I Smell a Spin-off

Welcome to what I hope will be an occasional segment on my blog titled I Smell a Spin-off. For those who aren't aware of the concept, spinoffs are when part of a successful show, usually characters, but sometimes a general concept, are taken and given a second show of their own.

From a producer's perspective, it's a chance to explore other aspects of a concept. Actors can find opportunities to grow in their craft, as well as rise in importance by moving from just being part of an ensemble to having a show built around them. For the networks, it's a chance to establish a show with a built-in audience, making it that much easier for them to sell advertising. And for audiences it's an opportunity to watch a show that expands on the characters and ideas of a program we already love and watch.

Television fans can be an obsessive bunch, and since the rise of online media and forums, now more than ever fans have the ability to voice what they think a good spin-off of their favourite television program would be. At one stage or another most long-running and successful television shows, whether the idea of the writers or network executives, or yes, even the sometimes over obsessed fans, consider the creation of a spin-off.

One of my favourite television shows of all time, Angel (above), is a spin-off from Buffy the Vampire Slayer that lasted five seasons. Angel, a popular and well known character on Buffy, and one half of the famous lovers, left the show at the end of season three, hoping to give Buffy a normal life. He moved to Los Angeles and attempted, with the help of new characters and old, to redeem himself for his past mistakes as a vampire buy helping the helpless through a supernatural detective agency. While it maintained some similarities to its parent show, including its humour and monster-of-the-week beginnings, spin-offs have the ability to become something not only apart of, but more than, it's parent show.

Anyway, as a TV nut, I often see promise in minor characters, plots, and situations that just aren't given as much attention as I'd like in the grand scheme of some television shows. That's why, with my I Smell a Spin-off segment I plan to highlight these ideas and give them a little justice by creating a mock spin-off for them. Things I'll be discussing will include: what characters will be involved, possible plots, how it will link from it's parent show, and most importantly, could it ever actually happen? I hope you all enjoy reading these, and please feel free to post your own spin-off ideas in the comments. I'd love to hear them!

Why is The CW failing?

I stumbled across a thread titled this a couple of days ago on a television website I often frequent. It was discussing how The CW, one of the five commercial American television networks, has the worst ratings out of those five networks. Interestingly enough, this topic was started back in 2008, and The CW doesn't seem at all to be in a better position in the ratings than it was back then, but then again, it hasn't crashed and burned either.

Everyone has an opinion as to why The CW is having difficulties and before I add mine I thought I should say that I'm 21 years old, and male. While I live in Australia, if I lived in America, I've no doubt The CW would be the channel I watched the most. I watch Supernatural, The Vampire Diaries and Nikita, and until they were cancelled I watched The Secret Circle and Ringer, too. Hell, if I lived in America and watched The CW enough they could probably even convince to me watch shows like The L.A. Complex, and I would have checked out Melrose Place too.

Anyway, enough about my bad taste in television. I would say the demographic is the major problem, as many others have said. According to Wikipedia it's '18-35 year olds'. It doesn't specify gender, but women are the obvious answer. So how to get young women to watch The CW? Well they've got the programming down pat in my opinion. Personally, I think the problem is that young people just don't watch as much TV as they used to, and if they do, they're on their computer while watching the television, or god forbid, watching television on the computer. So the idea would be more online interactive content. Facebook, Twitter, games, competitions etc. Honestly I don't really know because I'm old fashioned and I'm scared of computers and change, so anyone else have any ideas?

A lot of people have said that that The CW doesn't promote its older and more established shows in comparison to its advertising and support for its newer ones. As I don't live in America, I can't comment, but even if they do this, it wouldn't really surprise me. As they are focused on such a young demographic if a show ends up going for longer than three years, chances are, viewers that were interested in the show at the beginning of the series may have grown-up and moved on, lost interest, or just no longer find the time for television. This is why I could understand The CW being hesitant in promoting its older shows. Why advertise a show past its prime that's constantly losing viewers (or at least it is in their eyes) when you can heavily advertise a new show that will encapsulate the hearts of new young television viewers? In this scenario, as much as it pains me, I understand why they might have cancelled shows like Veronica Mars.

The CW is a result of a merger that occured between the WB and UPN networks in the fall of 2006, one of the primary reasons for that merger supposedly being that neither network could get as high ratings as the other netowrks because they were vying for the same audience and therefore cancelled each other out of the competition. While in theory merging the two networks into The CW solves that problem, in today's TV market The CW is most definitely not the only channel of its kind. ABC Family has shows like The Secret Life of The American Teenager, Pretty Little Liars & The Lying Game, all of which I could see on The CW (as well as previous shows like 10 Things I Hate About You, Greek, Kyle XY & The Nine Lives of Chloe King). And at the moment MTV seem to have started to fast develop a similar sort of demographic with shows like Teen Wolf and Awkward (previously The Hard Time of RJ Berger).

Maybe in an attempt to extend their demographic The CW could take a leaf out of MTV's book, and produce more mature or possibly even risqué, programming content if it would get them more viewers. Nikita and Supernatural would have to be the two shows currently on the network that could break into other demographics, and Ringer could be seen as off brand too, but The CW hasn't tried all that hard to branch out as yet. Possibly there safest bet to do this would be to have shows that mothers and daughters could watch together, in the vein of Gilmore Girls, in an attempt to spread their age bracket a bit higher (just forget trying to get males in at this stage, they've got enough problems as is). Unfortunately I can't see any of The CW's fall or mid-season shows making more mature aged content, although Cult looks very promising.

Another suggestion would be to bring back comedies! I couldn't believe from doing research on this piece  that Dawn Ostroff, The CW's former President, 'publicly declared the difficulty of doing comedies for their target demographic'. What??? Everyone loves a comedy. Yes, a lot of sitcoms nowadays are hit and miss, but I could see something like What I Like About You (an old example, I know) doing really well on the network. Plus, sitcoms are something families can watch.

