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2014-15 TV Cancellations: Under the Dome canned, what will CBS do with CG cows next?

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The reviews seem to be all over the place. I do wonder -- and this is a different discussion -- if that because Nic Pizza seems to be such a repugnant human that there's less of a need for a critical consensus because of how little critical goodwill he has left. I don't think it's necessarily a conscious thing, but there can be a hive mind when it comes to reviews, especially for TV, that this almost feels like a conscience vote on the season.

It sure seems like a lot of the reviews Ive read harp on the fact that he is such a repugnant human and that his repugnancy bleeds through into the way the show handles female characters. A lot of them even speculate that Rachel McAdams character was meant to be a man.

https://twitter.com/jeffeastin/status/612281910371291136

I'm surprised there's EVEN a season 3. The past two seasons were just piss poor. :/ White Collar this isn't.


I'll watch episode 1 but I'm expecting a trainwreck given how awful Season 2 was.
 

firehawk12

Subete no aware
Hannibal continues because it is internationally financed, and probably will regardless of the ratings.
And, if you look at it, it's really something that isn't appealing to a broad demographic. The people who like generic crime stuff don't want something so violent, and the people who watch "prestige" TV is a comparatively tiny number... which is reflected in the ratings.
 

kmag

Member
Hannibal continues because it is internationally financed, and probably will regardless of the ratings.
And, if you look at it, it's really something that isn't appealing to a broad demographic. The people who like generic crime stuff don't want something so violent, and the people who watch "prestige" TV is a comparatively tiny number... which is reflected in the ratings.

I believe NBC aren't paying much for it, so they might continue as they have to show something during the time. Although I imagine it's probably a bit more expensive than just showing repeats.
 

firehawk12

Subete no aware
I believe NBC aren't paying much for it, so they might continue as they have to show something during the time. Although I imagine it's probably a bit more expensive than just showing repeats.
Yep, it costs little for them to air it since someone else is paying for it. And they get some "hype" from critics. It's why they dumped it in the summer, since it doesn't matter if no one is watching it as much as if it was airing in the winter.
 

RatskyWatsky

Hunky Nostradamus
Bryan Cranston & David Shore Pilot ‘Sneaky Pete’ Nears Move To Amazon

The fate of Bryan Cranston & David Shore’s pilot Sneaky Pete may soon be (partially) in viewers’ hands. Amazon is in negotiations to pick up the drama pilot, originally developed by CBS, and put it on its platform as it does with its own pilots. I hear the original pilot would undergo some tweaking and possible minor reshoots before being made available on Amazon. Taking into account viewing data and customer feedback, the streaming service would make a decision on a series order.
 

beat

Member
Dammit
NBC has stuck a fork in Hannibal.

The Peacock network has cancelled Bryan Fuller's acclaimed, lush thriller, TVLine has confirmed. The show's current third season -- slated to wrap up in late August -- will be its last.

"NBC has allowed us to craft a television series that no other broadcast network would have dared, and kept us on the air for three seasons despite Cancellation Bear Chow ratings and images that would have shredded the eyeballs of lesser Standards & Practices enforcers," Fuller said in a statement. "[NBC president] Jen Salke and her team have been fantastic partners and creatively supportive beyond measure.

"Hannibal is finishing his last course at NBC's table this summer," Fuller added, "but a hungry cannibal can always dine again. And personally, I look forward to my next meal with NBC."
 

Zoe

Member
Amazon plz. I'm already having to pick up Hulu for Mindy--I'm trying to hold out on Netflix as long as possible :(
 

berzeli

Banned
Can't say that I'm surprised about Hannibal, those ratings were pretty dismal. It will be interesting to see how/if it gets saved, Amazon has streaming rights in the US, Netflix has them in a bunch of other territories and there are a some Sony owned TV channels around the globe who were co-producers. So it is a little messy.
 

Sober

Member
Season Four is coming to NeoGAFTV


Introducing NeoGAFTV, a brand new service that revives cancelled TV shows but on a shoestring budget. Our Current Lineup is Hannibal, Firefly, Community

/s
The lineup would be "The Sony Fanboy Hour" (a panel of 97 people yelling over one another about how awesome PS4 and Sony first party games are) followed by a documentary on how Nintendo is failing to capture an audience (going mobile, obviously), and later, an expose on Always Online for Xbox One (it's on repeats).

