Monday morning, perhaps early afternoon on the east coast I did a post on Video On Demand usage lagging behind DVR and online video viewing. Ultimately, I think Video On Demand is one of the single most important riddles, at least in the shorter term (next 5-10 years) for the television industry to solve.
Almost nobody read the post. Relatively speaking, that is. Did I ask myself whether I promoted the story enough? I certainly didn't give it top billing, but I promoted it prominently on the home page and due to a dearth of posting in general, it was very high on the list of new stories the remainder of the day.
Did I ask myself if I published the post at the right time? If I had published the post two hours earlier or two hours later might the post have done better?
I didn't ask myself any of those things. Had I positioned the post more prominently or posted at a different time it might have done a bit better, but I can tell from the numbers it did generate that none of those machinations would've made very much of a difference. A small difference perhaps, but not a big enough difference to change the truth.
The truth is, no matter how important I think the story is, the people who visit the site voted with their eyes and their clicks. Generally speaking, people just weren't that interested. It's not the first time that's happened and it won't be the last. I just accept it. The numbers paint a very clear picture. I might not like the picture the numbers paint, but I can't deny the story they tell.
It was the same for Kings
Kings was a very similar situation for NBC. Don't get me wrong, there's plenty of stuff to rag on NBC about. Plenty. But its treatment of Kings isn't one of them. Definitely. isn't. one. of. them. Just because you might think Kings is the greatest show ever, there's not really a rational argument for saying NBC treated the show unfairly. If you want to blame the viewing public for not being that interested, that's fine. They just weren't that interested.
NBC promoted Kings a lot on its own network. It also promoted it during the Super Bowl (edit: or at least the pregame show!). Granted, that was around six weeks before it would actually air, but still, as promotion goes, that was good promotion. Few (relatively speaking) tuned in for its two hour premiere on Sunday, March 15. Fewer people tuned in the following week, and still fewer the week after, and the week after. By then, what had started as 6.1 million viewers and anemic adults 18-49 ratings wound up as 3.6 million viewers and anemic adults 18-49 ratings.
NBC DID give Kings a chance
For starters, it aired it to begin with! That's about the best chance you can get, really. It aired it on Sundays at 8pm, not the best slot perhaps, but God forbid had NBC aired it on Mondays at 8pm! For all kinds of reasons, I am thankful that didn't happen. That would've caused an apocalypse.
Kings aired five episodes on four consecutive Sundays. By the fourth Sunday, it was pulling under four million viewers. No more chances. NBC bounced it to Saturday for one week in April, before pulling the plug and banishing Kings to summer burn-off theater.
But NBC did give it a chance. What it saw was that even of the viewers who gave the show a chance, over 40% bailed out after a month.
NBC should've aired the show on Thursday!
Would the show have done better on Thursdays? Perhaps. But there's absolutely no reasonable case to be made that it would've done that much better, and certainly not so much better that it would've had any hopes for renewal.
I'll grant that it's not like Southland pulled fabulous numbers, but I agree with NBC's decision to favor Southland over Kings if for no other reason that the basic premise of Southland is much easier to relate to and embrace than the premise of Kings.
And sure, NBC didn't absolutely have to pull the plug and banish it to Saturdays and then to the summer. But I can't fault NBC for doing just that. Sure, if it would've kept the show on Sundays it would've done better than it did last Saturday when it got 1.6 million, but it wouldn't have done well enough to justiify keeping it on Sundays in the spring. That's why they moved it in the first place.
Still, I liked Kings
I kind of like Kings. So I can understand people wishing that the show would've done better. But that's like me wishing more people were interested in the plight of Video On Demand over the next few years. I wish more people were interested, but they are not.
But you can definitely mark me down as an Ian McShane fan. Visually, the cinematography of Kings is quite often stunning in HD, and I imagine Allison Miller looks good even in standard definition. Also, when I started viewing Kings last March, I hadn't gone on my "catch up on NCIS" jag yet. So by the time the show started airing again in June, it was sort of cool to have that "wait, Lt. Col. Hollis Mann is the queen!?" moment. Speaking of queens, Susana Thompson had played queen at least once before -- starring as the Borg Queen on several episodes of Star Trek: Voyager.
