Lead-ins and How They are Helpful (and Hurtful)

If there is one thing that is always important about lead-ins to a new show is that they could provide all of the pull they need to in order to keep people watching the next new show. But a weak lead-in could provide the exact opposite affect instead. Do lead-ins provide all the power? And what if you are the way the network starts out the night? Are you certain to have things last?

Perhaps the biggest gamble is how each network starts out the day of the week at 7 Central (or 6 for some of the networks at least part of the year, if not all of it, on Sundays) since they are betting that this will be the most popular or watched of all the shows they could be airing at the time. Thus, you will often not see new shows then. But this is not always the case. Some networks have very few things to rely on or timeslots that they have open so they have to put new things on at the earliest timeslot at times because not much else can work or go there.

Needless to say, regardless of how you start the night, you want to make sure that you have a strong enough show that people won’t change to another network once it is over. Such a simple thing is worth putting a lot of effort into each network’s shows. Thus, if you have a strong show like The Flash at the start of the night, you would want something after it so the CW network is constantly putting new shows on after it hoping that the ratings would help as a result.

Sadly, a show may be strong, but not produce good ratings on the show after this. The most notable example of this is The Voice which tends to always have good ratings and continue going strong, but it is not a show that most other NBC shows want to air after as there is too much competition on other networks at the time and the post Voice timeslot is often poison to new shows or even some of the existing shows that are on the air after it.

That is why lead-ins are a double edged sword. On the one hand, they can help a show out. On the other hand, they can drag a show down. The Voice is the only show that I know of that doesn’t provide that strong a lead-in despite being a strong show itself. I can’t think of any shows offhand that add viewers in the later hours after a poor lead-in. That doesn’t mean it hasn’t happened. I just don’t think that there is one that exists right now that I know of at least.

The annual event of The Super Bowl proves the ultimate test of just how good a lead-in can be. There have been shows that aired for the first time after that show just for a ratings boost. If the game ends up airing late and long, then it is harder for viewers to stick around and watch it. But it will always be a habit for all networks to air something new after the game is over. Most others then air a late night show, except for FOX, obviously, since it has none.

Without must else to say in this blog post, I will let you go and continue these posts in the future. This is the last regular Tuesday post for a while, probably, depending on what happens. The regular posts should hopefully remain on Thursdays and you will be seeing them on other days of the week as well as usual as you hopefully want to see if that means that I wrote a Survivor blog post since every time I roll and see an episode of that show, I have to update this blog unless I would have anyways, at which point this blog would not be updated, in case there is anything confusing you about it. I know that this is quite a complicated and confusing way of doing things and things could get even worse if the new blogger way of doing things stays the way it does for me or better instead. We’ll see.

The Late Late Show: James Corden versus Craig Ferguson

It has been quite a while since I’ve done a post like this. I had done things like this before, but now feel the need to do it again. I can only hope that I can write this and other posts that I want to in certain time in the future. For now, let’s get to this post in question.

What was Craig Ferguson like? When his show was on at the time, he was probably my favorite of all the hosts. Still, he could be vulgar at times with his constant swearing. He was known for improvisation most of the time as he would famously rip up his interview cards at the start of every interview. He also had a robot skeleton as a sidekick at some point (I forget how long) and used puppets like a swearing rabbit for a time, but not in the later episodes towards the end. Outside of emails, he didn’t do as many bits on the show that recurred like you might see in other shows.

How he was good: His jokes worked practically all of the time and he was always engaging with all of his guests in a way you wouldn’t see typically from other hosts. His banter with his sidekick was the type of thing that you wouldn’t see as well done anywhere else despite the good chemistry from most of them in the end. He is a wonderful host.

How he was bad: He was vulgar in some ways and a bit inappropriate for some of the female hosts, it seems. Without as many bits that were done regularly on the show, it didn’t make as much sense or have as much to it like you’d see on other shows.

What is James Corden like? He can be goofy, but not always in a good way. I do like him a lot and think that his bits could use improvement at times or done away with entirely. Other bits of his are awesome and fun to watch at times, at least in some of the studio versions.

How he is good: He has awesome forms of humor that you don’t see as much from the other hosts and can make staying up that late worth it. The format where all the guests are being interviewed at once seems like more of an improvement than other ones as we are certain to hear from all of his guests, even if we here from some more than others.

How he is bad: While not on him, his sidekick sucks in many ways, such as his question at the end. About half of his bits fail a lot such as celebrity noses or other things that I’m not sure have names. He doesn’t always go the places he should with politics.

