• by Wayne Friedman , Staff Writer, February 2, 2007

TV pressure groups should take note of what has happened at MyNetworkTV: Viewers become bored when sex and violence air on TV five nights a week.

Yesterday, MyNetworkTV finally announced what the rest of the TV business press has known since last September: that the network's all-prime-time, all-English-language telenovela plan had little chance of success.

At a Nielsen 0.3 rating among 18-49 viewers, and with an average of 300,000 viewers overall, the News Corp.-backed network couldn't even break the top 15 or top 20 U.S. cable networks.

What's on tap now? There'll be martial arts and ultimate fighting events on Monday nights and theatrical movies on Thursdays and Fridays. Telenovelas will now be squeezed into two nights, with one series each running on one night for two hours. After that -- games shows and reality programs.

All that spells relief -- economic relief. Just like telenovelas, all these genres are inexpensive to produce or buy. Like a good U.S. cable network just starting out, MyNetworkTV can ill afford the expense of scripted once-a-week sitcoms and dramas -- as well as the apathy of viewers.

Greg Meidel, the recently installed president of MyNetworkTV, told Daily Variety plainly: "Trying to get people to watch serialized dramas every night on MyNetwork TV was asking the impossible."

No kidding.

Other broadcast TV networks work in somewhat the same field. They run countless serial dramas -- shows that worry programmers, who wonder how many different shows viewers can stay interested in all season long.

The difference is that shows like "24," "Heroes" and "Lost" only air one a week -- not every night. Viewers get to catch their breath. At MyNetworkTV, with all the sex, it has been one panting sprint after another.

All these changes don't come in a vacuum. NBC recently cancelled one of its daytime show, "Passions." Jeff Zucker, CEO of NBC Universal Television Group, was quoted as saying it's "the beginning of the end" for daytime serials and soaps.

Could prime-time soaps and serials be far behind?

MyNetworkTV can show you the Nielsen ratings books for insight into this question.