Networking Was Cool, Once...

I just saw one of those "renewed/on the bubble/cancelled lists that I always click on 'cuz I'm a tv junkie.

What's interesting is I'm actually not.

NBC has one show on the bubble that I like, Debris.

ABC, also just one show, The Rookie.  Also on the bubble.

CBS?  I started the season watching two of their shows.

I tried watching the promising Clarice but by the third episode or so I just gave up.  This version of the character has been slotted in to a mediocre procedural with painfully cliche supporting players and then cruelly saddled with a debilitating case of the stupids.

So, in the end, I watch one show.  The Equalizer, renewed.  Also cliche and a mediocre procedural, but a fun one.

Fox?  Same.  The Simpsons.

That's four shows across the big four that I watch.  Total.
Truth be told, The Simpsons is more "I tune it in and it plays for half an hour.  Sometimes I even pay attention."  Call it three and a half.

The CW gets a lot of my eyeball time, simply because they pack in the lion's share of current comic book properties.  If I'm honest, even though I'll watch ALL of these for as long as they make them, more than half the time I'm disappointed in the quality.  I wish I could say every episode is gold but that's just not the case.

The only new CW show that had some promise, Kung Fu, couldn't keep me interested enough to finish even episode 1.

Renewed: Batwoman, Superman and Lois Lane, Legends of Tomorrow and The Flash.

Black Lightning and Supergirl finish their runs this year and the second season of Stargirl hasn't started yet so no word on season 3 is likely for a while.

So I watch 4 network shows and (stunning, I know) seven superheo shows on the CW.

There's also the stuff on HBOMax (Titans, Doom Patrol) and every once in a while I find something new on Netflix or elsewhere like HULU. 

What stuns me about this is that I've pretty much abandoned network tv.  Or has it abandoned me?  I used to be able to count on at least a show or two on one or the other of the big four networks pretty much every night of the week.  I'd fill in empty slots with movies or rewatches of old dvd sets.  These
days the script is pretty much flipped.  

It's probably too early to write network tv's epitaph but something tells me that we might actually see the demise of one of the "big" four networks in the next decade or so.  The writing is on the screen.  Or rather the writing isn't on the screen, at least where the big four networks are concerned.

A goodly portion of the best of the best television these days is coming from the streaming services.  Amazon, Netflix, Disney+ all have had success with stuff they've produced in house and they're apparently determined to continue, hiring some big names in pursuit of bigger successes.  I wonder if there's enough money in the long run to keep this trend up, but for the moment, it seems that the talent is really migrating away from traditional network television. 

And apparently, so am I...