I spent about four episodes trying to decide whether I liked Kings or not. Ultimately I concluded I really liked parts of it, though I didn't love it overall, but liked it enough to stick with it. And at least through the first four weeks it aired last March and April, about 60% of the people stuck with it. But, unfortunately when you start out with numbers as low as Kings started out with, you can't afford any erosion at all. Kings would not have likely been renewed even if it kept the ratings of its premiere.
Conclusion: Don't Blame NBC
If you want to blame NBC for being a crap broadcast network in prime-time, there's definitely plenty of data to back you up. But if you want to blame NBC for not giving Kings a fair shake, not only isn't that fair, it also seems plain wrong. NBC might have done a few things differently with Kings, but none of them would've made any difference in terms of the show's renewal.
I completely understand fans of the show being upset the show never took off and it's sad for the cast and crew involved with the show. It's even sad for NBC because they allegedly paid a ton of money to make Kings. But blaming NBC for not giving the show a chance? NBC was the network that did give the show a chance!
In the end, the only reason any of us got to see Kings at all, even the few diehards among us who will watch the final episodes over the next couple of weeks, is because of NBC. Even more so than the fans perhaps, NBC would've liked the show to have been more popular, too.
And I wish more people cared about Video On Demand. But they don't. Sometimes, that's just how it is. The good news for me is that there is not really any cost in producing a post that relatively speaking, nobody will read, so I will continue doing posts about VOD simply because it Suits me.
Unfortunately for fans of TV shows, that's just not a luxury NBC or any other network has when it comes to producing scripted shows.
Thanks Robert for recognizing ‘Kings’ in this well written article.
‘Kings’ may be the last big-budget, grand sweeping miniseries that we see on broadcast television. I liked it from the opening scenes, and was mystified as to why it rated so poorly, especially amongst the younger demographics. It might have gotten better handling on a paycabler, but I can’t fault NBC…they really pushed this show heavily in the lead-up to its premiere and for a few weeks afterward.
I am grateful that NBC is playing out the full series on Saturdays, despite the low ratings. That is a measure of respect for the devoted viewers of the series. If it was on CBS, it would have been yanked after the third episode and never seen again.
The Biggest Flop of the year
First, it was NOT sponsorized during the SUPERBOWL.
Now I will report what Micheal Green, creator of KINGS, has said recently ( http://www.newsarama.com/tv/090515-guggenheim-green-god.html ):
“They were very confused with how to market our show,” said Michael Green, the creator of Kings, which was replaced by NBC this season after airing only the first four episodes. “And I think, ultimately, I think it’s one of the reasons they lost the desire to make a success out of it. It’s very easy to say, ‘we have a nice cop show we executed really well for you.’ It’s harder to say, ‘we have a character-based soap that’s got some bizarre elements to it.’”
“When the time came for the marketing, there was a very deliberate, outspoken, loud desire articulated by them that, ‘We are not going to say King David.’ They were scared to say King David. They just felt that that would be detrimental to the show,” Green explained. “I thought it was the clearest way to express what the show was about, and I thought it might actually generate interest. But there was a fear of either backlash or marginalizing or pigeonholing. There were a lot of reasons they had. They wouldn’t go near it in the marketing, but they never had a problem with it on the creative level, which is why I was so baffled.”
“I do think there’s an audience out there for this stuff,” Green said. “The audiences for Lost come at it with an incredible amount of intelligence. I think it’s the job of the network to generate an interest in these products.”
Rei….calm down the shows going to end….you will find another show to bitch about being canceled next year at this time
great article rob
I like the show too. Ian McShane’s performance is pretty fantastic.
I think it would have had a chance if they had marketed it better, like REI said. But much more importantly, what is up with the prose? It is so pompous and unnatural, it destroys the suspension of disbelief at least once a minute. There were so many things about this show that the audience had to get used to, that the dialogue style was I think just one thing too much.
Let’s just say, the writers of Kings thought they had Aaron Sorkin’s wit. They were sorely mistaken.
