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TV's Winners and Losers

The dust has settled on the TV season—American Idol and The Good Wife are in, The Event and $#*! My Dad Says are out. Jace Lacob rates the hits and the flops of the 2010-11 season.

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Three of the season’s notable winners come from the cable side. AMC took a risk in launching zombie drama The Walking Dead in October, but by leveraging its horror film content during the month, it paid off: the series attracted an average of 5.2 million viewers across six episodes (and became the most watched cable program among Adults 18-49 in the process), sparking intense online discussion as well as a swift second season order. MTV’s ratings giant Jersey Shore shows no signs of slowing down; in its third season, it launched with a record 8.5 million viewers, MTV's most viewed series broadcast ever. By the fourth episode that total went up to 8.9 million viewers. Meanwhile, Hot In Cleveland —a female-centric multi-camera comedy—established TV Land as a home for original programming. Now in its second season, it attracts an average of nearly 3 million viewers and has led to the network rapidly expanding its slate of originals.

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While neither show is necessarily a break-out hit, per se— Blue Bloods started its run with 15.2 million viewers (and has held above 10 million throughout its run) and Hawaii Five-0 launched with an equally impressive 14.2 million viewers but settled in closer to 10 million on a weekly basis—both fall well within CBS’ comfortable wheelhouse (crime procedurals), while also bringing in older viewers, an oft-neglected segment of the viewing population that only seems to be serviced by CBS. Additionally, Blue Bloods proved extremely durable even on Friday nights, an evening where the networks traditionally shove their weaker shows on their way out the door. Not surprisingly, CBS renewed both shows for second seasons, a rare sign of encouragement in a season that proved to be extremely challenging for new shows.

ART STREIBER
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In its second season, The Good Wife has continued to attract ratings (it averaged 12.8 million viewers for the season), despite airing in an intensely cut-throat time period (Tuesdays at 10 p.m.), and lavish critical attention. While the whip-smart drama’s strong points aren’t necessarily its key demographics, The Good Wife is the sole serialized drama at the network (and will remain so, after CBS turned Ringer over to the CW) and the rare CBS drama that is an Emmy play. Whether devoted viewers—riveted by topical issues, Julianna Margulies, Archie Panjabi’s kick-ass snoop Kalinda, and the entire stellar cast—will follow the show to Sunday evenings next season remains a mystery. However, given that season ended just a tick off of the season premiere, the ratings crystal ball indicates that all signs are clear for further success this fall.

JUSTIN STEPHENS
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It’s a given that NBC needs a savior, and that might be its new entertainment President Robert Greenblatt, who could bring some Showtime-style credibility to the struggling network, or it could be musical competition series The Voice, which may have single-handedly saved NBC from the brink. Based on a Dutch format, The Voice launched with a surprising 11.8 million viewers, topping ABC’s dominant Dancing with the Stars in terms of key adult 18-49 viewers, and has so far averaged more than 11 million viewers. NBC has already renewed the show for a second season, though it will wisely keep it on the sidelines until midseason, giving producers an opportunity to further develop the format for a lengthier run next spring.

Matthew Rolston
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Simon who? While Fox is banking on Simon Cowell and Paula Abdul when it launches The X Factor this fall, the granddaddy of musical competitions performed just fine this year, the show’s 10th cycle, even with the much-publicized absence of Cowell. Proving itself impervious to critical disdain (many critics took the judges to task for being too nice and not offering constructive criticism this season, while others held that the voting audience was biased against female contestants), audiences continued to show up in droves for the latest edition of Idol—perhaps thanks to the contestants, perhaps because of the arrival of new judges Jennifer Lopez and Steven Tyler. Accomplishing the near impossible for an aging show in a fractured media world, Idol grew its audience this season.

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The rare show that has actually improved its ratings from its first to second season, Steve Levitan and Christopher Lloyd’s Modern Family shows no signs of being in a sophomore slump. The show—which revolves around the extended Pritchett-Dunphy clan—attracted an average of 12.4 million viewers this season (it hit a ratings high of 13.1 million for its Halloween installment) and has continued to provide a strong anchor for ABC’s Wednesday night comedy block at 9 p.m., despite the lack of a strong lead-in. Coming off multiple Emmy Award wins—including Outstanding Comedy Series and Outstanding Supporting Actor (for Eric Stonestreet)—the show continues to receive largely positive critical traction as well.

Bob D'Amico
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With brand-defining drama Gossip Girl most definitely on the wane, the CW’s fortunes have been improved by the zeitgeist-grabbing supernatural soap The Vampire Diaries, overseen by Kevin Williamson and Julie Plec. One of the few CW shows that has both teen and adult appeal, the show—now wrapping its second season—has become addictive viewing for the nearly 3 million viewers who tune in each week… and who take to Twitter, Facebook, and Internet message boards to discuss and dissect it each week. With a third season order already on tap, the CW plans to use the strength of Vampire Diaries to launch a new supernatural-themed teen drama, Secret Circle, this fall. Don’t expect that the show—which takes plot twists to a whole new level—will lose any of its bite next season, as it leads into a fitting companion.

