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By Kate Blake, Admin The Sarah Connor Society and Multipleverses.com

Every week this fall the ratings for the top sci-fi and action shows continue to take hits. The ratings blogs and entertainment publications are in a quandry wondering what is going on. The answer is simple. MONDAY NIGHT FOOTBALL!

Long long ago, in a time far off in distant memory when there were only three big networks and few or no cable choices ( the 70s and 80s) nobody put anything on Monday nights that was considered male oriented viewing. What shows were on Monday nights? NBC had Little House on the Prairie for over a decade opening its Monday night line up. A show that attracted families, kids and older viewers alike with heartfelt drama. Comedies have always done well on Monday nights for CBS. Mash was a Monday night show. Today, How I Met Your Mother and The Big Bang Theory are drawing strong young audiences with programming that is definitely NOT aimed at the sports enthusiasts crowd.

What do NBC and Fox do? They put their biggest action/ sci-fi shows on and then wonder why they aren’t getting ratings. Hello! I am currently not a huge NFL viewer simply because my team – which will continue to be the SF 49ers yeah though they suck and have for a long time- has not had a team of note in a decade. Last night the New England Patriots who entered last year’s Superbowl undefeated and lost- played the always popular Denver Broncos. The game brought big ratings to ABC and pretty much meant that football fans weren’t going to tune in to anything else.

For those of you outside the US- American football as played by the NFL is unique in the world of professional sports. Unlike Baseball, Basketball and Hockey which have unending seasons, the NFL only plays 16 games with a couple of pre-season games and a couple of post-season games culminating in the Superbowl. The entire football season runs from training camp in July through the big event in January. With this compressed time frame is it no wonder people find it easier to religiously follow football than other sports? Football dominates high school sports across the country. Here in Phoenix where we have a major university that is always recruiting top football prospects and is scouted by the NFL ( Arizona State University) – this big city of over 4 million people usually runs high school football news roundups and coverage on the weekend sports along with the professional and college news.

Football is not restricted to men anymore either. More and more women are attending games and are

counted in the ranks of rabid fans- I say it is because of those tight pants they wear- but purient interest aside there is a reason Alyssa Milano is designing a line of women’s NFL garb. Men and women both watch football. Women are even starting to play football. Girls football is one of the fastest growing high school and college sports along with women’s hockey. Women in the US like to go out and kick ass as much as men. Who would have thought that almost 40 years after title nine we would see this happen?

Back to our discussion of TV ratings. A lot of people in the media have a pre-conceived idea of the average sci-fi fan. They see us as geeks, dweebs and dorks who go to comic book conventions. That may be but we are also the most educated and diverse group in the tv and movie viewing landscape. We watch sports- some of us even have season tickets to our favorite teams home games. We also like good music, good food and we tend to have hobbies. We tend to be more educated than the typical viewer and thus pickier and more critical of poor writing and sloppy storytelling. We don’t watch blue collar laugh track sitcoms. We do miss Frasier. When we want to see action it must be coupled with compelling stories and top level acting. Our vernacular includes BSG, TSCC, SGA and for some Trek.

I am on the viewer panel for NBC and get frequent surveys asking about my viewing habits and comments about what I like and dislike. The one thing nobody ever asks- do you follow sports? Sports is the one thing that exists outside of other TV programming and cuts across and into every type of TV series viewing. Once upon a time FOX knew this. Melrose Place was a break out hit for Fox as a non-sports fans programming alternative. If Fox and NBC were to shake up both of the schedules I think they would be shocked at what would happen.

Some ideas and thoughts for the networks and media in general to consider:
NBC- move Chuck and Heroes to Sunday night. Establish a night of fun family friendly action and sci-fi for your network. Put something new at 8 then run Lipstick Jungle on Monday nights. Make it female programming! Gossip Girl does well at 8/9pm- having Lipstick Jungle on after that should pull viewers in if you advertise correctly.

FOX- you need a night of soaps. Do the action Mondays in the winter and program Soap Mondays in the fall. How about a couple of strong family dramas? Don’t come back with your action shows until winter- they run them without any breaks or repeats. It has worked for 24 and works with the American Idol rollout.

Networks- there is no need to think every series has to have a 20-24 episode season. Cable has figured this out. You can offer more programming with more variety and higher quality by having fewer episodes with better storytelling. Don’t throw crap out at us and expect us to watch- we won’t bite. Heather Locklear’s recent troubles brought one of NBCs bigger failures to light again- the ill conceived LAX. A series dealing with security at airports- boring! Slick, shiny and boring doesn’t equal viewers no matter who is in the show.

Can we also see fewer reality TV series? The FOX show Hole in the Wall is idiotic and the ratings bear that out. The Japanese may find people doing strange humiliating things for money appealing- Americans needs more incentives than that. Personally the only reality shows I watch are American Idol- and usually not until they hit the top 24, and I watch the last episode of each season of The Greatest Loser on NBC. Who doesn’t want to see fat people cry about finally getting off the couch and blasting years of blubber away? I can say this as I am yet to find this initiative myself and think the prize money is not nearly enough for the weeks of public humiliation in prime time but can’t help myself when it comes to watching the final.

TV media in general- over 100,000 people attended Comic Con last summer. The number who wore costumes was nominal, most people were nice working people with jobs who enjoy some fan fun to support their shows which are also their hobby. I am personally tired of having people who follow celebs like Brittney Spears and her idiotic exploits as if they were really newsworthy call me a geek. My fandom and hobbies expand my imagination, they give me creative outlets and forums where I can discuss a lot of interesting ideas and theories and possibilities. In other words- we like using our brains. And when we need to get our ya yas off ( thank your Agent Scully for that memorable line from First Person shooter) we like to see things explode. Sometimes we like to see big guys beat the hell out of each other on a playing field too. Making us choose between our favorite shows and our favorite teams is just plain mean!

At the Sarah Connor Society we have launched a campaign to move Terminator ( which just got picked up for a full season- THANK YOU VERY MUCH FOX!) to Wednesday nights so it won’t be competing with football this fall.

At the end of the day- and this rant what does it all mean in the scheme of things? The television landscape has gotten more and more crowded with more choices and people watching a great variety of programming than ever before. We also watch on more than just television. Online viewings, video on demand, iTunes, Amazon Unboxed and yes lets not forget the bane of the studios- torrent downloads mean we as viewers have other places to catch our favorite shows. The issue is that for a show to be successful it still has to measure up in the standardized ways that the entertainment industry uses for metering success. To get the types of ratings that ensure continuation of a serialized drama it needs to be accessible to as many viewers as possible who would like to view it live. To make sure your maximum number of male and female action fans can tune in- Fox and NBC- you should really rethink how you program Monday nights. Or make sure you bid for Monday night football! NBC did a great job of snagging this year’s Superbowl and they are still riding high on their massive Olympics payday which garnered the network over a billion dollars in ads in two weeks.

Just some thoughts- feel free to post yours in the comments below!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 21st, 2008 at 11:02 am and is filed under Chuck, Heroes, My Own Worst Enemy, Prison Break, Sarah Connor Chron.. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.