Smash: Discussion Thread

[sheilaforever]

didn't help BOSTON LEGAL et al.

[JackPeyton]

didnt that damn show go like 5 seasons?

Plus ABC wasnt in the place that NBC is. They may need anything they can take. I guess it depends on if it turns a profit or not.

[wingwalker]

West Wing did well in the high income houses as well, but neither Boston Legal nor West Wing's ratings were ever as long as Smash's is. You can't make money on broadcast tv with a drama that has 3 million viewers and less than a 1 demo. It'll be canceled. With Chicago Fire coming in first Wednesday (and been a solid 2nd place all season), NBC would be better off creating Chicago Fire: Burn Victims Unit.

[DRW50]

The better comparison might be Studio 60.

[gtru1981]

Lol... That was funny

[EricMontreal22]

I think this has helped Smash pretty much guarantee (unless their ratings crash further, but they seem to be evening out at the low, low level they are at) stay the season. They wrapped the 16 episodes last week and apparently filmed an ending that could work for a series ender. I don't, however, see it playing a part in getting a third season.

[Angela]

The latest episode got 2.68 million viewers and a 0.8/2 in 18-49. All new-lows.

High income placement? Delayed viewing? Network spin. They'll let the show finish the season but I don't see how these ratings wouldn't cement their cancellation at the end of the season. The ratings are too low and the show is too expensive for anything more. If it continues under 3.5 million/1.0 for the rest of the month, I wonder if they're even going to want to waste the after-The Voice slot on it. It'll air an hour after The Voice starting the last week of March.

[marceline]

I think Smash will be fine once The Voice comes back. I think the numbers now are a combination of having lost its lead in and losing viewers who don't like the change in tone from last season.

[DRW50]

I'm mostly hoping the show stays on just because I want to hear some of you talking about it. I guess that is more than I can say about most network shows now.

I do wonder how much The Voice will help NBC's lineup. Go On in particular seems to have rolled over and died without it.

[Angela]

They're giving the best real-estate to Revolution since it did well in its earlier run. That'll air on Monday after The Voice. The performing shows do better than the result shows. They're giving the Results night real estate to Go On, The New Normal and Smash. I'm doubting that will have enough fuel to save the Tuesday night shows. On top of that, ABC's DWTS will be competing with the comedy's.

A few articles on Smash/NBC's Ratings:

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY

Smash crashed 22 percent to a new series low — and this show did not have 22 percent to give. If asked a couple weeks ago, even after the show’s ultra-weak premiere, I would have said there’s no way that NBC will yank Smash from its schedule before the end of the show’s second season (there will not be a third). But now that the musical is within a tenth of a demo point of The CW’s Hart of Dixie (!)…

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY

WHY NBC SHOULDN'T YANK 'SMASH' YET

We’ve seen it many, many times — low-rated shows yanked early in their runs, before characters are fleshed out, worthwhile plot-lines have unfolded and viewers are given the chance to really experience the show in the first place.

So naturally, the assumption is that Smash, NBC’s musical drama that stars Katherine McPhee and the woefully underrated Megan Hilty — should be headed to the trash bin because its second season ratings have been even more unimpressive than the year before: Tuesday’s episode dropped 22 percent to a new series low of .7 in adults 18-49 and 2.6 million viewers. And since other shows have been pink-slipped this season after averaging much higher ratings than what Smash was luring (See: Partners, Whitney, The Last Resortand Zero Hour), the clock should have already stopped on the Broadway-based series, right?

Not necessarily...

The rest of this article is here: http://insidetv.ew.com/2013/03/06/why-nbc-shouldnt-yank-smash-yet/

NEW YORK TIMES

'SMASH' RATINGS HIT A NEW LOW ON NBC

Can “Smash” stay on the air? The enormously publicized — and enormously expensive — NBC drama crashed to a new ratings low Tuesday night, hitting a level that only a few weeks ago caused another NBC drama, “Do No Harm,” to be yanked off the air.

On Tuesday, “Smash” pulled in only 2.6 million viewers and a remarkably low 0.7 rating in the audience that NBC sells to advertisers, viewers between the ages of 18 and 49. Not only was that the worst number recorded Tuesday by any show on network television, it is exactly the same rating that pushed “Do No Harm” over the ratings cliff.

That medical drama won the unfortunate distinction of scoring the lowest ratings for its premiere of any drama in network history; now “Smash” has sunk to that level.

But “Smash” may yet survive for several reasons, beginning with its close association with Bob Greenblatt, the top NBC Entertainment executive, who brought the show with him from Showtime when he joined NBC. More significant, perhaps, is that NBC has an enormous amount already invested in “Smash.”

The show has completed all 17 episodes it had scheduled this year. At a cost of about $4 million an episode, NBC has already spent about $70 million on the show. To pull it off the air now, after just four of those completed episodes have been broadcast, would mean NBC would have no chance to recoup the rest of its investment.

The rest of this article is here: http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/03/06/smash-ratings-hit-a-new-low-on-nbc/

THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER

HOW NBC CAN SAVE ITSELF FROM BEING NBC

HIT THE WALL, KICK OUT THE DEAD, THROW IT IN REVERSE AND PUSH THE GAS. HARD.

