser
10:00 – Parenthood

Wednesdays

8:00 – Undercovers
9:00 – Law & Order: SVU
10:00 – Law & Order: Los Angeles

Thursdays

8:00 – Community
8:30 – 30 Rock
9:00 – The Office
9:30 – Outsourced
10:00 – Love Bites

Fridays

8:00 – Who Do You Think You Are/School Pride
9:00 – Dateline NBC
10:00 – The Outlaw

Midseason: The Cape, Friends with Benefits, Harry’s Law, The Paul Reiser Show, Perfect Couples

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Looks like it! He was already ‘killed’ off last season but came back in Sylar’s body (though he has been MIA the past few weeks save for a small glimpse).Reports are coming in he is the HERO who will be leaving the show come early January. How many more people can the show dump before the show becomes cheap enough to head over to cable?

Bye-bye ‘flying man’.

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I’m told:  not likely, but anything is possible.  First they’ve already cut the costs down and numbers are trickling back up as long as the cheerleader might be gay.  Throw in the fact that the Peacock currently has nothing on the air doing a whole lot better as far as dramas go and you’ve got your answer when you combine that with DVD Sales & oversea sales.

How Do You Stop The Ratings Bleeding?  Add Zima and…

Have Her Kiss The Cheerleader

Will it make the inevitable move to Friday?  Probably.  Have the producers been told to consider an ending?  I’m most positive they have.  HEROES has no plan, and I’m certain Gaspin has demanded they come up with one.  Is it possible that NBC will green light a new short chapter to end it all?  Possibly.  However I see a full final 5th season would get them to the magical 100 episodes.   The question is will that air on NBC or somewhere else?  I just don’t see this series dying with the solid DVD sales it provides despite the show sucking.  The costs are getting low enough for it to live on cable.  Can it pull a 2.0 on Cable?  Yeah?  That’s a success for many networks.

It may end on NBC (and it’s a huge possibility that extra episodes may be ordered to end it, to have it live on with CHUCK), but the finances say it would be stupid for it to end this year.  Get the show on another network and get rid of Kring and Universal might be able to squeeze out some more money from the franchise.  For NBC it doesn’t make sense, for Universal it does.  Which is an interesting situation.

And its probably about time. The show has once again come to a grinding halt with stories going no where, plot lines left dangling, characters disappearing for several episodes and Sylar trying to figure out if he is good or evil. Sigh.

Since NBC already ordered a shortened 19 episode Season, perhaps they will give Producers the final 3 to let them wrap up everything? Looks like Gaspin is serious about trying to fix the Network. (And ordering 6 more episodes of CHUCK is a good sign he is serious about keeping the show).

If TRAUMA goes the way it should (to the trash heap) then NBC has a few choices.  One of them is to move HEROES back to its old time slot and bring back CHUCK early.  It appears like this is a serious idea being bandied about.  The idea that CHUCK may be back in January is absurd.  The Olympics would kill any momentum it might get from its premiere.  That would be stupid and Gaspin isn’t BS.

Will CHUCK return early?  The future of TRAUMA may tell us

Is it likely?  Well, lets consider that NBC had been thinking about moving HEROES to Friday, and had even opened up a time slot for it to go die in, when they canceled SOUTHLAND Season 2 sight unseen.  The idea had been that HEROES was dying and lets just move it.  Then the rest of the shows debuted and HEROES despite having horrible numbers is still better than most of the rest of the trash on NBC.  It’s doing better than TRAUMA, MERCY, etc.  In fact the new shows for NBC just plain suck in the drama department.  Now HEROES is a basic strong point.  If TRAUMA ends (but who is to say, I mean they renewed a show that had pulled a 1.8! in PARKS & RECREATION) early like it should an open spot will appear.  HEROES may do better in its old time slot.  Going up against LIE TO ME is smarter than HOUSE.  Meanwhile CHUCK provided better numbers than HEROES in the earlier time slot in some important demos (and I believe Season 2 averaged a 2.5 demo, while HEROES is averaging the same).