Who do I like better? This is a hard one for me since one is my old favorite and the other is my current favorite. Picking between two favorites isn’t that easy to do. But I do like Craig Ferguson more simply because I was used to him more. He narrowly wins this battle for me.

There are more late night comparisons that I can do in the future, but don’t know yet if I will soon or not. Some of what has changed since March of this year makes some of his harder to keep track of in the current moment. But I hope that you like this post nonetheless.

Top Ten Anti-Heroes of Arrow

While I don’t think for sure this will be the last top ten from Arrow as I might mention what I feel are the best ten episodes of the show as well (and possibly the worst, but maybe just the best), I think that this could be the most fitting one since Oliver Queen in an anti-hero and so is everyone on the list. I just hope that I didn’t include anyone on this list that was on the other ones as well. I think that I picked a bunch of good people and I know that a lot of these could just be villains who became heroes or others that have been on this list. But let’s get to it then.

#10 Al-Fatih: While I don’t remember this person that well (and might not have seen any of the episodes he was in), I still think that he was a great anti-hero in the show and made quite a good bit of influence in the series as a whole.

#9 Noah Kuttler: Another more obscure person, I still felt that he was a great anti-hero from what I was able to look up of him when doing research for this post. I can hope that he is better than this paragraph describing him seems to give credit for.

#8 Talia al Ghul: She was pretty great in the end, even if she didn’t have as much of an influence on the show as she could have in the end. I still like what she was able to do for the team as she was able to help Oliver with his prison time while moving the plot forward in important ways.

#7 Anatoly Knyazev: Quite a pivotal part of the whole series, he was a frienemy of Oliver, but still used a lot and very helpful in the end to a lot of this show, proving quite a huge influence over the rest of the people in the show at times and doing a lot.

#6 Slade Wilson: The big bad of the second season, he wound up doing enough good in the end that he is worthy of the place on the anti-hero list instead of the villain list. He helped train Oliver, even if it wound up costing him his eye and even normal human behavior for a while.

#5 Nyssa al Ghul: The daughter of the third season big bad, she’s important like her half sister who was also here on this list. She was quite an influential person on the whole show that it is hard to believe that she was ever a bad person at one point.

#4 Mia Smoak: Oliver’s daughter is worthy of the list, even if she is quite mysterious in many ways and a bit hard to keep track of what happened after the crisis and other ways. I think that she has a lot more of her future left to tell which is why I really hope that the show Green Arrow and the Canaries is made in the end so we can see what happens next to her and the others. If nothing else, at least conclude the cliffhanger of the penultimate episode in a Legends of Tomorrow one.

#3 Vincent Sobel: Better known as Vigilante, he is someone that could have been a villain through and through, but those who kept up with the whole franchise would have noticed that he was with all of the heroes who died in Doomworld, an episode of Legends of Tomorrow. That great piece of foreshadowing proved that he would wind up being a hero in the end despite his evil ways for a while.

#2 Laurel Lance of Earth-2: First she was an evil Yanny based off of her earth-1 counterpoint and then she became a hero so redeemed by the sacrifice of her father’s doppelganger that Oliver felt it was better to keep her alive then bring back the earth-1 counterpart of hers that she had. I love all of the layers and complexity of this character as things went along and hope that she can be seen more in the future as well with all the other canaries.

#1 Oliver Queen: Of course the main character would be the best of the anti-heroes of all of this show in the end. I don’t know who else would even qualify as better. He stopped being a killer most of the time and even helped lead the city as mayor. He also revealed his secret identity in the end in order to do the best for others. And it was his sacrifice that saved the multiverse after it was destroyed.

That’s all that I can think of saying for this post. I hope that you liked it even if not many people of you are reading posts like this in the end. I can only hope that people enjoyed it nonetheless. It was quite a fun show to watch at times and I only wish that I saw more of it than I did in the end. Maybe I still can and will. Who knows what the future might hold.

Notes on the Upcoming CBS Schedule: 2020 Version

We will be lucky if we get the fall season that we want to of any networks this season. While CBS still announced a normal seeming season, we don’t yet know if it will happen in the end. But I’m going to report what they said will currently happen and hope that it does when they want it to. Let’s get started with this post at hand.

The new shows that CBS will air during the fall will be The Equalizer and B Positive. Another show that is new set to air sometime during midseason is Clarice. Those three are the only known new shows that might air on CBS, although tons might be made and premiere later at midseason that isn’t announced yet because they haven’t made or started to make it yet.

Meanwhile, the shows that are gone and won’t be coming back for another season are Broke, Carol’s Second Act, Criminal Minds, God Friended Me, Hawaii Five-0, Madam Secretary, Man with a Plan, and Tommy. What’s interesting and kind of unusual is that maybe half of these were gone before midseason had started and happened.

