Cable versus networks

[mrbaseball]

There are a couple of pretty good series on cable this summer. I'm really liking Burn Notice now that it's a couple of episodes in. And I found the premier of Madmen last week to show a lot of potential. I love the way that they capture that time period. Madmen looks like it could be really great. Psyche is sort of interesting in an offbeat way too. I like it but I can see how others may not.

I like these offbeat cable series and I probably wouldn't watch them at all if it weren't for the DVR so I can watch them at my convience. Network series kind of suck in comparision. At the start of the fall season I set up the DVR to set up series recordings on most of the interesting new shows and most of them were promptly cancelled. You can't trust the networks. They will run 2 or 3 episodes of a new show and yank it as fast as they can if the initial numbers aren't there and replace it with some horrific reality show or American Idol wannabe.

An interesting thing happened about 6 weeks ago. All of a sudden one of my fall picks (Kidnapped) started showing up on my DVR. It's being broadcast at 1am on Mondays so I'm guessing it's not getting much viewership outside of DVRs. I guess they figure they have shot the episodes so they might as well show them. Anyway it's a really well done show and pretty interesting but I know it's gonna be disappointing. It will likely end with no resolution and a cliffhanger ending we will never see resolved. The cable networks will stick with whatever they have but the networks panic. I think the future of network TV series is gonna be bleak while cable will steal more and more viewership with comitment to fresh ideas and to actually sticking with a series.

[Shadowrun]

I also like Burn Notice, I really liked the commercials for Madmen but havent seen an episode yet.

I like Monk more then i like Psyche. Rescue Me is good.

Plenty of good shows on cable, network tv i dont really watch a lot of anymore. I am not a fan of gameshows/reality tv for the most part.

Only shows on network that i watch is Scrubs, 30 rocks, and Office. Sometime i will watch a random episode of Numbers.

[mrbaseball]

Just caught another cable premier (on DVR) Damages. This really looks like another winner with a strong cast. The quality of these cable series continues to rise while the cheapo gameshow and reality crap the networks are shoving at us are the true junk of TV. I really believe that unless the thinking changes that CBS, ABC and NBC will be lucky to stay ahead of the FX's, AMC's, USA's etc. in less than 10 years.