Commentary

More Lessons Television Is Teaching Us In 2013

This continues to be a highly educational year for anyone working in or around the television business, especially where programming is concerned. Here are the latest lessons:

Sometimes the networks shouldn’t listen to critics. Consider the “Smash” crash. A chorus of glowing reviews resounded across the land early last year when NBC premiered its ambitious drama with music about the making of a Broadway musical. Perhaps that’s because so many television critics enjoy musical theater. But the honeymoon proved all too brief, as it became increasingly clear that when the characters weren’t singing and dancing they were navigating combustible personal and professional lives. In other words, “Smash” wasn’t so much a drama with music as a soap opera with music. One would think flash and trash go well together, especially in the soap genre. Indeed, one would think that such escapist fare would prove to be the perfect alternative to the deadly serious dramas that are redefining the medium in this still-young millennium. That wasn’t the case.

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As the personal plotlines continued to expand, and the characters continued to develop, the same critics who had championed “Smash” began to grumble in disgust. Coupled with the carping of hundreds of anonymous online haters, the din became so pronounced that NBC and the show’s producers in season two decided to remove several cast members from the “Smash” canvas, juggle the remaining players into largely new situations and replace the timeless soap elements that had filled out the show with a secondary storyline about the development of yet another musical, this one Off-Off Broadway. The result was a not-hot mess that has been condemned by critics and sent millions of viewers fleeing. Now, poor “Smash” has been banished to Saturday nights, where it will suffer a slow, invisible death. What a sorry end for what had briefly been one of the most original broadcast series to come along in years.

Sometimes the networks should listen to viewers. The excitement this week surrounding the 50th anniversary of ABC’s revitalized “General Hospital,” not to mention renewed viewer interest in CBS’ “The Young and the Restless” and NBC’s “Days of Our Lives,” proves what frustrated fans of daytime drama have known all along: Soaps aren’t tired or irrelevant. They’re just vulnerable to the machinations of executives with no interest in or understanding of the genre, and they don’t do well in the grip of writers who can’t craft stories filled with romance, humor and heartbreak. All is well when the right people are calling the shots.

Sometimes the networks should try to learn from past mistakes. There had to be a better way for NBC to handle this week’s explosive news that Jimmy Fallon will replace Jay Leno as host of the “Tonight” show early next year. (Small matter that it was the worst-kept secret in the business.) Didn’t we just go through this a couple of years ago? Given NBC’s woes in virtually every other daypart, the timing of this latest late-night upheaval is somewhat awe-inspiring. It is entirely possible that NBC is taking the one area of its schedule that doesn’t need repair and “fixing” what isn’t broken. Would it have been so terrible if Leno stuck around for a few more years? Is Jimmy Fallon the right choice for a big broadcast network at 11:35 p.m.? (Conan O’Brien certainly wasn’t.)

Do any of these questions really matter? The real heat in late night these days is coming from Jon Stewart’s “The Daily Show” and Stephen Colbert’s “The Colbert Report” on Comedy Central, Chelsea Handler’s “Chelsea Lately” on E!, Andy Cohen’s “Watch What Happens Live” on Bravo and Conan O’Brien’s “Conan” on TBS. They’ll be joined later this year by W. Kamau Bell’s “Totally Biased with W. Kamau Bell” on the upcoming FXX network.

Is there anyone in the entertainment firmament who could bring to late-night broadcast the kind of outsize power and influence that Johnny Carson enjoyed for three decades? Not likely. Carson was a perfect fit for television and the role it played in people’s lives in the

‘60s, ‘70s and ‘80s, and once the ‘90s came around, he wisely realized that it was time to get off the stage. His remarkable reign is yet more hindsight evidence that television often offered so much more when there was so much less of it.

Sometimes smarter is better. Thank goodness for “CBS This Morning”! It is now the smartest and most engaging program on morning television. While NBC’s “Today” show and ABC’s “Good Morning America” have been dumbed down and/or pumped full of happy juice, “This Morning” has refused to follow the pack, focusing instead on smart news reporting and intelligent conversation. The terrific trio of Charlie Rose, Gayle King and Norah O’Donnell are showing their competitors how it’s done. I enjoy the summer concert series on “Today” and “GMA,” but very little else. Besides, it seems that every time I turn on either show I see a feature about one of their hosts or correspondents doing something or other. Or they’re sitting around discussing topics with each other that are trending somewhere. Since when does that qualify as morning news or entertainment? More to the point, who has the time or inclination to watch such stuff?

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