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No. 1 on cable: ‘Monk,’ not wrestling
Either cable viewers are acquiring better taste or pro wrestling is simply losing its luster.
For years, the top-rated program on basic cable was wrestling, whatever version was the most outrageous at the time. Today’s televised grunt-fest is “WWE Raw,” seen Monday nights on Spike.
(On broadcast TV, UPN has “WWE Smackdown” on Thursday nights, which also, thank heavens, is in a ratings slump.)
The top-rated cable show last week was the award-winning “Monk,” which airs at 9 p.m. Fridays on USA. I feel like high-fiving the cable-viewing public and telling them to keep it up!
Rounding out the Top 15 on the cable Nielsens were various installments of the daytime kid faves “SpongeBob SquarePants” and “Fairly Odd Parents,” both on Nickelodeon, and reruns of NBC’s “Law & Order” on TNT.
I find it depressing when the most popular shows on TV are icky stuff like wrestling. And I find it encouraging when reality trash like “The Will,” which lasted only one week on CBS, definitively bombs.
I’m truly heartened that “Monk” is the top-rated show on basic cable, and the current broadcast Nielsen heavyweights include “CSI,” “Desperate Housewives,” “Lost” and “The West Wing.”
The taste of the American public has a direct impact on my professional life, not to mention my health and frame of mind. When the most popular shows are tasteless junk, more are bound to be coming, and that squeezes out any hope for the good stuff.
I have to watch it, good or bad, and, well, you should feel my pain when a half-dozen pilots come along that were clearly “inspired by” “My Wife and Kids” or “Fear Factor.” It’s excruciating.
Do I smell a whiff of a quality television trend? I’m holding my breath.
Ranch reality coming to PBS
It’s not the first time PBS has joined the reality craze, but it is the first time one has been steeped in Texas history.
“Texas Ranch House” will feature 20 participants ranching, roping and generally living life as American cowboys (and cowgirls) in the post-Civil War era. The eight-part series will film this summer at an undisclosed location in East Texas and is scheduled to air in spring 2006.
Executive producer Jody Sheff has said the show, which sounds similar to “Frontier House” and “Colonial House,” will dispel Hollywood’s often romantic stereotypes of life on the range.
If you have time to kill and want to live like a true citizen of the Old West, you can find applications and information about “Texas Ranch House” at www.pbs.org, beginning Tuesday.
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