How NOT To Get People to Watch Your Show

Insulting your viewers probably isn't the best way to get them to watch your show. But that didn't stop HEROES showrunner Tim Kring from laying the blame for the ratings decline of his show on serialized storylines and the limited intelligence of his audience. 

The engine that drove [serialized TV] was you had to be in front of the TV [when it aired]. Now you can watch it when you want, where you want, how you want to watch it, and almost all of those ways are superior to watching it on air. So [watching it] on air is related to the saps and the dipshits who can't figure out how to watch it in a superior way." 

A superior way? Why is it "superior" to watch the show on your iPod or your computer instead of on TV? Isn't it a TV show? How does the medium you choose to watch HEROES with make the stories and characters any more or less compelling?

I'm sure that heavy serialization is part of the problem with HEROES. But the bigger problem is that the show is a confusing, uninvolving mess that isn't compelling or entertaining enough to get the viewer to make the necessary commitment. At least not this viewer, one of the "saps and dipshits."

I watched all of season the "superior way" on my iPod on plane flights while traveling back-and-forth to Europe. And I really liked it. I saw the first four or five episodes of season two on TV. And gave up on the show.  I guess if I'd watched the season two episodes on my iPod I would have liked them. (Or is he saying the opposite, that TV is the "superior way" and other platforms are for saps and dispshits? He's not too clear. Either way, it's the stories and characters that matter, not whether you watch it on TV, a computer, or a DVR).

Now Kring is planning to make his stories less serialized…or not serialized at all. That could work, but I'm not sure that he's attacking the real problem, or as Time Magazine TV critic James Poniewozik puts it:

Yes, you can blame technology for siphoning all the smart viewers away from your series. You could try revamping your show so that it becomes the complete opposite of what it was conceived as. Or you could try, you know, not sucking. A story arc or two that doesn't inspire ridicule could go a long way with the saps and dips***s, is all I'm saying. […]Whatever problems Heroes has, the fault lies not in its DVRs but in itself.


UPDATE 11-25-08
: Poniewozik reports that Kring has apologized for his comments in an open letter to fans, which reads in part:

I was making the point that these platforms now offer a superior way to watch the show (without commercials, with extra content, commentary, at the audience's convenience, etc.) … It was a boneheaded attempt at being cute and making a point. Instead, it turned out to be just plain insulting and stupid. I know now how it sounded, but I truly never meant to suggest anything bad about our audience. 

Memory Lane

Tonight I went to a cocktail party and screening at the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences to celebrate the Archive of American Television's DVD release of the classic series STUDIO ONE. The boxed set contains 17 episodes, including the original, TV production of "Twelve Angry Men," which was long thought to be lost until a rare kinescope turned up recently in the estate of a deceased trial lawyer who collected books, movies and ephemera about the law. So much our priceless TV history has been lost through carelessness and stupidity, but that's another story…

You never know who you are going to bump into at these events and, for me, this one became an unexpected opportunity to revisit the start of my career in television. I ran into Bruce Bilson, who directed the first script Bill Rabkin & I ever had produced, an episode of SPENSER FOR HIRE. We chatted for a bit, and then I spotted Leonard Stern walking across the room. He was one of the executive producers of MURPHY'S LAW, a short-lived series starring George Segal that was our first staff job. I was pleased and flattered that Stern not only remembered me and Bill, but also my book "Unsold Television Pilots" (Stern, in addition to being a legendary writer/producer, is also a publisher, one of the partners behind Price Stern Sloan and now Tallfellow Press).

Jack Klugman, a veteran of many live TV productions, was also at the cocktail party (he was there to speak on a panel after the screening). I said hello, reminded him who I was, and thanked him again for guest-starring in one of our best DIAGNOSIS MURDER episodes, "Voices Carry." I liked the episode and his performance in it so much, that I ended up writing a prequel — the novel "Diagnosis Murder: The Past Tense," which became the most widely acclaimed of the eight novels in the series.  I told him that, too.  He seemed flattered, or maybe he was just being polite.