Getting to what shows replaced what, we got some of the confusion with the Friday shows, but not much outside of that. Magnum P.I. was replaced by the returning MacGyver. Once Hawaii Five-0 ended for good, Magnum P.I. returned in its place. Madam Secretary was replaced by FBI: Most Wanted. God Friended Me was replaced by The Equalizer. S.W.A.T. will be gone for a while and replaced by The Amazing Race. Evil was replaced by Tommy for a bit and now Tommy is gone for good with Evil taking its place back when it used to be. While Carol’s Second Act became Broke, they will both be replaced by The Unicorn, which is returning like it was going to. The Unicorn was gone for a bit to allow the end of the run of Man with a Plan. That show will now be B Positive.

There’s not too much else to say regarding shows that will be airing. Survivor still might be a bit of a wildcard as they might not be able to film it, unless they do something domestically as I have seen at least one person suggest and think that they still can do if they aren’t doing something in Fiji again right now already. Some summer shows won’t happen for quite a while since they won’t happen this year, but they aren’t kept tracked of in this post anyways. Thus, I will end the post here.

The Pros and Cons of Watching Shows Online

If you want to keep up with certain TV shows, the only logical way to do that might be to watch it online over the network’s websites when they are available to stream later. But this isn’t always something that is good. I will start with the general pros and general cons before going through the specific issues that I’ve had or still have with one network’s in general. Let’s get to it.

Pros: A lot of things that you missed are certain to be here, at least for a time. Thus, it only makes sense that you should watch it if you can since where else could you go? If your affiliate of this network keeps poorly coming in making watching not really an option with live TV, you can always do this instead. The sites keep you interested with old programming available for free as an option a lot of the time. Most of the sites try to stay as updated as possible for newer computers. Sometimes glitches skip the ads.

Cons: There are normally always loading issues, regardless of which site you use. Glitches are quite a common issue at times. Updated websites for videos make it impossible in some cases to watch the shows at all on older laptops. If you have an ad blocker, the site may refuse to work for you since it needs the ads to work. Most annoyingly is the fact that you have to sit through all the ads.

ABC website pros: They have a lot available, including old shows that aired a while ago. I don’t know how much is available, but they could have every episode of every season of whatever shows are on this site. Plus, the site is free for pretty much everything that you want it to be.

ABC website cons: You have to wait at least a week after an episode has aired before you can see it for free, which is quite annoying. The site is too updated making it impossible to see on older computers. I’ve had numerous issues with loading where it just freezes up for some odd reason.

CBS website pros: While you have to pay for it, this has the entire CBS library of TV shows and you can watch all of them online. CBS all access also comes with original programming you can’t get anywhere else outside of The CW in the future later this year and the first season of The Good Fight and hopefully more of that in the future.

CBS website cons: The site is too advanced nowadays and may not work at all if you block ads on other sites since it has to air the ads to air the rest of the content. It may not tell you if such problems exist and you might need even to go through a lot of hassle just to see the free stuff. I’ve also heard of some people having trouble finding just trying to use the site itself, although I don’t know by how much.

CW website pros: It has improved a lot for me versus what it was like in the past with huge availability of a lot of old shows of theirs and even other networks on the CW Seed’s site which is free for all. It might have more on the site than it originally did at one point.

CW website cons: While I don’t know if this is still the case, they would only have the last five episodes that aired on TV on the site, meaning that if they aired reruns and you wanted to see something that was more recent, you wouldn’t be able to get it as the reruns would be on the site instead.

FOX website pros: Honestly, I haven’t used or tried to use this one as much as the others as I haven’t been as reliant on it as I otherwise could be. But it seems to work on the newer laptops and can give you what you’d want or otherwise need from it without too many issues loading it.

FOX website cons: The most advanced of the sites, I couldn’t even access the site on my oldest laptop as it instantly stopped working the moment I went to this site. I’ve had issues with the way some of the ads have loaded and frozen up in the past. You also have to wait a week to see anything new that had aired on this network.

NBC website pros: Like ABC, it has a ton of selection of shows from the past and has more availability of current shows than is typical beyond the usual previous five episodes. It has impressed me so much that it went from around the worst ranked one for me to being the best or second best.

NBC website cons: There have been strange issues in the past with ads where they might reload what they have already aired before and force you to go through them again. I couldn’t even get a loading bar at the bottom once recently and thus couldn’t skip ahead and had to watch through the entire first act of the show again.

