Comments on: How Swingtown Did On Friday...

By: xerxes

xerxes — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 09:02:13 +0000

You know, both the New York Times and The New Republic magazine have just come out with excellent articles with a lot of positive things to say about Swingtown. I think that says a lot about the quality of this show. I hope the brass at CBS takes note and orders more episodes. I don't care if it is CBS or Showtime. As long as it is the same cast, same writers, same sets and same costume people.

By: xerxes

xerxes — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 04:02:13 +0000

By: Robert Seidman

Robert Seidman — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 03:13:10 +0000

Holly, keeping in mind that *do* think it's likely the show gets nixed and I'm thinking about it in terms of the summer, not the regular season….

I don't have any insight into advertising on the show. I have seen some critical kindness ranging from Aaron Barnhart to the New York Times. I think what caught my eye from the Friday airing was the percentage of the overall viewership that was in the demo.

By: Eileen

Eileen — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 03:02:59 +0000

I really, really hope they don't cancel this show, or at least they give it a chance for another season. It's the ONLY network show I watch. I thought it was ridiculous that they switched its night without any warning—I was sitting right in front of the TV on Thursday at 10—yet there I was again on Friday.

By: Holly

Holly — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 02:28:07 +0000

But if they can't get the advertisers, does a marginal demo really help all that much? More than half of the CBS shows last week beat or met it in the demo. Without good ratings, advertisers, or any major critical acclaim, I don't see it having a chance.

By: Robert Seidman

Robert Seidman — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 01:59:04 +0000

Holly, really -- but not emphatically so. I think it's likely the show gets nixed, but I am not certain of it. CBS seems to have entered the "beggars can't be choosers" realm with regard to the demo in *many* slots (and not just in the summer).

I don't have any way to get a handle on is whether being more than 50% better in the demo than just about anything CBS airs on a Saturday would make the show's extra production cost tolerable on a Saturday with much better demo performance than anything else CBS has. It seems that though viewers suffered with the move to Friday at 10pm, demo performance didn't really take much of a hit.

Demo-wise, excluding Big Brother and the Monday night rerun lineup, there wasn't anything on CBS that solidly had a better demo performance than Swingtown. Even Flashpoint wasn't vastly better demo-wise with many more viewers. Granted, a lot of the shows that marginally beat it were reruns.

By: Holly

Holly — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 01:42:32 +0000

Really? I can see Flashpoint still having a chance because it's a Canadian production and rather cheap, but Swingtown is more expensive and they have been having a lot of trouble getting and keeping advertisers.

By: Robert Seidman

Robert Seidman — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 00:17:05 +0000

Scristanti: unlike Bill, I am not yet convinced it's a slam dunk that CBS will pull the plug. It seems to be trending in that direction, but I do believe there is yet a case to be made for it based on the numbers. Note: I have never seen a single episode so am not commenting based on the show itself or its quality.

By: scristanti

scristanti — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 00:10:34 +0000

LOVE SWINGTOWN, LETS HOPE THEY DO NOT CANCEL IT