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According to Media Week, gaps caused by the WGA strikes are being filled with game shows. I’m no psychic, but I think I can safely predict that book sales are going to skyrocket as mystery lovers search for alternatives to fill in their viewing schedules.
What viewers are ready for, everyone seems to agree, are family-friendly game shows. Shows that aren’t too risqué. Shows, Sternberg said, that “adults can watch with kids in the room.”
And that’s just what NBC hopes it has with Amnesia. Craig Plestis, the network’s executive vp of alternative programming, compared the eight-episode series to the classic This Is Your Life, “but with stakes to it,” he said, adding Amnesia was much more light-hearted than Fox’s Moment of Truth.
Who exactly is everyone? I don’t personally know anyone who is just dying to see more game shows. Family-friendly, yes. But game shows? I do like Are You Smarter than a 5th Grader, but I don’t actively try to watch it. I can’t imagine gathering around the television to call out things to Amnesia contestants. How do you feel about game shows filling the t.v. schedules?
Katelyn, I, for one, will most assuredly be catching up on my reading. I have no interest whatsoever, in unscripted television, whether it is game shows, or reality shows or competitions. That is not entertainment in my opinion. So I will be doing a lot of reading and watching more movies. I don’t know who these people are talking to who are telling them that they’ll watch that stuff, but it ain’t me. I think everyone should boycott all television and force the studios to go back to the table and settle this strike quickly.
They all seem to be about the bottom line, and if viewers start turning away from tv and the networks lose their advertisers, then they’ll start to feel the pinch and maybe do something about this mess that they’ve created.
Yikes, I do like Are You Smarter than a Fifth Grader, but that’s about it for game shows over here. Once the scripted shows go off the air, I won’t be watching much televison.
I do enjoy game shows, but the latest crop are too, I don’t quite know what to call them, but they just are not that enjoyable to me. I have never watched “5th Grader”, can’t stand Deal or No Deal, mainly because of Howie Mandel – I used to like him on St. Elsewhere, but I only like him in very small doses. I wish they would bring back simple and enjoyable shows like Password or $50,000 Pyramid. I was watching some on the game show network a while back and geez! They were playing for prize money of $150 and $300! No one was a better host than Allen Luden.
These new shows seem to be more about greed than anything else.
I do thoroughly enjoy shows such as Dancing With The Stars and So You Think You Can Dance – they showcase some real talent we would never see otherwise and have opened up a lot of people’s eyes to the rigors and benefits of ballroom dancing. I watched the first couple of seasons of American Idol, but it’s just gotten too big and it’s hard for me to watch when the teeny boppers watching vote for some no talent like Sanjaya week after week keeping him on in favor of someone far more talented. I don’t agree with their showing so many of the completely untalented people in the first shows.
I enjoy my scripted shows, too and guess if the strike goes on and on and there aren’t any new episodes I revert to my VCR collection where I have taped entire runs of some shows like Babylon 5, Nash Bridges, Miami Vice, and I have the first 3 seasons of Gilmore Girls on DVD and of course all 3 seasons of Medium. I sure will be inconsolable if Medium does not get to come back at least as scheduled. I read where already shows are still airing that would normally have been pulled by now due to low ratings, but the networks were considering the affects of a strike and are still airing the new shows that have already been filmed at this point, even if they are dogs in the ratings, at least they are new dogs.
Here’s my question. How much longer will Medium continue before it shuts down production? I read that they should have 9 of 22 episodes completed, but does that include those already in production? Do they have more scripts completed to work on, or is this it when they finish what they are doing now?
Someone came in the other day and said that she would be out of work in a couple of weeks because she was a “below the line” crew member, but was this person a member of the Medium crew, or some other show?
I really hope that NBC brings it back as scheduled and with at least 9 episodes filmed, that should take them through March, and hopefully the strike will have been settled by then and Medium will go on (hopefully) uninterrupted. Let’s keep our fingers crossed.
Katelyn, I don’t know if anyone is interested but I found another picture of Patricia on the picket line. At the LATimes site, there’s a gallery of pics about the food delivered by the stars to the writers, and they rate the health and the stars contributions. They only mentioned the cookies that she sent on the first day. There was no mention of the Starbucks and pastries that she brought the next day. Typical. But it’s a great pic of her. And the comment they made about her cookies was cute.
Dawn, I read where it depends on the type of show. Apparently, sitcoms work much closer to the edge and some are already out of scripts. A lot of their scripts are done the same week they tape and sometimes they even re-write or scrap whole scripts when they start taping.
Dramas need more lead time and have completed scripts before they start filming and then they begin working on set pieces and stuff like the car accident scene in “Be Kind Rewind”. There are a lot more location shoots and things that have to be completed for dramas where sitcoms usually use the same sets for most of their shots so they can get away with being closer to the filming time.
I sure hope they start talking again. Now the Broadway stagehands are on strike. I’d be really upset if I planned a whole vacation around a trip to NYC and seeing Broadway shows only to get there and find all the theaters dark! Broadway actors aren’t payed anywhere near what television stars are paid so it will be really tough on them to be sitting around not working. I read where television stars usually start out making something like $12,000 to $15,000 per episode. Sure they have to pay their manager and agent a percentage, but that’s a lot of money – only the very unluckiest shows make less than 13 episodes before being canned – at $15,000 per ep, that’s $195,000 for a failed show. Not bad. I think Broadway pays in the hundreds of dollars, not the thousands.
Saw my first Medium commercial last night! Woo-hoo!! Good on NBC! Oooh! I can’t wait! Seeing David again will be a delayed Christmas treat! And Jake for you Dawn! We’re silly gals, ain’t we…?
Rachel, that is so exciting! Exciting for 2 reasons, NBC is actually promoting Medium a full 3 weeks before it starts and exciting because it is so close!
Rachel, was there any hint at the episode in the commercial? Who was in it? PLEASE tell us!
Just a tag that “Oscar winner Anjelica Houston plays a role in upcoming episodes” kinda thing. Absolutely no hint as to plot, and no shots of the girls, Joe, Devalos or Scanlon. What a tease it was!
OOh, I’m gonna have to start watching for those. Maybe they’ll do some print ads as well, like they did last year.
I read something interesting a while back that I had forgotten about. There was an ad for Medium fans who were going to be in the LA area to meet at a certain location in LA and they were going to be filming some stuff to be included in the first episode with the fans. I’m not sure exactly what they meant by that, or how they’re going to incorporate that into the episode, but I wish I’d have been there for that, lol. But that was way back in September and I didn’t read it until it was already over. Darnit! Anyway, 21 days until the new Mediums start!! I can’t wait!!!