Also any PC related programming is at like 2 in the morning.
 

Danthrax

Batteries the CRISIS!
This being the TV thread, I somehow first thought you meant the bubble shows from Sony Pictures*.

* or whatever the name of their TV show business is.

Well, Crackle is their streaming "network."

Hannibal for Crackle? It can air alongside The Cleaners and old episodes of Dilbert.
 
A couple of business related articles:

- NY Times Magazine: Comedy Central in the Post-TV Era
The network is in the middle of a creative renaissance — and a business-model crisis.
The reinvention of “The Daily Show” looms as an important trial not only for Noah — who became the target of online controversy when several old, impolitic tweets of his were exhumed after his hiring was publicized — but also for Alterman and for Comedy Central itself. The network, owned by the media conglomerate Viacom, is trying to adapt to trends that have changed the television business irrevocably since Stewart began hosting “The Daily Show” in 1999, and the program sits at the center of thorny questions about how best to face the future. Contemporary news cycles can seem to comprise nanoseconds and to unfold as much on social media as anywhere else. And viewers — especially the younger ones Comedy Central wants in its cross hairs — slip elusively among smartphone apps, Xbox consoles, YouTube windows, Apple TVs, bootleg streaming portals, Roku units, Hulu pages, Netflix accounts, Amazon interfaces, torrent clients and, if they even own them, cable boxes. Any traditional media institution faces a version of this challenge, but Comedy Central’s quandary is almost paradoxically acute: What does a television network do when its bread-and-butter demographic — young, piracy-fluent, glued to phones — stops watching television?

The network’s higher-ups argue that people are still tuning in, but doing so in ways that traditional — or, to use the industry term, “linear” — ratings don’t capture. The problem is that when it comes to selling ads, “The dollars are still, for the most part, in the linear world,” says Doug Herzog, who oversees several of Viacom’s television properties. In recent quarters, Comedy Central’s ratings have declined by double-digit percentages — among its target audience, they were down 30 percent, year over year, in the first quarter of 2015 — and advertising income has declined along with them. In April, Viacom announced a major “strategic realignment” involving layoffs and asset write-downs.

Yet frustration about the hard-to-monetize new ways in which people are watching shows is ultimately an enviable position, because at least it means that people want to watch your shows. Alterman seems keenly aware of this. Even as he addresses new modes of viewing (by betting big on web-born talent, devising shows with digital platforms in mind and bringing greater diversity to the network’s programming), he has restored Comedy Central’s reputation as a launching pad for major comedic stars, and for humor that thrums, delightfully, with a sense of purpose — a place where jokes can be insightful, argumentative and daffy all at once. Somehow, Alterman has helped to usher in a network renaissance — improbably but definitively — against the backdrop of a network crisis.

- Andy Greenwald for Grantland: Comedy of Errors: ‘Ballers’ and ‘The Brink’ Aren’t Good — But Does That Really Matter for HBO?
Since the late ’90s, when the recent Golden Age of Television was just sparkly runoff accumulating on the banks of the L.A. River, HBO has dominated the TV landscape like a colossus. Its shows win the most awards, suck up the most oxygen, and kill the most horses. In the past decade, a legion of ambitious upstarts have come at the king — and while they have occasionally not missed, HBO remains dominant and implacable. Thanks to powerhouses like Game of Thrones and Veep, the network’s name is so closely linked to contemporary ideas of quality and prestige that its occasional misfires barely leave a mark. Luck was dispatched to the glue factory so quickly it didn’t leave hoofprints; Hello Ladies was mostly a curt goodbye.

So strong is HBO’s consumer identity that when it announced a long-rumored “Over-the-Top” service, called HBO Now, the move was generally hailed as a bit of bold maneuvering, not dinged for being an inevitable reaction to the looming threat of Netflix and its streaming ilk. The expectation was that HBO would continue being HBO regardless of the form in which it arrived, be it cable box, wireless router, or raven. This is a testament to HBO’s sterling brand; like Idris Elba in a tuxedo, the network is assumed to class up any room it wanders into. This is great for first impressions and early adopters: Look at that library! Look at that tradition! But what few have taken into consideration is that in order to dominate the future, HBO will likely have to undermine the brand that helped it win the past.

