Each year around this time, TV critics fire up their outrage to pen “save this show!” columns, pleading with networks and viewers alike to lavish a bit of attention on little-watched but high-quality programs, hoping that their meager voices will somehow help to convince the corporate TV overlords to look beyond low ratings and renew whatever critical favorites happen to be on the chopping block that year. I was all set to do just that, to make a case right here for three of my favorite shows, all of which have low ratings and all of which appeared in danger of cancellation. But before I could get around to it, NBC went and gave an early second-season renewal to one such show, Tina Fey’s excellent sitcom, 30 Rock, and a preliminary order of six second-season scripts to another, the superb small-town football drama Friday Night Lights.
So instead of berating clueless network presidents and taste-impaired viewers, I want instead to praise forward-thinking executives like NBC’s Kevin Reilly, who has been outspoken in his support of Rock and Lights and has voiced confidence in their potential for ratings growth, and loyal viewers with impeccable taste who take to the Internet and even old-fashioned postal mail to express support for their favorite programs. Despite what the tenor of save-this-show columns may indicate, not all is bleak in TV land. Lights’ future may still be uncertain, but a big part of why it was even able to make it to a full 22 episodes this season (the season finale aired last week) was the support of Kevin Reilly.
I’ll also praise CW Entertainment President Dawn Ostroff, who, although she’s made other questionable choices in the past, has kept another of TV’s top-notch low-rated shows, Veronica Mars, on the air for three seasons now. Before the WB and UPN merged to form the CW, Ostroff was head of UPN, where she gave Veronica Mars a second season despite its status as one of the lowest-rated shows on TV. Veronica’s fate is once again in doubt, probably more so than that of Friday Night Lights, and chances of a fourth season look slim. It’s much easier to put a low-rated show on the air for a second year in the hopes that it will find an audience; by year four, those hopes are pretty much dashed.
The rumors swirling now are that if Veronica does return for a fourth season, it will be in a radically different format, with the titular teenage private eye (about to complete her freshman year of college) as a junior FBI agent, the show having jumped several years ahead in time. I put my trust in series creator Rob Thomas to make this approach work, if it indeed comes to pass, since his strong voice has carried the show through all of its changes and iterations thus far. Likewise, I trust 30 Rock’s Fey and Friday Night Lights’ Jason Katims and Peter Berg to stay true to their visions, even if this leaves their shows in the ratings basement—their dedicated fans will always be there to sing their praises, and we can only hope that future network executives will be as patient as Reilly and Ostroff have been.