CHANALYZE

In which we dig in to each specific channel, seeing if there really is something to this whole “channel personality” thing

FOX

Did the FOX network create Channel Personalities? I’m not old enough to remember what the world was like before FOX, but I do remember them quickly becoming the network that certainly did not belong to your daddy, or anyone else’s father, unless your father was a rude dude who wore his saggy pants backwards and called things “bad” when he thought they were “good.” The narrative was that God, on the seventh day, created the only three networks that would ever be, until a bunch of fucking punks got together and slapped God in the face, using only audacity and crudeness. FOX  arrived, and there was nothing you suit-wearing suits could do about it.

This is what everyone looked like back then. I’m serious. Stop laughing, asshole.

Is this still the case today? Sort of not really. If it is, it’s really just based on history and reputation, as opposed to actual programming decisions. They’re the only major network that supports animated programming at all, having essentially dedicated an entire night to it, every week for decades. This is something that would have seemed crazy 30 years ago, but institutions like The Simpsons, King of the Hill, and Family Guy have made prime time animation a pretty standard thing. They used to be the network with the black shows, but that throne was taken over, and has since been abandoned, by the WB/CW. (A good way to tell if someone is 5-6 years younger than me is finding out they’ve never seen an episode of In Living Color, but have seen every episode of Homeboys in Outer Space and The Wayans Brothers.)

It should be noted that, as a sign of their still-relative youth, or their incredible laziness, FOX has 7 less hours of programming a week than ABC, CBS, or NBC. The “Big 3” programs from 8-11, every night, and then lets their affilates pick whatever shitty local news show or syndicated sitcom it wants to air for the other 21 hours of the day. (Technically, Sunday nights from 7-8 also count as prime time, but everyone just airs a bunch of bullshit, so fuck it.) That’s seven fewer hours that FOX has to pay for, seven fewer hours that FOX has to worry about, seven fewer hours FOX has the opportunity to define its brand. What would go in these hours, if FOX had to air something (which seems unlikely, as this is the way its been for almost 30 years, while just about every “old rule” of how television works seems to be getting flushed down the toilet)? Genre dramas and musical-reality-competition shows, based on its current line-up. This leaves FOX in a weird place, priding itself for being less boring than CBS, but certainly without that crazy edge that they think they had in the nineties.

Other shows in the original WB lineup included Black High School, and Black Mailmen Be Crazy (shown above)

Off the top, FOX’s biggest problem might be shows like Almost Human. Almost Human is by no means perfect, but it’s fun enough, watchable, and a perfectly fine replacement when you’re too broke to go to the movies. But even though they are seemingly cutting every corner they can to keep the budget manageable, it still feels way too expensive to stay afloat. It’s really cool that FOX wants stuff like this to work. It’s the only channel that really tries to get these genre shows to stick (sorry CBS, Intelligence doesn’t count) But in order for them to keep paying the bills, it essentially has to become the BIGGEST SHOW ON TELEVISION. In order to become the biggest scripted show on television, it has to be the exact same thing that’s popular right now (another CSI), or come totally out of nowhere for no explicable reason (The Big Bang Theory). As much as it sucks to say, FOX can’t tell themselves that they are going to make a quality show with a cool premise, and guarantee huge ratings. You might be able to do that with the box office returns of a summer movie, but not in network television. So Almost Human will probably spend the rest of its life getting retooled and reshuffled, until all of a sudden we’re three years into the future, and the only time we remember the show is when some nerd on a website screams about a reunion movie, in which Nathan Fillion will play every single part. It’s the fate of 90 percent of the shows like this. And FOX will try it all again next year, with an even higher budget and premise.

