|
Administrator
Currently Offline
|
Posts: 234
Join Date: Apr 2006
|
I read yesterday that television's ratings are down in general including great shows like Lost and 24. Possible issues may be folks are recording them and watching later, watching on the net, etc of which I can see those definitely being a factor, but the issue I believe that has slipped the minds of TV producers and execs is this. Your killing off all your interesting characters! You might as well cancel a show in installments when you do that.
Think about it the shows that have suffered the most lately with drops in ratings are the ones that have done the most killing. At first it gets a rise, sure. Everybody wants to see who is going to die, but you have to think long term here. If I'm watching Lost because of character x, y, and z, and z gets knocked off, that only leaves x and y to keep my interest up. Now if I watched the show for a year and only watched it because the story of z fascinated me, and they killed z off, then I'm going to stop watching altogether after the death of my favorite character. It's simple math. Lost has declared multiple deaths to look forward to at the end of this season.
24 does the same thing. The human psyche can only handle so much even when it's fictional. People start to get into these characters like they know them personally, and then they kill them off.
Smallville a great show, but they killed off Jonathan Kent played by John Schneider and you can feel the gap in the show every time you watch it. Sure it's still a great show as is Lost and 24, but there is something missing. Now it looks like Martha Kent maybe going to washington. Why? Maybe her character just doesn't work now that Jonathan is out of the picture. When you change one dynamic, it's like pulling out a spark plug in a car. It might still get you somwhere, but man is it going to be a rough ride if it works at all. I haven't actually tried that by the way, I just know a bad plug makes a car run like crap.
So wake up America and lets fill the message boards with complaints until someone in Hollywood finally gets it. Stop the killing of our characters, or lose ratings!
|