Art Streiber
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NBC didn’t have a lot to celebrate this season, so it had to be content with (relative) hits wherever it could find them. Case in point: David E. Kelley’s legal dramedy Harry’s Law, which premiered to mediocre reviews and yet attracted an average of 9.4 million viewers across its 12 episodes, despite having extremely weak lead-ins (like the dismal superhero fiasco The Cape). The series sank to just 7.8 million viewers by the time the season finale rolled around in early April (Hey, those are big numbers for NBC these days!), but that didn’t stop the network from giving the show a second-season order. File this one under: Old People Watch TV.

Matthias Clamer
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Conan O’Brien seemingly emerged as the victor after the entire NBC-Jay Leno affair last year. Poised to host a new late night talk show for cable network TBS, O’Brien seemed ready to take on Leno, Letterman, and the big players of late night, but his eponymous talk show—which did change the status quo of late night, introducing a new cable player—hasn’t exactly clicked with audiences as much as perhaps he would like. While Conan launched with 4.1 million viewers, trumping Leno in the ratings, as the season has worn on, the show has fallen considerably behind Leno, luring just 831,000 viewers, though Conan does see a bit of an uptick when factoring in Live+7 ratings, bumping it to 1.2 million. Whether the show can ever truly prove to be a legitimate threat to the hegemony of NBC and CBS late night remains to be seen.

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By the time Nikita’s freshman season ended, the espionage drama had lost more than 1.6 million viewers, way down from its initial total audience of 3.6 million. For a while, the show—which is based on Luc Besson’s La Femme Nikita and the USA series of the same name—seemed as though it was on the triage list, but it was given an 11th-hour reprieve by the CW, which picked it up for a second season. However, this fall Nikita will move to the much-less desirable real estate of Fridays at 8 p.m., where it will compete with another spy show, NBC’s Chuck. Unless it can galvanize its fanbase and mobilize them to Fridays and provide a decent lead-in for the netlet’s returnee Supernatural, this spy will be out in the cold soon.

Ben Mark Holzberg
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While Fox renewed the show for two additional seasons before the musical-comedy’s first season had even wrapped, this season Glee has taken a hit in terms of ratings (it’s lost nearly 4 million viewers since the start of the season), which saw the show slip into Ugly Betty-esque ratings as the show underwent a critical backlash. (The comparison to Ugly Betty seems particularly apt: both shows burned brightly in their respective first seasons, only to flicker quickly after that.) While the show continues to be a major money-maker for Fox, it’s quickly becoming clear that this cash cow can only keep grazing for so long, with many believing that it only has a season or two left at best. Co-creator Ryan Murphy—who has made headlines for his expletive-laden feuds with bands unwilling to license their music to the show—now has an FX horror drama in development, and there are signs that an actual writing staff, including Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, may be hired next season.

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The midseason replacement launched with 7.3 million viewers, a number that has slid considerably as its run went on. At press time, the most recent episode attracted just 3.1 million viewers, though Happy Endings has surprisingly found some critical traction even as audience members don’t seem to be all that taken with the single-camera comedy. Still, those numbers were enough to justify a second-season order… or ABC was willing to invest in the show’s future in order to keep co-star Damon Wayans Jr. from joining Fox’s upcoming Zooey Deschanel comedy New Girl. Either way, Happy Endings will return in the fall and land in the plum post- Modern Family timeslot on Wednesdays at 9:30 p.m., no small feat given the terminal nature of most freshman shows this year.

Bob D'Amico
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Poor Shawn Ryan. The Shield creator had not one but two much-mourned cancellations this past season, between FX’s gone-but-not-forgotten Terriers and Fox’s cop drama The Chicago Code (née Ride-Along), which drew early comparisons to HBO’s The Wire and quickly became a critical hit, albeit it one with middling ratings. Launching to 9.4 million viewers, the show fluctuated within the 5-8 million range for the majority of its run. Strangely, the show seemed to see an uptick in viewing figures after Fox axed it, with numbers on an upward trend for the final three weeks of its 13-episode season. (Its finale placed second in the time period and first in all key male demos, and showed a week-to-week increase of 1.3 million total viewers.) Ryan, for his part, is attempting to shop The Chicago Code to cable networks and even Netflix, the DVD-and-streaming-video subscription service that is entering the original programming game. The odds are against them, but I wouldn’t count these Chicago cops out just yet.

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Greg Garcia’s single-camera comedy Raising Hope gets some major kudos just for surviving the bloodiest freshman season ever, managing to secure a second season at a network that hasn’t had much success with live-action comedy in recent years. Roughly 7.5 million viewers tuned into the series premiere last September, but those numbers dipped into the 4-5 million range over the course of the season. Still, the show has proven largely stable, and critical reaction has been somewhat favorable. Raising Hope will return this fall on Tuesdays, leading out of Zooey Deschanel’s New Girl.

