A Plea to ABC for Pushing Daisies

To Whom It May Concern at the American Broadcasting Company:

Please do not cancel Pushing Daisies.  Please order the back nine episodes of the second season of this wonderful, original, different, and highly entertaining television show.  Please give it a chance.  You haven’t done that.  You’re not doing it now, and now the future of such a great show hangs in the balance.

If Pushing Daisies is faltering in the ratings, it’s your own fault.  What can you expect will happen when you debut a new show and then stop airing it completely for ten months due to a writers’ strike?  Of course it lost viewers, you haven’t done anything to invite viewers to really watch it.  Why didn’t you rerun the original nine episodes during the summer so viewers would be caught up when Season 2 started?

I somewhat understand why so many shows just chose to not return after the strike until the new season, but (and this goes for all shows this happened to and all the networks)  it seems that you’re wanting these shows to fail so you can place crappy, cheap reality shows instead.

Aren’t most shows that didn’t return after the strike faltering in ratings?  Then that’s your fault, and you should give each of these a chance.  There is some quality programming out there for the first time in years, and there’s a huge chance it will all be taken off the air because you, network executives, haven’t the intelligence nor the cojones to just let these shows grow and build their audiences back.

Of course, you’re not really giving your Wednesday night shows a chance at all to gain ratings.  For two weeks in the crucial Sweeps month of November you’ve pre-empted normal programming for Dancing With the Stars and tonight’s hillbilly fest Country Music Awards.

Again, how is a show supposed to gain an audience when you don’t air it?  Seriously.  I may have to stop watching all ABC shows and buying them on iTunes if you’re really that stupid.

Grow a pair, save Pushing Daisies.

Obersvations and other Random Things.

• Friday morning I left work around 11 AM with what had to have been one of the most debilitating migraines I have ever suffered. I awoke feeling odd, but still quite able to go to work. Then, around 9, it hit me honestly like a freight train. There were none of the floaters that I’m accustomed to that warn me of a migraine, just nausea and sudden, rapid eye twitching. So, I finished the work that I had to complete some how and left. That sort of put a damper on my weekend. Though the pain subsided by that evening, I honestly felt off most of the weekend. Nonetheless, I completed a substantial amount of housework, played with the poochie-girl, and enjoyed time with Bart. Still yet, I hate migraines.
• I have started going back and reading some of my stuff in order to get to know my characters again. I trying, in all honesty, to “get back in the saddle” one step at a time.
• I had a particularly “huggy” puppy-dog this morning. She always is on Mondays though. She gets to spend so much time with us on the weekend, that when we start our weekly routine, it’s like she’s begging us to just stay home with her.
• I also think that if Lucy was a human, she would be one of those people who secretly poisons her loved ones so that they will have to stay near her, and she would have to take care of them. The joy she derived from spending Friday in bed with me while I slept off my migraine was unmistakable.
• My Sooners are ranked Number 1 in the AP Poll for the 69′th time, breaking a tie with Notre Dame. Of that I am very proud.
• How thrilled am I that the new TV season is here? More so than I should be, probably. Last night we happily enjoyed Desperate Housewives and Brothers and Sisters. Tonight there will be new episodes of How I Met Your Mother, Big Bang Theory, and Two and a Half Men, and Wednesday night is the return of Pushing Daisies! I love that show and have bought all but two episodes from iTunes. I’m sure I’ll have to get the last two soon.

Why Television Is Losing the Battle and How It Can Be Saved

    According toTV Week, “On average, the networks are off the mark by 10% from last year in
total viewers and off 17% in the 18- to 49-year-old demographic.”  So, in short, May Sweeps, were a bust.  This news doesn’t really surprise me though, because in my opinion the television as we’ve known it for the past fifty-sixty years is in the process of digging its own grave, and I don’t believe that it’s just the five broadcast networks.  I think that for the most part, cable networks are alienating their own core audiences.

    Throughout the Eighties and Nineties, as more cable networks were created, many were started with a certain niche, their own special genre, and they would air shows in which the subject could be viewed as under the umbrella of their certain genre. The History Channel, now justHistory, focused on shows with a historical context.  The Discovery Channel was created to help viewers learn about the world around them. TV Land was supposed to expand on theNick at Nite of the eighties that aired reruns ofclassic TV shows likeBewitched,The Donna Reed Show,My Three Sons,The Patty Duke Show, and so many other wonderful shows of yesteryear – as well as the wonderfully nostalgicRetromercials. 

