Rather than allowing the judges to trot out the same old tired catchphrases every week (“It was just alright for me, dawg”), they need to watch a few episodes of the far superior SO YOU THINK YOU CAN DANCE and see what actual critiques look like.
Despite the fact that several networks have put an actual effort into offering programming that doesn’t involve eating-’til-you-vomit challenges or supposedly-real housewives who are never seen, you know, cleaning, viewers simply aren’t tuning in. ABC should be rewarded for putting out fun fare such as THE GATES and SCOUNDRELS, and NBC’s PERSONS UNKNOWN should have been the perfect summer fodder. Instead, both failed to find an audience. So come on, folks, give these or some other scripted summer series a try… otherwise, next summer, the networks will go back to doing what they do best: pumping out reality crap that’s cheaper than a hooker’s shoes.
There ain’t much love in the afternoon over at GH, but there’s a whole lotta violence. Not a week goes by that doesn’t involve gunplay. Attention, residents of Port Charles: Please step forward if you’ve never been shot. Not so fast Jason, Sonny, Ethan, Kate, Johnny, Jax, Michael, Carly, Dante… well, you get the idea. There’s no suspense to violence if it becomes a way of life for the folks on the show. At this point, it’s more common than kisses, and that’s a sad, sad statement to make about a soap.
One of the reasons the nets are having such trouble finding an audience for their programs this summer is that they’ve trained us to think of this as the dead season viewing wise. But like puppies, the audience can be trained! Look at Telemundo, Univision and similar networks who get bang-up ratings year round by never giving their audience a break. You wont’ find a rerun anywhere in primetime during the entire year on Telemundo. Original programming is offered five nights a week, 52 weeks a year… and the audience eats it up.
Not every show has to revolve around cops, lawyers or a combination thereof. There are about 5,432,476 jobs out there, any of which would make a great backdrop for a series. And it’s not as if other professions haven’t proven wildly successful in the past. Remember a little show about a waitress named ALICE? Or a newscaster named MURPHY BROWN? Or a housewife named MARY HARTMAN whose name was so nice they had to say it twice? 