That’s about it for this post as I can’t think of anything else to say outside of the usual closing which can be strange as I try to talk about enough in order to finish saying what I think needs said in this post for some reason or another. That’s all for now.

Why is Modern Television so Weird?

Something that seems almost certain nowadays is that when you watch a show nowadays, something about it will be weird in some way. This didn’t used to be the case. But it seems to be some common at this point nowadays that something will be weird with the shows that are on and thus, with the shows that you watch at some point in time or all the time.

It would be impossible to think offhand all the shows that follow this format and may instead be quite easier to think of shows that aren’t weird. But then you’d think of the important question: what is a normal show and would anything qualify as that?

What I mean by weird is that something about it just seems strange at times or all the times. Maybe the heads of characters change for people to know that they are a special creature in this show’s world or maybe magic is used a lot in some way, causing strange aspects as well. Science fiction shows might as well be weird in every aspect. Fantasy shows are. Every supernatural based show is.

Even if we go to the standard sitcoms, be it family based, friends based, or workplace based, there are a lot of weird things that happen over and over again on it that move the plot forward in some way. All of the regular seeming dramas of courtroom or medical based ones to even police procedurals tend to have a lot of weird cases or people moving the plot forward at times. Weird can encompass a whole different number of things in just how a show works.

By why is this the case? Why is TV so weird? Well, maybe they need some sort of hook to keep people coming back to it time and time again. A lot of people are weird and people would want to see those like them on TV since why else would one keep coming back? Maybe people don’t care too much about it since they like a show too much to care about the fact that it is weird.

Whatever the reason, it is likely that a show being weird is just what sells and what networks or those in charge want to go with nowadays. I don’t have any problem with any one show for being weird (but certainly a lot of shows’ weirdness hurts it more than it helps). It just seems, well, weird that so much of what you see from TV nowadays is like that.

If I Ran a TV Network

A lot of wishful thinking can happen with life and part of it could involve me having my own network. Whether it would be me somehow starting a new one or me taking over a current one, I do not know. I also don’t know which of the major network (or cable networks) I’d most want to take over. As much as I would love a network like CBS, for instance, could I actually take control of its programming and be good at it? And if I started a new network, how would I know what to do with it and what to air on it? Well, this is a totally hypothetical situation anyways and I don’t have to be realistic if I don’t want to be. What could I do if I ran a TV network?

I realize that there is not a lot of Christian programming on TV and it makes sense. It would be hard for sex to sell when a good chunk of Christians don’t do that until they are married. And I wouldn’t even want to cover all of primetime with something like this. But I would want to do programming on Sunday nights that would be Christian themed while maybe even doing a live Sunday variety show afternoons that day featuring various important things in the day.

A lot of networks have a certain format that they follow in terms of what they air each week or also during the summer. Sundays have ABC airing game shows during the summer. They air comedies on Wednesdays during the main season and often air reruns during most of the summer (but not this one). CBS and NBC air comedies on Thursdays. If I’m putting Christian shows on Sundays, then I could clearly put shows with other themes on other days of the week every week. I could also put on movies or some other special on Wednesdays during Lent and Advent so people don’t have to worry about missing those shows in the end as they’d be on hiatus.

I don’t know what I’d do for daytime shows or late night shows. But I might do something crazy in terms of what you’d see on other networks. I might not allow any news on the network as you can get that on all sorts of other places. The main reason why is so that there wouldn’t be any breaking news that cover the shows that people want to air instead or weather events showing over the show. (I don’t know if I could prevent weather from airing over it based on how some networks work so I’d say that the worst that could happen just might be a scrolling notice at the bottom of the screen.)

Whether or not I would get rid of the news, I’d still think of the one thing that is certain not to air on any of the networks that I would be in control of if I wasn’t taking charge of one that clearly used it or maybe only used it is sports. While I do watch sports at times, it is normally only so that I can see what is on after it and not because I actually care about it or like it. Of course, there are times that I care, but I more than often don’t most of the time. I don’t want sports messing up the programming that would be on that people want to rely on airing at a good time so I wouldn’t want any live events like sports to air over the shows that should be airing instead.

I don’t know if I’d have any live specials, but could do some prerecorded ones at times. I might want to put movies on at certain times of the day, especially during typical dead zones like most of Sunday before primetime starts or other things like that, although I don’t know what, outside of other movies, would air during oddly ended times if I did that and just didn’t want to extend the airtime of it.

While there’s not much to this post, I still think that I explained well enough how I would run my own TV network if I could and would be able to air something like that in the end. There may not be much of what would be different and I have no idea if such a thing could happen at all in the end. But I still think that this would work in the end if I wanted it to.