And I liked the show, overall. But it was just too much. Too different, and not succeeding enough in its difference.
I don’t understand why if someone disagree with you then he have to “bitch about”. I’ve just reported what the creator have said about the failure of the show and NBC’s responsabilities in that regard.
Why does all the topics have to end up in a flame?
I enjoyed ‘Kings’. Very much so. I like when networks have these ‘out-of-the-box’ shows. It’s tiresome to watch the same old generic police/doctor/forenzic/lawyer procedural garbage, so Kings was a fresh of breath air. Too bad people did not want to watch it. Shame, but hey, that’s how the TV biz works. Your show is watched = you get renewed. Your show is not watched = you don’t get renewed.
The only mistake Michael Green made was not offering Kings to HBO or Showtime. I truly believe Kings would’ve made it on cable. Too bad we’ll never know now.
Of course it’s not only NBC’s fault, but Kings is a hard show. It could only have a chance at succeeding if NBC gave it a special treatment.
Come on Robert! You don’t spend 60 million on a show like that and air it on Sundays at 8 pm.
The show is too different. It needed the treatment that ABC gave Lost and maybe even a different network.
They promoted it very much, but that doesn’t mean they promoted it well.
It is good to see someone taking the side of rationality, in discussions like these, like Robert has done in this case. So often irrational people are looking for conspiracies, figuring that networks are plotting against them. Silly! The networks want programs to be successful. When they give up on a program, it is for very good reasons, even if we don’t like it.
If only you would republished the article with Kings replaced by Pushing Daisies, Elli Stone, Dirty Sexy Money, Samantha Who, Terminator:The Sarah Connor Chronicles, or any other crappy show that got canceled after loosing even more than 40% of the people that initially sampled it.
King’s major problem was that the concept required an ensemble cast where all where as good as McShane, not Ian McShane lugging around the dead weight of people that never had more than supporting roles, and for a very good reason, now it seems evident. They where hoping that McShane’s notoriety in Deadwood was enough to sell the show. They forgot that it was on cable, and that if it’s managed to draw all Deadwood’s viewers, at the height of it’s popularity, those were not enough to make the Kings viable on network.
They hired McShane, and them went cheap on the rest of the cast hoping that he was enough, it wasn’t. The guy that play David makes Pia Zadora’s efforts unjustly maligned in retrospect.
You should be reminded that Cheers ranked last in ratings in its first year. Not just close to last. Dead last. Good things do not always catch immediately. As someone so invested in numbers, you should know this. But apparently not. This is the problem with statistics these days. Not that they lie. They do not. But that people make judgments based on the numbers rashly and poorly, forgetting precedents and other important statistics.
Success has to do with a lot of things.
Timing. What shows flank another? With Cheers in 1982, it was flanked by Fame and Taxi. Fame was canceled because of low ratings. And Taxi was in its last season, a show that was in decline before its final year.
After its first season, NBC went on a promotion binge for Cheers. By 1983, they had placed the Cosby Show and Family Ties before Cheers, and Night Court immediately following it. Why would anyone need to change the channel? I mean, I wasn’t personally a fan of Family Ties. But Cosby? Cheers? And Night Court? All on the same night? Must See Thursday, indeed.
The rest was history.
I will look at the numbers and think what I will. To have someone condescend and tell us how to interpret something is to forget what the purpose of a statistical site should be. We know Kings had low ratings. We know that NBC did some promotion. But some of us think it was not enough. And we still think what we will, because of historical evidence.
That TV is so cutthroat these days is problematic in and of itself. That Lost was so successful in its beginning, companies are looking for instant success even from complex dramas. But they forget shows can sometimes take time to mature. And if not to mature, then to build an audience. They’re looking for greatness in adolescence, but that doesn’t come often.
Yay, the Cheers argument is back!
“It was dead last!” “No it wasn’t!” “Yes it was!” “No, it was only dead last the week its premiere aired, not for its first season!” “And it trended up, instead of down like show XYZ” etc. Pretty well traveled ground here.
