Television is winding down for its tradition hibernation period. “The Swan” has flown, “Frasier” and “Friends” are gone, and now all of our favorite ongoing TV shows are in reruns for the next three months. Time to give the set a rest, get outside, and spend some time with your family and friends.
Ha! Of course I’m kidding.
The networks, frantic at the thought that we might blink, are all programming new stuff for the summer. Advertisers need numbers, viewers need constant stimulation, networks are threatened by DVDs and videos, and 30 weeks of reruns just ain’t gonna cut it no more. So we can expect lots of cheap-to-produce reality shows clogging up the airwaves, 24-hour Paris Hilton updates via satellite, and a few sitcoms and dramas that weren’t quite good enough to be midseason replacements. NBC is starting their new shows in August, Bravo is advertising new “Queer Eye” episodes all summer, and FOX is abandoning the concept of “season” entirely and introducing new programming all year round just for kicks.
Obviously there’s interest in the death of the rerun. “American Idol,” “Survivor,” and “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire” all debuted during the summer and they did OK. A year’s a long time. Why shouldn’t we get new shows every month?
Because I don’t like it. It screws up my rhythms.
At the risk of “old guy” rambling — “When I wanted to watch television I had to haul the 235-lb picture tube 15 miles and plug it into the town’s windmill! In the snow!” — I prefer the old September-May schedule. It fit nicely into my year.
When I was growing up new shows started in September, as God intended, the same time I was heading back to school. The stress of new classes and homework after three months of goofing off was muted by the promo-driven anticipation of a new television season. It was something to look forward to, like cooler weather and Halloween. Shows ran until May even if no one watched them so if you weren’t a fan you could write that evening off and enjoy a quiet night at home.
When school let out for the year so did television, and I was free to vacation without worry. I could catch up on the reruns of the shows I had missed. I could relax. TV was in tune with the rhythms of the earth as much as sowing and harvesting and hurricane preparation.
Now if I relax I miss something, especially if I’m foolish enough to think I know when my shows are on. Networks are far too twitchy for that, and they’ve discovered that by moving the shows around a lot they can instill a sense of accomplishment in the viewer who manages to find them anyway. “Malcolm in the Middle” and “The Bernie Mac Show” bounce around like popcorn in hot oil. Five of UPN’s returning shows will have new times and ‘Enterprise’ will warp to Fridays where it can die unnoticed. “24” will be broken into 96 fifteen-minute episodes which will run as a picture-in-picture during the credits of “The Casino.” “Alias” will be on at a different time every week with local listings hidden in code inside Mountain Dew bottle caps. Shows that display even the slightest drop in ratings will be canceled during the commercial and replaced with “Celebrity Amputations” before you can get back from the bathroom.
All of which sets up the new reality show I want to create. “Program or Die!” Random people off the street will be dropped into executive positions at the major networks and told to create a successful television season using any method they want, up to and including tea leaves divination and throwing darts.
The only drawback I see is that I think it’s already being done, and no one’s winning. Least of all us.