Next season on FOX: Agent Gold Car: Weekly Explosion

Remember Terra Nova? They wasted so much money, on something that was so cheesy, and the nation collectively cared so little, that I kept looking for Kevin Costner’s name in the credits. I don’t know if television audiences can give FOX what it would take to get a show like this to six seasons and a movie anymore. It’s just not the way the world works, and even if enough people were watching, no one has the tools necessary to measure that. It’s like FOX is trying to out-movie the movies by keeping sci-fi on the televisions. But the one way FOX has messed up the most over the last decade (and relatively speaking, there aren’t as many mistakes as you’d think), is by acting like the movie theater is their enemy, when it no longer is. It’s time for networks to shake the hands of the movie studios, tell them it was a fun, 60 year war, and take aim at their true enemy: all of the other ways we can get “television” on our television. If you want huge ratings, forget it. You’re never going to get that again. But if you want just enough viewers to make a profit, you need to cut budgets in half, or make sure you have a slam dunk on your hands. Shows like Almost Human aren’t going to cut it.

What should be on FOX next season: Soda Man, brought to you by Coca Cola.

FOX’s other big flaw (and this has been the case for years now) is not knowing how to take a hit and make it grow even bigger. They really only know how to take a hit and force it so far down our throats that our farts sound like a high school kids singing a capella. Remember The OC? Of course you do. You’re probably like me, and remember it every night before you go to sleep. Although it was probably never the cultural phenomenon that FOX claimed it was at the time, it’s ratings were better than FOX expected. So they ordered way too many episodes, and promoted it to the point where people no longer wanted to be welcomed to the O.C., bitch. Same with those aforementioned Glee kids. People spent the first two seasons mildly enjoying it, the second two seasons hoping all of those singing fucks died from a ball-peen hammer thrown straight at their face, and the final two seasons (this and next) surprised that the show is still on. Is this just the fickle nature of today’s television viewer? Maybe. But it happens enough to FOX to think that their “Next Big Thing” anointments may have something to do with it. All of this means that the ideal FOX show is, of all things, Bones.

Bones!?!?!?!?

Yep. Bones. Bones just got renewed for it’s tenth (TENTH!) season. Just to put that in perspective, it’s something that’s only happened to about 40 scripted shows in THE HISTORY OF TELEVISION. It’s genre-ish. It looks like a CSI show but somehow  isn’t. It’s runs on a seemingly affordable budget. And it has a fanbase that is fervent enough to watch for the last decade, but was never so big or rabid at any point that FOX felt the need to order sixty more episodes over the next three months or release Christmas albums featuring the characters singing “Deck the Bones” and “We Bones You a Merry BonesBones.”

Sunday remains FOX’s most reliable night. It doesn’t pull in the same numbers it did in the heyday of The Simpsons, or when Seth MacFarlane almost took over the network, but it’s still dependable enough. Let’s also not forget to mention that FOX’s Sunday line-up is the home of the single greatest show on TV, so they’ve got that going for them. The FOXiest night of the week, however, might belong to Mondays, despite its lack of cartoons or black people. Monday seems like the night that FOX likes to air its genre shows, most likely counterprogramming to CBS’ powerhouse comedy line-up. Bones will be back here soon, after proving that it could hold on to its viewers on Friday nights. This is also where you would find Almost Human, the critically-hated-but-commercially-decent The Following, and FOX’s new baby, and the most-likely-to-suffer-from-overkill candidate, Sleepy Hollow. This is how a network creates a name for itself. FOX has stepped out as the first of the major networks to tell all of the old rules to go fuck themselves. No longer will they be slaves to pilot season, ordering 100 shows to be made so they can choose one or two of them. No longer will they force themselves to schedule season premieres during the same three week period that everyone else does. I think all of that is fine. Better than fine. Ballsy even. The old rules no longer work, and new rules aren’t going to hurt anything. But what this does do is give FOX this one night, Monday night, all year round. Viewers can tune in every Monday night to see two hour long sci-fi/action/mystery/thrillers no matter what. For instance, half the year will be Sleepy Hollow and Almost Human, the other half will be Bones and The Following. If networks are still really aiming for “appointment viewing,” which is essentially like aiming to open a yellow pages printing press, then this is the only way to do it. Hey, people that like these shows! We’ll put them all here for you! It might just hold off the death rattle of network television as we know it today.

