Prime Time Network TV Sinking (Oct 9, 2008)

October is the best month of the year with the baseball playoffs going on and football just under way. Hockey is beginning its regular season this month. The exhibition basketball games are starting up. Halloween is at the end of the month, yet we're not seeing a lot of overcommercialization of the holiday during the early weeks of October.

With sports on TV still popular, what does that leave the broadcast networks. The only exciting things on any of the five broadcast networks are Dancing With The Stars (Don't laugh, I'm rooting for Susan Lucci to win), Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader, and the Fox TV four cartoon comedies.

I've sampled a lot of the other shows and turned off most of them. I like Julia Louis-Dreyfus, but her show Old Christine doesn't do anything much for me. Heroes has gotten so boring that it's turned into Zeroes in my book. Kristen Bell is hot, but her show is not.

Speaking of NBC, why did they pay so much for the Olympics so that they could plug the fall shows that go nowhere in the ratings? They've paid too much. Too bad the Olympics isn't a weekly series. Their ratings for the regular series are still in the cellar, getting UPN-sized ratings during the now-defunct network's existance. NBC: Nothing But Crap.

It's due or die time for The CW. 90210 is iffy at best. It's good when Shannen Doherty was on, but flat and boring without her. None of the steamy billboards for Gossip Girl are advertising anything new on TV or helping out the ratings.

My Network TV is showing some life with the addition of WWE Friday Night Smackdown. The CW getting rid of that franchise was a mistake that will cost them their existance.

Fox TV has the most male-friendly programming on any of the five networks, yet outside of sports, nothing seems to be helping it get into first place without football or American Idol.

I tried Terminator and Prison Break. Not bad but nothing I want to watch every week.

The Monday CBS comedies I'll check out in January once Monday Night Football ends. I don't have that much time for that much TV. I'm not missing anything by missing the low-rated Worst Week.

Lots of other humdrum prime time TV series are all over the dial. Too many dramas and reality soap operas to interest me.

As we enter year three in the post Prime Time era of television, called the My Tube TV Era, the five networks continue to deteriorate in the ratings by forgetting to program to the masses. Instead, they program to the 18-34 age groups that are busy with college, outside life, Internet, and other distractions that compete with time for their declining interest of prime-time television.