The first evidence of this arrived Sunday night. No, the wobbly response to True Detective Season 2 isn’t to blame — HBO is always going to throw money and stars at difficult talent, and sometimes expensive ingredients really can make familiar dishes taste better. Pay attention, instead, to the two new series that debuted afterward, dangling like fraying threads on Colin Farrell’s bolo tie. It’s not a crime that neither The Brink nor Ballers is a particularly good show; in fact, that alone is barely noteworthy. What’s striking about them both is how profoundly inessential they feel, how the not-bad ideas that birthed them feel so strikingly absent from the not-at-all-good results. This is a break from HBO’s standard operating procedure, which has long prioritized passionate engagement over anything as gauche as ratings. This is why Getting On stays on, why The Comeback comes back, and why Girls keeps going. Though the latter show appears to attract trolls and viewers in equal numbers, its cultural Q rating — as in, the amount of attention paid to it by the chattering, tweeting classes — is through the roof. HBO would rather have its shows loved or hated than simply endured. And it’s this lack of ardor, in either direction, that makes The Brink and Ballers potentially damaging to HBO’s sterling reputation. It doesn’t matter if I liked them. The question is: Will anyone care?
And, in any other era, the ambitious-but-flawed Leftovers would never get a second season, never mind what appears to be a soup-to-nuts reboot. But what choice do Plepler and HBO’s president, Michael Lombardo, have? Something has to premiere this fall, and better the devil you’ve already invested millions in, right? Critically, I admire that HBO won’t make a cynical Marco Polo or a clickbaity Fuller House to attract new eyeballs and paper over the holes in its stretched-thin schedule. But that doesn’t mean that those shows aren’t smart business. The modern axiom is very true: Content is the one true king, sitting smugly on the Iron Throne, taunting contenders and pretenders alike.

Long before Netflix, Amazon, and Hulu took the boast to literal new extremes, HBO prided itself on not being TV. So it’s ironic that in its attempt to compete on the newcomers’ digital turf, HBO might have to sacrifice its high-mindedness and sink into the same trough as everyone else. At the moment, The Brink and Ballers are merely stuffing HBO’s scripted slate, not defining it. But if an elite consumer base has long been worth bragging about, it’s increasingly unclear what other value it has. After all, there’s a reason Tidal is struggling while American Express is suddenly working with Walmart. Appetite trumps aesthetics in TV’s binge-driven, cordless future. But that doesn’t make it any easier to imagine proud HBO swapping the silver spoon for a shovel.
 

beat

Member
What's striking about them both is how profoundly inessential they feel, how the not-bad ideas that birthed them feel so strikingly absent from the not-at-all-good results. This is a break from HBO's standard operating procedure, which has long prioritized passionate engagement over anything as gauche as ratings.
Is this really fair? I feel like HBO always makes some inessential shows. They just get cancelled quickly.

I actually liked How To Make It In America.
 

RatskyWatsky

Hunky Nostradamus
Is this really fair? I feel like HBO always makes some inessential shows. They just get cancelled quickly.

He expands on that a bit here:

HBO has managed to play both high and low before and remain on top.

But the creative squeeze feels more pronounced this time, particularly as the explosion of outlets has left HBO skimming the cream from a well-tended bucket. Netflix outbid HBO for House of Cards; FX did the same with Tyrant. Sometimes the threat is even coming from within the same building: Thanks to a clogged development pipeline, both Banshee and The Knick slipped from HBO to sibling Cinemax, instantly becoming the keys to the latter’s creative resurgence. Faced with the same choices today, I doubt HBO would let either of those shows out of its grasp.
 

Fuzzy

I would bang a hot farmer!
Speaking of HBO, any word on Open City? It's been over a year since I've read anything about it.
 

Wiktor

Member
It's ok. Westworld and Foundation will save HBO :) In Jonathan Nolan we trust.

#TheBetterNolan

Seriously though, production values is still a thing where nobody else can really match HBO when it goes all out. Something like Game of Thrones wouldn't be possible anywhere else, with maybe exception of Netflix. High concept expensive shows like those might be a way for HBO to deliver something unique.
 
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