TV Surveillance

This week has been all about next season for the television industry. New programs are being introduced and old ones picked up for another season, all in preparation for the network up-fronts (where the major networks present their schedules for advertisers).

But as exciting as it is to get sneak peeks at the new shows coming down the pike, and as nerve racking as it is for fans of shows on the cancelation bubble, the networks curbed all those emotions by making some really dumb choices. Most of those choices deal with a network bringing back a show it would usually have no business renewing.

ABC, which brought “Scrubs” over after NBC nixed it last year for what was supposed to be the final season and was written as so (Zach Braff’s character, “J.D.” had a farewell in the final episode), has decided to bring the show back for a ninth year.  Braff, who seems to only care about money at this point, has agreed to return for six episodes to transition to the show’s focus on the new interns. Maybe worse, Donald Faison will return as Turk, but his TV-wife Judy Reyes most likely won’t. How does that work? Turk just doesn’t have a wife and kid anymore?

The CW is not innocent in this either. The network renewed “One Tree Hill” a few months back, even though it knew that star Chad Michael Murray wasn’t looking to come back. Then, the show’s female lead Hilarie Burton was said to not be returning.

But no matter says the CW, we’ll just introduce three new characters and pretend that the two people that have been the heart of the show for six years just left. Right.

Other network renewals such as Fox’s decision to bring back “Dollhouse”  after the show failed to garner that large of an audience on Friday nights or NBC’s choice to do the same for “Southland” after its ratings dropped sharply after the second episode  prove to us that there must be a change in the way networks think.

After the last few years of seemingly ignoring the obvious right in front of them that almost all intelligent television viewers could see – that Nielsen numbers are a horrible way to calculate who watches television – it seems like the networks have finally woken up.

It is sort of sad that it took them a couple years to recognize that other viewing avenues like DVR (which is counted, so give them credit for that)  and online portals are very crucial. Heck, it is even important to see what shows are illegally downloaded most, because at least that helps the networks see what shows do have audience, however that audience is watching.

Moreover, with the economy the way it is and the television industry really still reeling from the WGA strike that ended in January of 2008, it is time for a new thought process to come forward. When “Dollhouse,” a show that has a huge online following and is loved by most critics, was renewed it was the first step in this new era where live viewers do not matter as much.

Add in the aforementioned renewals for “Scrubs,” “One Tree Hill,” “Southland” and other programs and the issue goes even further. At this point, the networks cannot really afford to cancel all shows with supposedly low ratings or other circumstances that will make them different next season. Because as low as the ratings are for “Scrubs,” ABC recognizes that introducing a new show will be more expensive in terms of marketing and is certainly not guaranteed to be even as successful as the show it is replacing. The networks know what they have in shows like “Scrubs,” and the fear of the unknown might just be too much to risk it.

So when NBC touts out the 14th season of “The Office” with Creed as the only original character, you’ll know that there are other reasons aside from NBC sucking that it’s still on the air.