Well, there's your big fiery death ball. Again. No, not the meteorite in Russia, the one that hit NBC on Wednesday like the gods themselves threw it out of anger.

The Tuesday night ratings arrived like a swarm of jackals on a nursery and the carnage was not pretty, nor even merely passably unattractive. Go On tanked. The New Normal one-upped that tankage. And Smash, well, yeah, it's smushed. If NBC wanted to find a silver lining it could have touted the fact that Betty White's Off Their Rockers, a show with a concept older than the people it features, was its highest rated show, reaching roughly 3.5 million people in the, what, 100-plus million homes NBC has a key pass to? There's no silver lining in that. Just a dry cleaning bag to kill yourself with.

Yes, every broadcast network sans CBS, which has been the best-run and most efficiently ruthless broadcaster for years now, is living a nightmare scenario that makes The Road from Cormac McCarthy look like The Sound of Music. But over at NBC, currently housed on an Indian burial ground, the relentless failure is no longer tragic -- just numbingly consistent.

When NBC entertainment chairman Bob Greenblatt came to NBC from Showtime, all the little birds sang him the same song: You're in the broadcast network business now, Bob, you can't make that delicious cable fare anymore. You're in the big tent with the big boys and you need to appeal to the largest possible audience. None of that niche candy you used so effectively to get Showtime out of HBO's shadows. Now you play by our rules.

And he did. At the time, that was wise. Even though the signs were already there that broadcast television needed a revamp, the Modern Familys and American Idols of the world were still doing big business and CBS had all that glittery gold. Greenblatt had no choice but to run NBC like a network, even if the previous stewards had run it like hardware store. So he did.

A lot of good it did him. Not many people are that visionary and daring, but wouldn't it have been nice if, when everybody told him he couldn't run NBC like Showtime, he gave them a one-word response: "Bullshit."

Because, let's face it, he's basically running a cable channel now. And so is everybody else but CBS. The difference is...

The rest of the article is here: http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/bastard-machine/nbc-can-change-network-model-426457#

[Darn]

I feel like the tone is exactly the same minus some superfluous characters and an even more dull narrative. They didn't change enough if you ask me.

[SFK]

I don't remember the last time I watched this show before catching some of it the other night. Is that Ivy in Les Liaisons dangereuses with Sean Hayes? It didn't really look like her but I was putting all of the two-and-two's together and since Katharine McPhee got the Marilyn role I figured they had to do something with Ivy. I didn't know that Daniel Sunjata was on here too.

[~bl~]

Yes Ivy is in the show with Sean Hayes. Daniel Sunjata is a dramaturg who was helping/pushing the script to be improved.

[EricMontreal22]

Absolutely agreed. There's no way unless a miracle happens rating wise that it has any chance at a third season. But unlike equally low rated Do No Harm (which I guess got a point below), I don't see it being dropped this season--the episodes are done, and NBC has too much face to save. I thought the last episode was an improvement (backhanded complement?) partly because it at least had more of the camp that I *did* enjoy about last year.

I dunno about sending Ivy off on her own isolated story--Sean Hayes' character had no idea Dangerous Liaisons wasn't a farts-and-all farce? And yet it was his idea to revive some forgotten musical that apparently Madeleine Kahn won a Tony for in Ivy's role (Kahn as Costance??) And all their scenes are complete with the "plinkity plink" music dramas tend to use to telegraph to viewers that "this is a comic scene" (the MUCH better written Once and Again--one of my all-time fave shows, had a huge problem with this.)

I kinda laughed at Wesley Taylor's increasingly cynical take on a gay chorus member--flirting shamelessly with Kyle until the point when he realizes his script is crap and loudly announcing it.

"I'm mostly hoping the show stays on just because I want to hear some of you talking about it. I guess that is more than I can say about most network shows now."

Besides being a sucker for anything musical theatre (and as awful as the Marilyn musical sounds, Marc Shaiman composed his best score for it--especially when listening to their "cast album" than he has for his last few shows like the lame Catch Me If You Can). But I agree with Carl's comment (except I watch)--when my mom called me after the last episode and I told her, after we complained about many elements, that it was doing so badly, she was upset because--as she said (she has no cable and doesn't download shows unless I do it for her) there are very few other shows she finds in primetime that she likes watching. It does make a nice change, even when I roll my eyes, compared with theCBS procedurals, etc. That's why I slightly bristle when people are hard on it, even if I can be more hard on it than they are--they are trying something that no other show (including Glee) is.

[EricMontreal22]

Yeah. I haven't watched Gossip Girl in ages, but I was hoping that hiring a Gossip Girl writer would mean they'd go full on camp soap. Instead the show seems to have magnified some of the more dull elements and removed a lot of the camp, though I hope and think that may change a bit. The new showrunner said he would never do any scenes where characters have fantasies and sing or break out into song and they're not on stage or in rehearsal or something (he commented that he would never do anything like the infamous Bollywood number last year--which I kinda enjoyed)--and yet that's not been true. We had a far worse Eurythmics fantasy number in the premier, and have had similar numbers since (I thought the Billy joel one Kyle sang actuallyw as pretty well integrated). And I don't mind that--I wish the show would become more outre like that, if anything. But it shows that they have no idea what they are doing. They should have promoted David Marshall Grant as showrunner, but he had left after his experiences last year to be story consultant for Nashville--and who can blame him.