Right now NBC needs just about anything.  It’s sad when USA has better shows than their broadcast partner.  BURN NOTICE and WHITE COLLAR are much better than anything currently on NBC in the drama department.

HANKS tanks

NBC didn’t show MERCY any, well, mercy

Is there no Hero to save HEROES?

TRAUMA is DOA with viewers

ABC extinguishes the flames for EASTWICK

CASTLE crumbles

CW evicts MELROSE PLACE

THE FORGOTTEN lives up to its name

6.27M people tuned in and 500k immediately tuned out before the 2nd hour started.  Which basically means that nearly 10% of American viewers did what I wanted to do last night:  tune out.  The premiere was more of the same awful crap we’ve had to live through since Season 1 ended:  bad writing, characters acting out of character, and Sylar now being weirder (and more stupid) than ever.

NBC wasn’t happy with the numbers and they’re already looking for ways to rid themselves of the black eye that HEROES has become.  The problem is that for Universal the show is still profitable.  As long as it can sell 500k DVDs in the states and continue to sell well overseas to other markets the show is worth producing.  For NBC it’s not worth airing.  The 2.7 in the demo is all that is saving the show.

Still it did better than CASTLE right?  Not exactly.  CASTLE was viewed by nearly 10M people and it scores extremely high with the over $100K per household crowd.  That is one list you want to routinely make if you’re on a bubble.  HEROES does well in the 18-34 and 18-49 categories.  The 2.7 is strong for NBC (shame on you BS where ever you are) and thus the show isn’t necessarily done for. However for its cost and if it was on any other network… it would likely be canceled already.

What should Universal do?  The show costs way too much money for syndication or USA.  It would take huge budget cuts to make the show profitable for NBC.  So what’s a company to do?  My guess is fire the expensive “talent,” and lower the budget to manageable levels for USA or even syndication.  If the show can continue to sell DVDs it can stick around, but it’s sad when the Network airing it is losing money on it, but the production company makes money and good money (and the parent company for both is the same).

Heroes: From the Outside Looking In.  By Eric S.

“Heroes” epitomizes everything that is wrong with NBC.  A strong statement, an awful lot is wrong with NBC, but this show is symbolic of it all.  To be fair, I have not seen a single episode of “Heroes,” so my criticism isn’t of the show itself, but rather is how I view the situation from the outside looking in.  The show did not make it onto
my personal DVR for its freshman season, too much else to watch, too little time.  The way I looked at it, if it did well, maybe I would pick up the DVDs and catch up before season two.  I meant well, but I was busy that summer bombarding CBS with nuts (yeah, I am one of them.)  There would still be time to catch up later, especially if the writer’s strike occurred and I needed filler programming.  I still neglected to catch up on the show because from what I heard from friends who were watching the show was that they were losing interest through season two, a discouraging thing for a potential viewer to hear. Besides that, I still had “Jericho” and now “Moonlight” to worry about!  The biggest “Heroes” faced when it came to attracting me, quite frankly, was its network.

I used to watch NBC a lot, and just like everyone else. I also watched them squander the success of “Friends,” “Will & Grace,” “Frasier,” “ER,” etc. as they padded their schedule with forgettable filler in the years prior.  So when those shows began to exit the schedule and the network began to collapse under the weight of all of the holes they were left with, I turned to the channel and didn’t come back.  My confidence in NBC deteriorated rapidly, I watched very little of it, and therefore I saw almost no previews for their new shows.  Out of sight, out of mind.  I would read about them in TV Guide, I’d see a commercial or two, and I picked up on a few shows, “Studio 60″ comes to mind.

However, when it came to filling out my own schedule, I simply stuck to the networks whose programming I had more confidence in.  Clearly, “Heroes” had enough viewer confidence to be a breakout hit in the fall of 2006.  By the time I was ready to get around to catching up on it, however, the deterioration had begun.  I read negative comments here and there, as I said before I spoke to people who weren’t enjoying it as much, so I opted to watch something else.  When I read about backstage turmoil, knowing that is never a good sign for a show, I lost even more confidence in it.  Plus, it’s a genre show, one I’m going to need to watch from the beginning to want to see it, and why invest time in catching up on a show that appears to be a downward spiral.  Hmm, a genre show that is quickly collapsing in the ratings, backstage turmoil, and it airs on NBC, a network which even the president has said that being #1 is no longer a viable goal.  Not exactly confidence-instilling, and certainly not attracting me as a viewer.