For a TV nut like me, being able to go to events like this is one of the great things about living in Los Angeles.

Writers Write

Career3
My friend Lisa Klink has some great advice for TV writers who are finding it very cold out there right now:

Budgets have been cut and
writing staffs have been reduced, resulting in more competition for
jobs.  Some experienced writers are taking less money and/or lower
titles just to keep working.  Networks are ordering fewer pilots, which
is also increasing competition among writers trying to sell shows. 
There’s a general tension and uncertainty in the air, which makes the
people doing the hiring less inclined to take chances on unproven
talent.

Depressed yet?  I don’t say all this to be discouraging, just to
offer some perspective.  If you’re not getting the opportunities you’ve
been hoping for, it probably has less to do with your talent as a
writer than the stressed-out state of the business.  So what’s a writer
to do?  What we do best.  Get creative.  Expand your horizons beyond
television to other media: video games, web series, graphic novels,
etc.  Get (or borrow) a digital camera and make a short.  Write a one
act play and stage a reading.  Explore every possible way to get your
work seen and produced.

None of this is to suggest that you should stop writing new specs,
meeting new people and looking for TV work.  But in addition to a
full-frontal assault, try coming at the TV biz sideways.  Having any
kind of success in any medium will distinguish you from your
competition.  More importantly, I think it’s psychologically helpful to
any writer frustrated with the business to find other creative
outlets.  Take a break from beating your head against the wall and have
some fun with your talent.  Remind yourself that you are actually a
good writer – and become an even better writer while you’re at it.

She's right. As my grandfather used to say, "You can't catch fish with your line in the boat" (it's amazing how many different situations I can apply that advice to, just like he did). That's why I am always working on several things at once.

Today is a good example. I had a pitch at FX, I did some research for my next "Monk" novel (which is due in April), I wrote five pages of my "standalone" novel, got notes on a spec script I've optioned to some producers,  and I started sketching out some ideas for a pitch I have on the 13th.

I have my professional ups and downs, and personal ones as well, but no matter what I am always writing something. Even when I had two broken arms. It's how I stay sane and it's probably how I stay in business.

Sybil Meets Monk, eh?

Canadian broadcaster Canwest announced four new pilots that they are putting into production, including a one-hour drama called  "Shattered," which is described this way:

Kyle Logan, once the best cop in the force and now a damaged
recluse, solves crimes with the help of his unconventional forensic
squad – who just happen to be facets of his
multiple-personality-disorder.

This latest in a long-line of "Monk" rip-offs sounds more like a "Saturday Night Live" spoof of a police procedural than an actual TV show.

Is the New TV Season DOA?

TV critic Tim Goodman of the San Francisco Chronicle thinks so:

NBC's "Chuck" and "Life" haven't exactly lit up the Nielsens – so much for all that Olympics hype – and ABC's entire Wednesday night line-up, from "Pushing Daisies" to "Private Practice" to "Dirty Sexy Money" was essentially DOA when it premiered last week. If it doesn't improve
substantially tonight – and odds are that it won't – ABC is going to be forced to either cancel series or drastically alter its schedule. That's not what you want to hear with the opening bell of the fall season still ringing faintly in everyone's ears.

Poor "Pushing Daisies" did horribly last week – laid out even by the dreadful "Knight Rider," which shouldn't even be on television. And the network can't claim one
of their favorite excuses – less people are watching television – since
more than 70 million watched the vice presidential debate last week.
The people are out there. Thanks to the financial crises cratering our
economy, those people are even at home. They're sitting right there! On
the couch! But guess what? They don't like the network leftovers. Hell,
they don't even like former hits, like "Heroes." The trajectory of that series? Down. How far down? Down.

James Poniewozik of Time Magazine agrees with him.

So we've pretty much established that nobody's watching anything this season.
New shows are middling at best in the ratings, relaunched shows like
Chuck and ABC's Wednesday have cratered—even hits like House and Grey's
are not doing so hot.

