{"id":69,"date":"1999-12-27T12:48:41","date_gmt":"1999-12-27T17:48:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/crashdown.com\/news\/?p=69"},"modified":"2008-06-28T13:08:14","modified_gmt":"2008-06-28T18:08:14","slug":"other-networks-try-to-copy-wb-formula","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/crashdown.com\/news\/1999\/12\/other-networks-try-to-copy-wb-formula\/","title":{"rendered":"Other Networks Try to Copy WB Formula"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>From the &#8220;San Jose Mercury News&#8221;:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The return of adult television<\/p>\n<p>Remember the start of this fall season, when the other networks decided to play the WB&#8217;s game and ordered up a batch of new series that tried to emulate WB&#8217;s youth-oriented formula?<\/p>\n<p>Well, guess what? The other networks could imitate the WB but they couldn&#8217;t beat that network in the 18-to-35 demographic wars. Most of the new series not only were not very good but barely lasted into October.<\/p>\n<p>In particular, Fox really self-destructed with &#8220;Ryan Caulfield,&#8221; &#8220;Harsh Realm&#8221; and the good but viewer-impaired &#8220;Action&#8221; already canceled and &#8220;Time of Your Life&#8221; on life-support. One of its new WB clone series &#8212; &#8220;Manchester Prep&#8221; &#8212; never even got on the air after both conservatives and advertisers criticized its sexual content. (The show had the potential to be the new &#8220;Melrose Place&#8221; of camp.)<\/p>\n<p><strong>The problem was that the other networks tried to clone the WB&#8217;s programming without successfully deconstructing how it worked. While shows such as ABC&#8217;s &#8220;Wasteland&#8221; crashed and burned, the WB churned merrily along and created several new shows &#8212; &#8220;Angel,&#8221; &#8220;Roswell&#8221; and &#8220;Popular&#8221; &#8212; that were just as good as &#8220;Buffy&#8221; and &#8220;Felicity.&#8221;<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>So what new shows did pull in the big ratings? Adult shows, aimed at the audience well beyond the 18-to-35 age group. CBS had &#8220;Family Law,&#8221; &#8220;Judging Amy&#8221; and &#8220;Now &#038; Again.&#8221; ABC got good ratings from &#8220;Once and Again,&#8221; the best family drama to come along in quite some time. And NBC had the best: &#8220;The West Wing,&#8221; which includes sexual entanglements but also deals somewhat realistically with the American political process.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>From the &#8220;San Jose Mercury News&#8221;: The return of adult television Remember the start of this fall season, when the<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"colormag_page_container_layout":"default_layout","colormag_page_sidebar_layout":"default_layout","footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[40],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-69","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-roswell","tag-article"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/crashdown.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/crashdown.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/crashdown.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crashdown.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crashdown.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=69"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/crashdown.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/crashdown.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=69"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crashdown.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=69"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crashdown.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=69"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crashdown.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=69"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}