I was impressed to see that NBC was taking steps to try to stop the bleeding, when I read that Bryan Fuller was returning following “Pushing Daisies,” I thought perhaps the show would manage to not so much turn the ship around, but rather stop the bleeding.  Maybe, at best, they could hold on to a decent cult audience which, for NBC, isn’t something that can necessarily balk at at this point.  But ratings remained in literal free fall for the rest of this season the point that I am convinced the show is doomed.

For the fans, I hope I’m wrong and that the show can turn around creativity wise.  But from the outside looking in, I just don’t see anything worth a summer catch-up marathon to prepare myself for the upcoming season four.  The news that Bryan Fuller quit and that the backstage turmoil continues puts the nail in that coffin as far as I’m concerned.  If I’m wrong and I read impressively good reviews for the upcoming season, and if ratings up-tick and the show is given a new lease on life, then perhaps next summer I’ll finally buy those DVDs.

It’s too bad, I personally love a show that is driven by strong characters.  If you have a weak plot, then you have weak characters, and not even a good actor can redeem that.  It’s going to take more than the same turmoil that brought “Heroes” down in the first place to fix it.  Similarly, it’s going to take more than the same powers that be that brought NBC down like the titanic to make any traction with the network as a whole.  But “Heroes” remains on a deathward spiral, and it seems pretty symbolic for what is happening to its network as a whole.  At least that’s my view from the outside looking in.  Who knows, maybe this time next year I’ll be watching “Heroes” instead of wondering what happened to it.

It was also around this time that word was out that PUSHING DAISIES was soon to be pronounced dead.  People at both Universal and NBC went about trying to acquire him.  He had written the most popular first season episode of the series and they wanted him back.  When talking with Fuller, the idea that Season 4 would be a mid-season show was told to him.  Angela Bromstad even mentioned it herself.  HEROES was going to come back in the Spring giving them plenty of time to fix the problems.  Fuller signed on to a 2 year deal at Universal (also the same time frame that JJ Abrams told him it would be before they would start a STAR TREK show) and was brought in to have a key role in the writing and direction of the program.  His Season 3 work is again considered the best work of that season (although that doesn’t take much).

In April word started to leak internally that HEROES would be back in the Fall rather than the Spring.  This is something that apparently Kring was fighting for.  He believed (poorly) that a wait until Spring was just a sign that the show was a dead show walking.  During this time frame Greg Beeman showed his disaproval of certain things with Kring.  Shortly after Beeman was fired.

This left the creative direction of the show to Kring and Fuller.  There was more fighting about certain absurd storyline ideas.  Fuller then quit.

That’s where we are now.  Now lets take a look at the four people who have been dismissed:

Jesse Alexander:  Alexander is of course a longtime friend and business partner with JJ Abrams.  He had a big part to play in ALIAS and helped define LOST.

Jeph Loeb:  Jeph Loeb has an interesting background.  He started out as a Movie writer.  The movies TEEN WOLF and COMMANDO were his first sells in Hollywood.  He would co-write the sequel to TEEN WOLF with Tim Kring.  He ended up having a solid career as a writer for films.  This career would lead to him being hired to bring THE FLASH to the big screen.  While it was a film adaptation that never saw the light of day, it did introduce him to DC Comics.  The people at DC offered him a job writing comics.

As a comic writer, Loeb is a 2 time Eisner Winner (think Oscar but for comics) both for comics that dealt with BATMAN.  In fact his story arc BATMAN: THE LONG HALLOWEEN is one of the most famous story arcs of the last 30 years right behind THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS, YEAR ONE and THE KILLING JOKE probably in popularity.