[…]The conclusion? After the writers' strike, viewers didn't want a
"do-over." They wanted a clean slate. They wanted to forget most of
what they were watching before and see something brand-new, that would
remind them why they missed TV. They still want brand new. And it looks
like they will end this season still waiting for brand-new.

Speaking of "brand new," I saw MY OWN WORST ENEMY and thought it was a great pilot. I have no idea how they are going to pull it off as a series, but at least it wasn't a re-tread of a 1970s show, or a remake of a British program, or another grim procedural.

No Redeeming Value

I am a big LAW AND ORDER: SVU fan. I have been for years. It's consistently one of the best plotted and acted cop shows on TV. I have used episodes of the show as examples in my TV writing classes here and abroad.

That said, I thought this week's episode ("Confession") was repugnant, pointless, and vile. 

It demonstrated what a joke network standards & practices have become. The censorship at the networks has nothing to do with content and everything to do with the ratings of the show and the power of the showrunner. No new show, or one with weaker ratings, or one helmed by a b-list showrunner,  would ever have been allowed to produce, much less broadcast, this episode.

Dick Wolf shouldn't have been, either.

Tonight's show was about a 17-year-old boy who is fantasizing about raping his six year-old step brother. And it gets more explicit and gruesome from there, with graphic discussions about anal penetration, oral penetration, and the evidence that digital or penile insertion in those areas will leave. An important clue is a semen found on the young boy's dirty clothes in the hamper…but it turns out his father was masturbating in the bathroom and used the clothes to wipe off.  There's also time spent with an adult pedophile who talks about his fantasies of sex with kids while we see photos of the children he has been stalking.

And that's the "cleanest" stuff in the episode. My description actually makes it seem tamer than it was and no different than any previous episode of the series. But it actually gets worse. Much worse. Keep in mind, I am a fan of this series and I found this episode shocking, not only in its graphic nature but in it's violence (there was an enormous amount of blood). I couldn't believe it was on broadcast TV and not HBO.

And yet, you can't show a woman's nipple for a split second or say "fuck" on broadcast television without incurring the wrath of the FCC (if you manage to even get it past the networks). 

The network will limit how many times you can say "Damn" in an episode but you can talk all you want, and in considerable detail, about a pedophiles raping children. I actually felt sick for the kids who acted in this program (or whose pictures were shown) and was angry at their parents for letting them be used this way.

This was an hour without any entertainment value… without any educational value…frankly,  without any value at all. Sure, the acting was great, and the production was top-notch, but to what end? What made this a compelling story worth telling? Why did it need to be made?

I have seen probably a 100+ episodes of SVU, so it's not the subject matter that bothers me. You can't do a show about sex crimes without sex crimes and they have dealt with child molestation before. But usually they have shown some discretion. Usually there is a mystery story worth following, or a social issue worth exploring, or a character worth examining. Something that made the show entertaining, relevant, and thought-provoking.  This episode has none of those things.  This episode made me want to take a shower to remove the stink.

It was ugly, sick and totally pointless. It had no redeeming value. I honestly don't know if I will be watching L&O:SVU again after this. I have lost respect for the judgment of the showrunners. If this is their idea of compelling television, they are on the wrong track.

I am beginning to think that about a lot of TV's slick procedural dramas, where the violence, mutilated corpses, and serial killings are getting more and more bloody, gruesome and graphic just to keep the attention of viewers (and writers) who have become jaded after thousands of hours and years of this stuff. All you have to do is compare a first season episode of  L&O:SVU or CSI with one airing in the last two seasons to see what I mean. They've amped up the explicitness of the gore, violence, and the discussion of the gore and violence, and fooled themselves into thinking that equates with raising the quality of the writing and the depth of the storytelling. It doesn't.  

On broadcast network TV now, you can show almost as much blood as you want….hell, you can spend five minutes with the camera lingering on the autopsy of a charred corpse…and discuss in explicit detail the murder, rape and mutilation of the man, woman or child before they were set ablaze. That's entertainment!