    It seems that today though, most of our niche cable networks have strayed from what brought them their core viewers to begin with.  Discovery received so much flack that they’ve adopted a policy of returning to their roots.  I only wish History and TV Land would do the same.  Both networks have been replacing their good programming with reality crap.  We get enough reality from almost every other network, not to mention the broadcast networks.  I don’t want to seeI Pity the Fool,High School Reunion,Ice Road Truckers,Ax Men, orMonster Quest. I also don’t want to see Extreme Makeover:  Home Edition or any other show aired in the past ten years on TV Land.  I want tolearnwhen I watch History.  I miss “The Hitler Channel.”  I used to love “Bloody Old England Week.”  Something is terribly wrong with things when last week I watchedVH1for the DocumentarySex:  The Revolution, a purely historical show, while History probably aired something related to music.

    Since what I want to see is no longer being aired in favor of what many consider to basically be crap, I choose to turn off my TV.  Instead I will read a book or do what many people my age are doing, watching things online, viaYou Tube,Hulu,Joost, and so many other wonderful services that let me choose what to watch, when I want to watch it.  There is also always DVR/PVR if a station actually airs something worthwhile, AND if they don’t block DVR / PVR asNBC did recently.  Boy, that was a dumbass mistake, but it is the network that pulled all of its shows from iTunes buttook them to the Zune Marketplace.  As I read somewhere, “2,000.000 Zunes sold since 2006…“  compared to the 140 million unites sold by Apple.  I, as an owner of both an 8 GB nano and 8 GB iPod Touch, will just not pay to watch NBC content, but will watch it onHulu, the one good decision NBC has made in this age of digital everything.

    In my opinion, TV Land should create spin-off networks focused solely on certain decades.  There should be a TV Land 50’s, 60’s, 70’s, 80’s, 90’s, and Current channel.  The History Channel should create a Current Events channel to air crap like Ax Men and Ice Road Truckers just as they created The Military History Channel, even though I can’t get that because as of now, we’re not payingCox Cable for Digital anything.  We’re waiting onAt&t Uverse to debut here in NW Arkansas this fall.  I’m thrilled Cox is going to get some real competition besidesDish Network andDirect TV.  Basically, television executives need to pull their heads out of that place where the sun doesn’t shine and listen to the public, or they’ll continue to lose the battle.  If I, a twenty-eight-year-old married woman with a decent income (hello desirable demographic) am disgruntled, what about the rest of the world?

In Appreciation of iTunes and my iPod

    When I was in high school I was obsessed with music.  I subscribed to Entertainment Weekly to know when songs would be released, listened to the radio incessantly, and made sure to watch CNN’sShowbiz Tonight at least every Thursday at 4:30 pm central time to see the billboard charts.  I had my favorite artists, one in particular, and was partially defined by that interest.

    A decade later, I still love music.  For a while I had grown a little away from music.  I didn’t really have the money to spend on cd’s, my tastes changed very dramatically, and the overall quality of most music suffered for a while.  Last year I received a cunning little iPod nano for Christmas though.  Since then I’ve once again become addicted to music, though my interests are no where near what they were when I was a senior at Heavener High School.

    At this moment I can’t recall if iTunes is the largest music store in the world or just among those that are.  Whatever it is, it certainly has opened an entirely new world of music to my melodically parched ears.  iTunes has a nice feature:  it gives away a free download of a song from an up and coming artist every Tuesday.

    The first few times that I downloaded a free song, I did it just because it was free.  Then I started really liking most of the songs I downloaded freely.  When searching the artists of these songs, I’ve come across songs downloaded by other people who’ve bought the same songs.  These recommendations have introduced me to wonderful music that I would never have discovered listening to local radio stations or visiting stores that sell cd’s.

    A great many record execs bemoan iTunes and endlessly look for ways to break it.  They don’t like that we have a choice to buy just one song that we may like rather than an entire, overpriced cd.  CD sales will continue to plumit because the compact disc is a fading mode of entertainment.  Buying a cd is almost as pointless as buying a phonograph cylinder.  Music executives don’t like that they missed the bus, but they did.  They should try to enjoy and innovate the music industry instead of trying to keep it in the 1980’s.

    I will have to say that my husband still buys cd’s.  He enjoys holding them in his hands and reading the booklet inserts in much the same manner that I still enjoy holding a good book in my hands.  However, he will often listen to some or all of a cd online before deciding to buy it.  If he likes the music, he’ll buy the cd. If he doesn’t, he won’t bother.  He’s slow to join the mp3 bandwagon in some ways, but he has done all he can to keep cd sales high.

    Music companies should stop alienating their customers and work to fulfill their needs and/or desires more.  Just because they tell us something is good and no matter how often they have it played on the radio, if it really isn’t good, people won’t pay money for it in any manner.

    I love iTunes.  I love that it has shown me music that I would never have seen with the devices of yesterday.  From the Becoming Jane score to Sara Bareilles’Little Voice, I’m buying the songs and albums I enjoy.  Were it not for that little black iPod with my name on it and iTunes, I probably would be living in musical limbo still, just listening to whatever my husband is.