Playboy - Analyst Hype Doesn't Help Lousy Tv Shows
Appraising the new shows of 2011-12 at midseason, veteran media analyst Brad Adgate of Horizon Media has found that some of the shows that were the most heavily hyped prior to their debut flopped while other little-noticed entries became hits. In an interview with the Los Angeles Times , Adgate singled out NBC's The Playboy Club and ABC's Pan Am as noteworthy disappointments, particularly given the amount the two respective networks spent on promoting them.
"All the buzz and hype really just works for the first episode," Adgate told the Times . "This isn't like a movie where you have a great first weekend and make your money." The Playboy Club has already been canceled. Pan Am is struggling to stay aloft. Another heavily hyped show, Fox's Terra Nova has pulled decent ratings but they may not be good enough to justify the show's enormous cost.
Then there's the case of Fox's The X Factor , which also drew solid ratings -- just not as astronomical as producer/judge Simon Cowell had forecast. The show's ratings have obliged Fox to give advertisers free spots -- so-called make-goods -- to compensate for the smaller-than-promised audience.
On the other hand, the Times observed, the broadcast networks rather quietly introduced a number of new sitcoms this season that clicked with viewers, including CBS's Two Broke Girls, ABC's Suburgatory , and Fox's New Girl.
"The biggest shock of the fall TV season," the Times noted, "was CBS' successful re-engineering of its top-rated comedy Two and a Half Men ," which was already the top-rated sitcom on television when Charlie Sheen was dumped last season and whose ratings have jumped 25 percent since he was replaced by Ashton Kutcher.
