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Will "Medium" Retain Its Viewership when NBC Moves Its Time Slot to Sunday NIght?
The NBC television network is in trouble. They have sunk in the network ratings to the #4 spot for the past two seasons. When a network becomes desperate, they are prone to making dumb decisions. Moving a highly-rated and critically acclaimed TV show like "Medium" from their comfortable time slot of 10PM on Wednesday night to a Sunday night time-slot of 9:00 PM does not do anybody any good. The viewership of "Medium" has gone down some this season as opposed to their stellar first season in 2005, but that is accepted in most cases as long as the advertisers are attracted to the demographics of the show. And in "Medium's" case, the demographics are just what most advertisers are drooling after; the TV show's main viewers are 25 to 48 year olds with disposable income. So why is NBC making this ignorant move? Because they believe the lead-in from "Sunday Night Football" will be a great way to build the audience for this female-driven supernatural show.
Whether the network made a mistake with this move will become only clear in January 2008, because that is how long the fans of the show will have to wait for new episodes. The positive side of delaying a show until January of a new year is the fact that there are virtually no repeats during the shorter run of episodes. This strategy has benefited shows like "Lost" which turned off millions of viewers after the first season when people got tired of seeing repeat after repeat instead of new episodes, which led to complete confusion as to what was happening to the main characters. This strategy could be a major benefit to "Medium" as well, since most viewers had no problem waiting for Season 3 to start on January of 2007. On the negative side, viewers who were accustomed to seeing "Medium" every Wednesday night at 10 pm now have to look for it on Sunday night at 9pm and change their viewing habits as well, which is never an easy task for a television show to do.
"Medium" has never really had an easy time of it when it comes to schedules. It started out its second season not even knowing if it would return because NBC did not include it in its fall schedule of 2006. It was only announced a few months later that it would return in January of 2007 to little fanfare. That really shows you the absurd mentality of NBC; that they would treat a stellar show like "Medium" so shoddily. The show really deserves much better treatment than that. The amazing acting talents of the entire cast warrant a quick rundown of the show's plot line for anybody still doubting the quality of this series.
Patricia Arquette plays the role of Alison DuBois, an assistant to the District Attorney's office of Phoenix Arizona. She has the uncanny ability to talk to the dead, as Haley Joel Osment did in "The Sixth Sense", only she makes her living at it. She is constantly helping the DA, played by Miguel Sandoval, to find out who the real killer is behind various murders in the Phoenix area. Her husband Joe, played by Jake Weber, is a long-suffering but good natured guy who wants Alison to do well in her job, but would also love to get some sleep instead of waking up to the screams of his wife who has nightmares most every night. These nightmares usually consist of a madman stabbing his wife/mistress in the throat or suffocating her with his hands, which is what Alison saw the character played by Jason Priestly doing during a guest role appearance he made on the last two episodes of the latest season.
Those two cliffhanger episodes really brought the entire series to a much darker place than the show has ever been in before. Alison always kept her gift of communicating with the dead to herself and her tight-knit family, but a wise-ass reporter, played by Neve Campbell, got Alison to reveal her secret to her so that Neve Campbell's character would not be killed by a serial killer still on the loose, played by the aforementioned Jason Priestly. Now that the newspapers got a hold of the sensational story, the DA's office is in turmoil because of the bad publicity brought on by having Alison's unusual gift exposed to the general public. The news that a kooky assistant to the DA's office is helping to make cases against supposed innocent citizens, makes it appear that all the arrests made by the DA's office are totally unjustified. The murderer played by Jason Priestly is in fact suing the district attorney's office as well as the city of Phoenix for false prosecution and arrest, even though he is guilty of the murder charges. At the end of the final episode of this season, we see Alison clearly shaken to the core by the fact that the city of Phoenix will not allow her to go back to her job as an assistant. To add even more angst to the series, her husband Joe cannot go back to work at his company because of his emotional issues after being witness to a fellow co-worker's cold blooded murder of three other employees during a hostage takeover.
This sets up season four as possibly the final season to tie up all of the terrible experiences of season three. It will have to show how Alison and Joe survive having no income coming in, but still having to take care of their three young daughters, and the effect of being newly poverty-stricken.
The network execs at NBC should take this time slot change as an opportunity to really advertise the fact that this is one of the best shows on their schedule, by creating a strong advertising campaign that shows stong support for the series. Anything less than that would be a real crime in itself.
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