Plus it was a 30 minute sitcom the execs at NBC at the time really believed in. Moreover it was more than 25 years ago when the siphoning off of broadcast viewers by cable was just a little trickle. Not just history, ancient history but as Cheer’s and general TV trivia go, it is a great story.
Rei – I really appreciated that quote from Michael Green. I remember after watching the show feeling that the advertising had some issues. It was not that they hadn’t advertised it enough, I completely agree (in fact, I think they were overexposed, at least in new york, and remember thinking had it premiered a week earlier it might have done better… friends of mine were tired of seeing the ads)… the problem I had was from the promos, I was worried this show, which I thought had a great premise, was going to get bogged down in the kind of thing like the prince worrying about this new guy taking his fame. It seemed to me like the premise wasn’t about these people’s egos but should really be about the complexities of running a nation and how large scale it should be. I was thinking they should deal with war and plague and major events that the premise inherently lends itself to, but the promos said to me it wasn’t going to take that route. In the end, being the avid tv watcher I am, I saw the show and gave it a real shot, finding that it ended up really leaning toward what I had hoped it would be – taking advantage of its premise.
I completely agree with Robert that Kings definitely had money sunk into it (it really looked gorgeous in HD) and I definitely feel NBC was behind it, it just seemed that they didn’t quite fully understand it. I’m still watching the show and I’m not blown away every minute of every episode, but in each episode, there are at least two or three moments that I feel are really good and well earned by the show… most of the rest of it however is not.
The way I look at it is if Kings was the worst show on television, television would be in great shape. If there was some magical way where only the shows I liked remained on television, Kings would still be on. It would probably be one of the worst shows on, but it would still definitely be on. That said, you just can’t argue with the millions of people who chose not to watch it.
The show description on tv.com reads in part;
Inspired by the biblical story of King David, this contemporary soap is about a typical small town guy who becomes involved with high society and politics and rises to the top against all odds.
What no one here has mentioned outright is the elephant in the room, the fact that the show is biblically based. I am not a Bible expert or even overly religious, but the show does have a bible flavor that some probably don’t like.
I think most of the reasons listed by other posters are in some degree valid, the show wasn’t promoted well, and really wasn’t what it was promoted to be. It did need special handling to succeed, which it did not get. McShane, while a dynamic actor, was not able to compensate for the many mediocre associates that he was cast to work with. What probably puts off many viewers is the unexpected and often sudden shift in dialogue style from a “normal” speaking style to the flowery and formally verbose style that was often used in “Deadwood” and that one might expect to find from a King James Version of the Bible. And the show does have its good moments, unfortunately too few and too far between.
I watch and enjoy (for the most part) the show, but it did not surprise me that the show got poor ratings. It is good in parts, the challenge is finding and enjoying the good parts and letting the so-so parts go by the wayside. Enjoy the remaining episodes, but there is no real need to fix blame, the show just missed its mark.
A great premise– the saga of a king ruling what looks like modern day America– was bogged down by its boring and irrelevant biblical tone, bad acting, ponderous and obtuse dialog, and a producer who just didn’t get what average people are willing to sit through. The whole mess was mishandled by everyone involved.
Let’s just learn from our mistakes, and move on.
I don’t wanna over simplify things, but I think “Kings” was a really, really bad choice of names. A show called “Kings” could be anything.
If the name didn’t kill it, it sure didn’t help any.
Frankly the name probably didn’t help, but the basic premise, an americanized kingdom, based on the biblical story of King David would be a tough sell under any tag.
The location of the “kingdom” isn’t clear, but it appears to be in a place where language, race and religion are not major factors but somehow “tribes” are.
Many place names are similar or the same as some middle east names. Many of the characters and their roles are lifted almost unchanged from the bible story.
Americanizing and setting the story in a modern setting strained suspension of disbelief to its limit in every instance. Perhaps a story set in the middle east, even in a modern time setting might do better, but there is that damned “Might” again. If a frog had wings he “might” not bump his ass every time he jumps.
Unfortunately, we’ve all had shows we thought were great, but our opinions were not backed up by the ratings. I thought Men in Trees was great. The fans didn’t, it got the ax. It happens. We move on.
Chuck Chuck Chuck Chuck
Someone has to say it