I was interested to see that The Bill Cunningham Show is going to The CW. While I have never seen or heard of the show before I think this is a very good move if The CW do it right. The network needs something, not necessarily national news or sports programming, but something else that's factual/ informative/ topical that their younger viewers can enjoy, while gaining older viewers, as this is the sort of stuff everyone can watch (and does). I was going to suggest a couple of shows, or variances of, that we have here in Australia that might work. There's one called The Project which is basically a news/ current affairs program, but it's hosted by a panel of comedians/ journalists and they often have celebrity guests. They present a really laid-back approach to the news that's easily accessible to all ages. There's also shows like The Gruen Transfer and Hungry Beast (which analyse commercials/ media and its effects on audiences) and The Chaser's War on Everything (which is a satire of news and politics. Much like Stephen Colbert I'd imagine). It looks like with Bill Cunningham The CW are testing the waters, so I hope it works out for them, otherwise they could try and go for something less serious in a talk show like Rove or Chelsea Lately.

Also, why does The CW not have programming on Sunday's? This seems like a majorly wasted opportunity. I'm not exactly sure how it works over there, but do they have any programming at all on Sundays? Or just nothing original? And if they have nothing original on, well why the hell not???

So do you watch The CW? Why/ why not? And what do you think the network needs to do to achieve better ratings?

Which TV character do you think you are? (Regrettably or Otherwise)

So the other day a friend of mine said something to me that really got me thinking about what television characters I have an affinity with. And not in a good way, unfortunately. Much to my dismay, my friend called me 'The Quagmire' of our group. For those unaware, Glenn Quagmire is a character from the animated sitcom Family Guy, who is known for his general creepy and sexually deviant behaviour. Well let's just say if someone compares you to a character like that it definitely gets you thinking about your personality.

In my honest opinion, if I were to be anyone from Family Guy, I'd see myself more as a Brian Griffin. I'm a struggling writer, enjoy a bit of a drink, enjoy being contrarian, and consider myself more cultured than most of my family members and friends. Obviously with those traits comes a fair bit of pretentiousness, and I'd be the first to admit I'm often sarcastic and a hypocrite towards others.

Thinking back to shows I watched when I was younger one character I especially remember relating to, and therefore sharing an affinity with, was Malcolm in the Middle's titular character Malcolm Wilkerson. Being considered smart, Malcolm is placed in a special class, which he has difficulty fitting in with and therefore is trapped in between the geniuses and the normal people, but is unable to fit into either group. His dysfunctional family are a constant hassle and embarrassment for him to deal with, and also prolong his doubts about not fitting in, as does his own ego. There are not too many redeeming character qualities here, if any at all, but regardless, Malcolm was a relatable character for young men, because he was realistic. What 12 year-old boy doesn't put himself first, blame all his problems on his family, knows the pain of being bullied, yet bullies himself, all the while longing to just fit in? Why yes, Malcolm, life is unfair.

Nowadays, I have grown into an artsy and socially awkward adult (with my 12 year-old maturity still in tact, thank God) and find that one of the main shows in which I relate to several of its characters is 30 Rock.  I think majority of the writers of TGS could apply to my personality including Liz Lemon, Pete Hornberger, and J.D. Lutz. All of them, a part from being writers, are socially awkward, generally insecure, hold strong concerns about how they are perceived by others (yet refuse to put too much effort into their appearance), are popular-culture nerds, and have issues with food. They are all very career driven, although this is because they are lonely not because they love their work, they set impossibly high standards for themselves and are desperate to please everyone, often leading them to be pushed around by others and let down. Honestly people, all this is why writers have such good material for their work.

Heading into darker territory, and exploring an interesting and exciting  development in television over recent years, is the affinity I share with Miami Metro's number-one serial killer, Dexter Morgan. Now I know I really shouldn't be telling people all the things I have in common with a mass murderer, but I'm obviously not the only one who shares my high opinion of the anti-hero, otherwise no one would watch Dexter. Killing very far aside, what makes him relatable is that Dexter feels he doesn’t belong in the world and can never be accepted for who he is and he finds it difficult to interact with other individuals and is often naive of social etiquette. For him, being normal and acting just like everyone else is an extremely difficult task, one he must constantly perform. As such, he feels disconnected from the world. We all have a 'Dark Passenger' of our own, and it's interesting to see that audiences are becoming more inclined to watch shows with flawed characters.

Who knows whether it's a trend that will continue, but it wouldn't be at all surprising if it does. After all, one of the most important parts of a successful television show are likable characters, and the best way for writers to do that is to make the audience relate to them on a personal level. In most television shows, but particularly sitcoms, main characters have a tendency to demonstrate similar primary character traits (sometimes to the point of stereotypes), which is why it's no surprise people often see themselves in characters. For example, as the socially awkward geek I described above, characters like Ross Geller (Friends), Seth Cohen (The O.C.), Eric Forman (That 70's Show) and Arnold Rimmer (Red Dwarf), are the ones I find most relatable, because they all share common characteristics and play a certain role show in their respective show, in this case, at it's very basic level, 'The Nerd'.

So, believe me, if someone ever compares you to a television character, or you yourself find you have an uncanny resemblance to one, don't say blurgh like my television alter-ego Liz Lemon would, but rather be aware the characters are written so that audiences relate to them and that it's nothing to be ashamed of, it's just the magic of television at work.

So I told you mine, will you tell me yours? What television characters are you most like? Are you a typical nerd, or can you easily be placed in another stereotypical group? I mean, come on, I had a dog and a serial killer in my list, yours is definitely not going to be as bad as mine, and I would love you to share.