Loeb would then transition back to Hollywood writing TV episodes for SMALLVILLE.  In fact he wrote one of the most popular episodes ever, that introduced Red Kryptonite to the series.  He would even win a Jules Verne Award for the show.  He only left due to his son’s bone cancer (Sam Loeb would die at the age of 17 in 2005).  If not for his son’s cancer, Loeb would likely have never been around for HEROES and still be part of the SMALLVILLE team.

Now that you have an understanding of just who Alexander and Loeb were, lets look at why Kring fired them.  He claims that they refused to write character driven pieces like what made Season 1 so popular.  What?  Really?  Because God knows that is their inherant weaknesses.  Alexander has never once written a character driven piece.  ALIAS?  That was total crap.  Crazy stories, crazy characters and none of it believable.  The characters were one dimensional and nonsensical.  Loeb’s work in comics has been noted for its lack of character pieces.  His works are total drivel.  With characters doing things that goes against generally 40+ years of history.  His characters act so out of character you wonder if he even knows what comic book he’s writing for at the time.

Wait.  I just made all that stuff up.  Alexander and Loeb are known for their character driven work.  So what gives?  We’ll get to that in a moment.

Lets look at Greg Beeman.  He too was fired.  So far no one to my knowledge has quoted Kring for why.  Beeman has been around more canceled TV programs than I care to count.  I remember him specifically for BRISCOE COUNTY JUNIOR (check out the future number 1 on my greatest TV shows of all time article… jk).  However Beeman has always understood basic writing.  Characters drive the story.  Stories don’t force the characters to act out of character.

Now lastly, Bryan Fuller.  Fuller is known for creating extremely complex and deep characters usually in outragious, unbelievable, fantastical or absurd circumstances.  So writing complex characters who happen to have Super Powers seems to be right up his alley.

They’re all gone.  We know Kring says Alexander and Loeb are gone because they refused to write character driven pieces.  We know Beeman is gone after things heated up when the schedule was pushed forward 4 months.  We know Fuller quit because of creative differences (ok I know it, and many of you may still be in denial or believing the company line he gave).  We also know that when Fuller was hired it was under the impression they would be given time to iron out the problems.  Then that was gone and it was rushed ahead for a September launch for season 4.

I’m just going to say what I believe here:  Tim Kring thinks he knows what character driven is.  People around him disagree.  They all have reputations for character driven pieces, and some even have the awards to prove it.  Kring on the other hand has only been tied to such masterpieces of character driven subjects as KNIGHT RIDER, TEEN WOLF TOO, and CROSSING JORDAN.  Lets look at CROSSING JORDAN.  That show is infamous by its fans for the characters doing things entirely out of character to push a story forward.  Wait?  Isn’t that the problem with HEROES?

It definitely isn’t too many people, too many plot lines.  That’s a load of nonsense.  It’s poorly written plot lines and characters acting out of character that is destroying the show.  Poor use of “time travel,” and other things.  I mean giving a character with one power a brand new super power of painting the future?  Really?  He paints in the same style as Tim Sale!  Wait, Tim Sale painted all of Season 1′ Isaac’s art work. *Editor’s Note, Tim Sale who does the artwork in HEROES is also a long time collaborator of Jeph Loeb’s including BATMAN: THE LONG HALLOWEEN*

The Sylar character is a prime example of one of the worst written characters in the history of television.  He’s bad.  He’s good.  He’s bad.  He’s just confused.  He’s just an addict.  Wait, no he is bad.  Wait, he still has a good side.  Nope, he’s bad.  Nothing about Sylar makes sense.  Sylar season 3 is incomparable to Sylar season 2 or 1.  Heck Sylar 2nd half of season 3 isn’t comparable to the first half of the season.  He’s a poorly written train wreck that only remains on the show due to the actor’s popularity.

Just pick a character and you can watch as they do things that are entirely out of character but it moves a story forward.  Now who is to blame?  Is it really Alexander and Loeb?  If so, why would Beeman have been fired and Fuller leave?

NBC let Kring act before them.  They then let Kring keep his job.  If fans are looking for anyone to blame… blame NBC.  They could have fired Kring and saved the show last November.