Thursday, January 31, 2008

Every silver lining has a cloud

The Lord giveth, reporteth the Times of London:
American TV networks have lost almost a quarter of their audiences because of the Hollywood writers' strike, according to new figures, and executives fear that “orphaned” viewers may never return.

The Nielsen ratings organisation found that US viewership for last week's opening of the 2008 TV season was down 21 per cent compared with the same week last year, when new episodes of hit shows such as Desperate Housewives and Grey's Anatomy were aired.

Because the strike has shut down production of all scripted shows, the networks are now almost completely out of fresh material to broadcast, instead relying on reality TV franchises such as American Idol.

The channel CW - home of Gossip Girl and America's Next Top Model - lost 50 per cent of viewers in the 18 to 49-year-old bracket sampled by Nielsen. “It's hard to ignore the declines,” the Hollywood trade magazine Variety said. It said that last week's figures were the first real evidence of the damage from the strike because previous weeks had been skewed by sporting events and Christmas holiday programming.
AND THE LORD taketh away:
Not everyone lost out. Perhaps because of the controversy over her pregnancy, Jamie Lynn Spears, the 16-year-old sister of Britney Spears, saw her sitcom, Zoey 101, on the Nickelodeon children's channel attract a record six million viewers.

The show was filmed last summer - before the strike and before Spears revealed that she was pregnant.

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