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Despite mixed reviews ( The Los Angeles Times called it a “cardboard show”), the Dana Delany-led crime procedural (in which she played a medical examiner and former neurosurgeon) Body of Proof attracted a staggering 14 million viewers when it premiered in March, the second-highest series launch of the 2010-11 season. (The first was CBS’ Hawaii Five-0.) By the end of its nine-episode run, the show had slipped to just above 10 million viewers and had secured a second season renewal. While the ratings appear to be solid (save for the sole Sunday night broadcast of its second episode), Body of Proof seems to lack a certain tension that would propel it into the realm of the procedurals aired by ABC’s rivals. Still, Delany and Co. will get another chance this fall, airing in the very competitive Tuesdays at 10 p.m. timeslot.

Claire Folger
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Kyle Killen’s con man/bigamist drama may have attracted some of the very best reviews of the season, with TV Guide’s Matt Roush calling it “this fall's best and most original drama” and “a gusher of intrigue and twisty romance,” but that didn’t stop Fox from killing Lone Star outright after just two low-rated airings. The series premiere netted 4.1 million viewers and hemorrhaged nearly a million viewers the following week. Among the potential reasons why it failed: the economy (when people are losing their homes due to foreclosure, who wants to see a con man lead bilk people out of their savings?) and the BP disaster in the Gulf (the show also revolved around Texas oil). Still, Killen will be back on TV in midseason with NBC’s Awake, an ambitious drama that is already one of the most-buzzed about shows for next season.

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What is there to say about the dismal year ABC had with its freshman dramas? Body of Proof and Happy Endings remain the only ABC first-year shows to warrant renewals, while the list of freshman failures is staggering: Detroit 1-8-7, Mr. Sunshine, My Generation, No Ordinary Family, Off the Map, Skating With the Stars, and The Whole Truth. It’s almost as though the American viewing audience was turned off by ABC’s development slate en masse. With new entertainment czar Paul Lee in place, it already seems as though the network is trying to be more creative next season with its upcoming shows, but whether Lee can bring the magic he previously used at ABC Family and BBC America remains to be seen.

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The first-place network in total viewers also had more than a few duds on its hands, as CBS wandered too far into gimmickry. There was Live to Dance, a dance competition show featuring ex- American Idol judge Paula Abdul, which was completely off-brand for the network. Then there was CIA comedy Chaos, an unfunny “dramedy” about intelligence operatives, which arrived at a time when the U.S. is enmeshed in two wars and fighting terrorism abroad. (Might not have been the best timing; it was pulled after just three episodes.) CBS tried to get into the world of social media by launching troubled comedy $#*! My Dad Says, but it proved to be an ill-conceived effort to expand the 140-character humor of a Twitter feed (believed by some to be fictitious) into a full-blown sitcom. (It’s worth noting that nothing came of CBS’ other Twitter-based projects either.) And then there was Criminal Minds: Suspect Behavior, a troubled production from the start of a spin-off that viewers greeted with a yawn. All four shows were duds.

SONJA FLEMMING
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Oh, CW. It was largely a bum year for the youth-oriented netlet, which failed to receive cheers for the critically reviled Hellcats, produced another string of reality failures (really, who thought Shedding for the Wedding would rate on this network?). Overall, the CW had no new strong shows (save for middling Nikita, which received a pick up) and no real overall growth. Still, the picture is a bit rosier for this fall, with two new series—the Sarah Michelle Gellar-starring noir drama Ringer (originally developed for CBS) and Kevin Williamson’s supernatural Secret Circle—looking particularly promising, while the entertainment division undergoes a regime change, with Mark Pedowitz replacing departing President Dawn Ostroff.

SERGEI BACHLAKOV
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This past season wasn’t kind to NBC (save for their alternative division capitalizing on Dutch format The Voice.) Like ABC, NBC is also enmeshed in a regime change as well, with Showtime’s Bob Greenblatt coming in to oversee entertainment following the merger with Comcast. Which is good timing, as this season was particularly dismal. Nine examples: The Cape, America’s Next Great Restaurant, The Event, Law & Order: LA, Outlaw, Outsourced, The Paul Reiser Show, Perfect Couples, and Undercovers. Despite the much-publicized retooling of troubled Law & Order: LA, which moved Alfred Molina front and center, it was a death knell for the spin-off and the first time in what seems like forever since NBC is going into the fall with just one L&O franchise on the books (the Christopher Meloni-less SVU). The Cape, Perfect Couples, The Paul Reiser Show (yanked after just two episodes), and Outlaw were all DOA.

Dean Hendler
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While Fox found moderate success this season with Raising Hope (and animated sitcom Bob’s Burgers), its other live-action comedy efforts were less than appealing, as it canceled three low-rated new comedies— Traffic Light, Breaking In, and Running Wilde—and one-hour cop dramedy The Good Guys (which it had begun airing last summer). Traffic Light launched to 4 million-plus viewers but sank into the 2 million range for the majority of its episodes (it has one remaining), while Mitch Hurwitz’s Running Wilde launched to disastrous ratings and sank further still. The Christian Slater-led comedy Breaking In, meanwhile, premiered to nearly 10 million viewers in its first outing and the majority of its installments stabilized at around more than 7 million viewers, though a recent episode crashed and burned. There had been talk that studio Sony Pictures Television was in talks with the network about a possible post-cancellation return, but for right now it appears to be staying axed.