In your Ask Matt column last ...
Question: In your
Ask Matt column last week, someone asked about Fox's reason behind promoting and supporting
Standoff while dumping
Justice. I'm not a fan of either show (though I did find
Justice more enjoyable than
Standoff), but I can understand why Fox chose to stay with the latter.
Standoff is produced by 20th Century Fox Television, while
Justice was produced by Warner Bros. Will a network's production house affect its willingness to pick up other production houses' shows? I remembered NBC initially held
Scrubs, a Touchstone production, until last January because it wanted to promote
My Name Is Earl, an NBC Universal show. Last month, CBS canceled
Waterfront, a Warner Bros. production, before it even hit the airwaves. It was suspected (mainly by the actor
Joe Pantoliano) that the network wanted to promote its CBS-Paramount produced
3 LBS. So, do networks only care about ratings and ad money, or are they also trying to make more of their own productions hits over other company's productions? ABC saved
Ugly Betty by moving it to Thursday, but refused to save Warner Bros.'
Men in Trees from its Friday slot until recently, after Touchstone's
Six Degrees failed to gather any
Grey's fans.
Answer: You're absolutely right. I should have pointed out the corporate synergy connection between Fox and 20th regarding the
Standoff renewal. (Although it's also in Fox's best interest to want to be in business with Jerry Bruckheimer,
Justice's producer, so that probably wasn't as easy a cancellation as it looked.) While your take on the issue is a bit cynical, and in the case of
Earl, mistaken (that show is not from Universal, but from 20th, ironically), for the most part you're right. The networks are more likely to favor shows developed from their in-house studio: CBS/Paramount, Fox/20th, NBC/Universal, ABC/Touchstone, CW/Warner Bros. and Paramount. In the case of
Betty, though, the show's move to Thursday was inspired more by the fact that everyone (critics as well as execs) loved it. And as buzz was building, ABC took the opportunity to dump the lousy comedies it had originally scheduled in front of
Grey's (you got a taste of one of them this week in the DOA
Big Day) in favor of pairing
Betty with
Grey's. A win-win. But you can't help concluding that
Six Degrees got its plum spot — and
What About Brian its full-season renewal — in part because they're from Touchstone. (The involvement of J.J. Abrams in both may also have been a factor.) As for
Waterfront (the pilot of which I never saw, so I'm totally speculating here), maybe CBS just didn't believe in its potential. CBS' schedule is so strong that the network may not have felt the need for another hourlong drama on the back bench. Or maybe CBS finally woke up to the fact that, after several tries, it's going to be tough to build a show around Joe Pantoliano, who's more of a character actor than a leading man. But it's also very likely that if this pilot had been developed in-house, its chances of making it on air would have improved.
