Television shows vary in focus from a group of medical surgeons to a renegade motorcycle gang, to even a high school chemistry teacher who starts producing and selling methamphetamine.
Though these are just a few of the many hit-series that air on television today, the real question is, what makes for a good television show?
According to Keene State College senior Matthew Zuppani, “If the show has strong writing, with well-known actors and unsuspected plot twists, this is what really draws viewers in and make the show a hit. People like to watch shows that take them out of their own reality and comfort zone.”
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One example is The Big Bang Theory, a sitcom created by renowned Chuck Lorre and Bill Prady. The show is based on a woman who moves into an apartment across the hall from two brilliant but socially awkward physicists and shows them how little they know about life outside of the laboratory.
In a panel interview for the Emmys hosted earlier this year, Lorre said, “You never imagine that you can reach that many people who care about the show so deeply. We all feel as a group we’re doing our best work now; we’ve grown up and the show has matured, and we’re doing a much better job of putting on the show every week.”And they are doing just that.
According to Hollywoodreporter.com, “Big Bang toppled Modern Family to become TV’s No. 1 scripted comedy with an average of 18.6 million total viewers and a 6.2 rating among the advertiser-coveted adults 18-49 demographic.”
Zuppani said, “Both the Big Bang Theory and Modern Family are great comedy series because they are shows that you can watch by yourself, with your friends and even with family.” He continued and said, “The Big Bang Theory is probably, in [his] opinion, one of the first shows where a strong influence of science is played out in a series, and that is something new for people, at least in this generation, this is why it is so popular.”
The use of repetitive promoting for a new television series seems to be key when trying to advertise. Senior Mason Cleveland said, “Whenever I see multiple commercials of one specific show or ads in magazines, it makes me want to watch the show because they are advertising so much for it that it makes me curious to watch the show to see if this is going to be a good or not.” According to newswire.com, promotion does work. “For new shows, in our analysis, viewers to a new show that were only exposed to on-channel promotion make up 40 percent of the premiere’s audience.”
With returning shows, “The largest share of viewers tuning in to the premiere is likely those who only saw on-channel ads, making up over 70 percent of the premiere’s audience,” newswire.com reported. Although promoting a new series can be a great asset, it all comes down to the pilot episode. The pilot is meant to be the testing ground to gauge if a series will be successful, and is therefore a test episode of an envisioned television series.
Senior Caitlyn Carter said, “A pilot show is what will determine if I will watch the rest of the show or not. If the show does not turn out how I suspected it would, then I most likely won’t watch it anymore.”
One pilot that aired on September 24 was “Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.” This show in particularly aired on ABC and, “12.1 million people watched the premiere and then another 3.7 million watched on DVR in the next couple days after the premiere,” according to insidetv.ew.com.
Zuppani said, “This was destined to be a hit show because it is based off of the movie the Avengers and that was a huge box office breakthrough.”
“Some of the characters in the movie play on the television show so that alone helped draw viewers in,” Zuppani commented. An up-and-coming series hit are reality shows such as Duck Dynasty, Pawn Stars and Catfish. These shows have made a relatively big impact on television.
Cleveland said, “People like to watch these shows because they are a way for people to relate more and let us know that these shows are unscripted and anything can happen at any moment.”
Deanna Caruso can be contacted at dcaruso@keene-equinox.com