But don't you dare show a woman's nipple (unless it has been mutilated and belongs to a corpse) or two people naked (unless they're covered in blood and, preferably, dead), or having sex (unless you're rescuing a victim from being molested or raped) because then you've crossed a line.

On "free" TV we can show graphic violence but not two people in love having sex. We can show naked corpses on an autopsy table, and even watch as they are cut open and their guts exposed, but we can't show two naked people in bed.

What the hell is the matter with us?

I know that's not the first time someone has said what I'm saying. It's become  cliche. But finally for me, personally, after seeing this weeks L&O:SVU, I am beginning to wonder if we have gone too far.

What were these writers thinking? What made them believe this was a good show, something that would entertain an audience? What was the network thinking?

Maybe that's the problem: no one gave it  a thought at all because they have become so inured to the violence, depicted or discussed, that anything less would seem too tame and pedestrian. We just keep pushing the limits, as if that is the definition of what makes great drama.

If I'm not offending someone, is it good writing? If  the viewer isn't turning away, repulsed, have I sacrificed the realism? If it's not as dark and gritty as possible, am I diluting the potential drama? Is that what the writer is thinking?

I worry that pushing the boundaries has become the goal rather than simply telling  compelling stories. I'm not saying that's the case at SVU…but that it's something I see happening  in broadcast TV as a whole. 

I know a lot of TV writers. They look at the acclaim that THE SOPRANOS and THE SHIELD got and they want it, too. Pushing boundaries gets you known. Pushing boundaries gets you Emmys. But pushing boundaries isn't always entertainment. Sometimes it's just vile.

Keep in mind, I am asking myself these questions as not only a fan of gritty police dramas (I love DEXTER, a show where the hero is a serial killer!) but as writer/producer/author of crime fiction myself. I don't want to restrict creative freedom…or stop writers from exploring new dramatic territory…and I'm not telling them that its wrong for drama to be offensive to some people (what viewers found "offensive" about HILL STREET BLUES, MAUDE, etc. seems so tame now). But I do think have a responsibility to think hard about what we are putting out there as entertainment. 

Are we trying to entertain? Or simply seeing how far we can go before someone slaps us and says what the hell are you doing?

(The irony here is, of course, that I have been accused of doing exactly what I am railing about here. There were people who reacted to some of my episodes of DIAGNOSIS MURDER — and even some of my books based on the show –  the way I reacted to this week's L&O: SVU.  And yet if you were to ask anybody in the TV business about DIAGNOSIS MURDER, they would tell you that the show was hopelessly conventional, old-fashioned and tame. I am sure there are TV writers who will read this and see it as evidence that I am out-of-touch and stuck in the past)

The Mail I Get

I debated whether to post this email or not with the actual producer's name in it. I decided that I probably shouldn't but I will give you this hint…I have sparred with him here before, which is why I got this email:

 XYZ  just called me and said he wanted to read
my script. He emailed a contract and then stated that I need to pay him $600 up
front against his 15% commission. I know this isn’t normal but he is a
real producer. My question is, am I getting scammed here?

Yes, you are getting scammed. No legitimate producer or agent would ask
you for a fee. A producer also doesn't ask for, or get, a commission on sales. He may have been a "real" producer once…but if he is asking you for $600, he's not any more.

Me on Me

Writer/producer/screenwriter David Simkins (DRESDEN FILES, BRISCO COUNTY, ADVENTURES IN BABYSITTING, etc.) and writer/producer/author Marc Scott Zicree (TWILIGHT ZONE COMPANION, MAGIC TIME, SLIDERS etc.) came over to my house and interviewed me for their on-going podcast conversation about tv, movies, and sci-fi.

Lee Goldberg's resumé reads like a TV what’s-what for the last twenty years. He’s
staffed shows, ran shows, written, directed and produced them in the
U.S. and Europe. And if that’s not enough, he’s also a published
novelist. Next up: splitting the atom. Listen in.

Under their intense interrogation ("Hello, Lee, how are you?"), I don't shut up for an hour-and-a-half.