David Kronke was appointed Mayor of Television after a bloodless coup in 2000. Since then, he has improved infrastructure, championed greater educational opportunities and fought for reforms that have utterly erased corruption and incompetence from the television industry. Since Mr. Kronke has ascended to power, Television is a far better place. The CW: Can't Win
"Everybody Hates Chris" is easily the series most egregiously wounded by the compression of The WB and UPN into The CW. Last season, it averaged about 5 million viewers on Thursday nights, a pretty impressive stat given how competitive that night is. Last night, the first night of original programming since The CW flopped its Sunday and Monday lineups, it garnered a mere 3 million -- and that was actually a mild improvement on how it was doing on Sundays.
That switch didn't prove to be the panacea The CW was hoping for: Its comedies received only a nominal bump from their ratings opposite "Sunday Night Football" and "60 Minutes," while "Seventh Heaven" and "Runaway" got absolutely rolled on Sunday. (As miserably as all these shows are doing, they actually did a smidgen better the other way around.) Simply put, The CW doesn't have any shows that can go up against the big guns of Sunday night (UPN, in its decade of existence, never programmed the evening; The WB did, though hardly with encouraging results).
Greg Hernandez offers a trenchant look at The CW's woes in today's Daily News. Key quote: "It's like two poor people getting married: Once they get married, they're still poor."
In other news: Last night, ABC's "What About Brian" - a show that did so poorly last season no one could figure out why ABC returned it to the schedule (except for the fact that not doing so would've meant the network went 0-for-2005/06 in new programming) - actually beat "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip." This is starting to get ugly.
Comments
I'm still confused. Is "Everybody Hates Chris" on Sunday or Monday now? (not that I've been able to pin down exactly where the CW is, anyway)
Posted by: Suzy Q | October 19, 2006 6:11 AM