The best show currently on TV, as if you didn’t know that already.

And then there’s Tuesday. Oh, sweet Tuesday. NBC’s Thursday night line-up used to be the only bright spot of my entire week. There was one or two sweet seasons where The Office, 30 Rock, Parks and Recreation, and Community were in peak form, and all other shows could rot on my DVR for all I cared. The closest thing we have to that now, in both quality and diminishing ratings, is FOX’s Tuesday night. The Big Bang Theory wouldn’t stop to pick up the ratings of these two nights if they were lying in the gutter, but for some reason both FOX and NBC enjoyed the critical success and word-of-mouth that came with the less-than-stellar ratings. The problem is that this places all of these shows  perpetually on the cancellation bubble. New Girl, Brooklyn 99, and The Mindy Project (which barely escaped cancellation) have all been renewed for next season, although they’ll probably never feel 100% comfortable. And then there’s Dads. Oh, Dads. It hasn’t technically been canceled, but when FOX realizes that they’re keeping those other three shows around because they’re good, as opposed to ratings bonanzas, they’ll probably want to ditch the one that is both low-rated and one of the worst shows of all time.

The only other night that FOX airs a full slate of original, scripted programming, after Animation Sunday, Genre Monday, and Comedy Tuesday, is Friday nights. Friday doesn’t have its own clique at FOX high school. FOX treats Friday night more like a AAAA ball club: shows that have graduated past the minor leagues of pilot season (this analogy is running out of steam), but aren’t really ready to graduate to the big leagues of the other three nights. Raising Hope has already been cancelled, just biding its time until it’s syndication eligible. But no one knows what’s really going to happen to Rake and Enlisted. Both of them are decent enough, and probably deserve to stay on the air. But Rake doesn’t really fit in on Monday, and Enlisted isn’t cool enough to hang out with the Tuesday crew.

With all of these personalities, what does that make FOX? What does FOX look like, when we’re finally able to create a laser that we can shoot at inanimate, intangible objects and turn them into humans?

The FOX network.

Punk rockers have to grow up. They have to do as much damage, and make their message as clear as possible, while they are an appropriate age. Then they have to mature, while attempting to maintain reasonable amount of that punk rock mentality in every thing they do. Otherwise they’ll kill themselves. FOX was punk rock. Then it matured, and became a legit network. In 2007, it became the most watched network on television. Since 2002, its ratings in the key demographics have left even the CBS’ of the world envious. The only thing left is stabilizing. Moving into the fully-adult phase of the rest of its life. Green Day albums will never again be tagged as “the one where they are maturing.” That part’s done. And although that “mature” album seems hard to do, since there’s so many ways to blow it, the more interesting part is what happens after the maturation has happened. Where does the drama and inspiration come from? What is your next goal, when you’ve already reached what seems to be the final goal of maturity? We haven’t mentioned FOX’s real money makers, the NFL and American Idol, but I don’t think they’re relevant. Not only are they unscripted, but they would be hits on any network. They don’t tell us anything about FOX. What FOX needs to do is get a better understanding of what it is they do. Don’t look at the success of Sleepy Hollow (another show whose initially decent ratings they weren’t able to hold on to) and try to recreate it or exploit it. Instead, I want them to know that they can do the cheesey genre shit while making a quality show. Brooklyn 99 is the comedy example of this. They hired all of the right people to make a cop show that isn’t a cop show, and it isn’t a cop show so well that you don’t even care that it might be the most unrealistic cop show of all time (except for Cop Rock. Always except for Cop Rock). 15 or 20 years ago, FOX was the most unreliable network for me. Every new show was destined to be my favorite of all time, or the worst shit I’ve ever seen. Now, they might be the most reliable of the big five, at least as far as quality goes. Now let’s see if they can finally get people to tune in.

– Ryan Haley