Beware Clickbait TV Websites

I will be talking about at least three websites in this blog post, even though I thought at first that I would only talk about two of them. One covers more than just TV and I’m honestly not sure what the other two are. I just thought that I would warn you about them.

While browsing on other sites, typically news ones, I keep seeing ads for two different sites that stand out in my mind. One is called the delite and the other is called the investing. I will never go to either of these sites because they are full of crap. How do I know this? They will say, often, “canceled shows, effective immediately” while showing a picture from a show that isn’t cancelled or in any danger of being that. Also, the idea that any of these shows would be cancelled when they say they are is also outrageous in some way since they just simply aren't true.

Blatant lying like this is simply a way to get people who don’t know any better to click of this site. I do not know what happens if you do. There could be malware there or other spam. Maybe it is just a waste of time in some way and has no other negative issue than that. Still, the ads are lies that they are hoping people will fall for, something that I’m pretty sure is banned in advertising.

I know that All Rise isn’t cancelled. CBS would not just randomly announce whether or not NCIS is renewed in some way the way these sites would claim. Blue Bloods has never been in danger of ending, and yet the delite keeps putting that in their pictures of supposedly immediately cancelled shows. They can also be clueless at times as one of them thought that a show called Navy Seal exists. I know what show they meant based on the picture, but most people shouldn’t fall for such crap.

There is another site that isn’t as bad that is always advertised on imdb. This site is called zergnet and it just seems to be more of a waste of time than anything else. They do a lot of things that just seem random and there are times when it seems like they try to answer something important, but don’t. They keep talking about why a certain actor or actress isn’t doing anything anymore or a supposed real reason why a show ended, no matter how long ago it did. The one that I actually read that annoyed me most was over why Hetty was gone from NCIS: Los Angeles. It was an eight page story and only page seven had a fleeting mention of the reason why she was gone.

If you know of any other sites, be it dangerous or just dumb, that one should avoid that are always in some way advertised or promoted elsewhere, let me know so I can pass the warning on. I try not to click on ads from news sites as I think that both Yahoo’s and MSN’s websites have done ad for stories that I was interested in that immediately tried to put a virus on my laptop that I could thankfully get out of right away. I have never clicked on an ad on MSN’s main webpage again which I’m typically only on after I am done checking my hotmail account, but can be there other times as well. Like I said, I don’t know if either the investing or the delite would try to give your computer a virus, but since they are clearly trying to trick you into thinking a show is leaving that isn’t, then I wouldn’t think that something good would happen, even if you just wind up wasting your time on crap.

My Planned Viewing Habits: Summer of 2020

I feel kind of stupid for not writing this post sooner. The summer schedule has already started and I haven’t told you my planned viewing habits of it yet. Well, I’m sorry for not writing this sooner and can only hope that it isn’t too late. The format might be strange as I haven’t bothered to look up what I normally do for these posts. Maybe I’ll share that in the posts next year.

On Sundays, I plan to watch Press Your Luck, Match Game, Celebrity Family Feud, and 60 Minutes. I can only hope that ABC keeps coming in or it might mess with my plans. On Mondays, I’ll watch Penn and Teller: Fool Us and Whose Line is it Anyways? I was seeing Roswell, New Mexico until its season ended. I won’t watch all of primetime so I can leave for work early. On Tuesdays, I’ll watch The CW Happy Hour and Stargirl. I might replace the first show with a movie if I don’t like it. For now, there is nothing else that really work then at that timeslot.

On Wednesdays, I passed on Game On and Ultimate Tag, having seen it both once and deciding not to see either again. I will check out Tough as Nails. For now, I am watching Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. The next day has a lot of potential if shows I like come in. On Thursdays, I’ll watch or want to watch Burden of Truth, Blindspot, To Tell the Truth, Broke, and Council of Dads. I saw and passed on Celebrity Watch Party and Labor of Love. On Fridays, while I could watch more movies as I don’t have to see any of the shows right now, I will be watching CSI: Miami reruns on My Network TV.

Other shows I may check out at some point are Don’t on ABC, Generation Gap on ABC, and Dead Pixels on the CW, provided that any of these air in summer season with only the first one known for sure to be moving forward soon. We’ll see if any of these stick around.

There are a lot of summer shows from last season that I probably won’t be able to see again as they won’t be on again, even though I like them and would want to see them as a result. They include things like Hypnotize Me or The $100,000 Pyramid. I’ll see what happened to them later. If I had to guess, I would say that they are both over. Hopefully we’ll find out soon if I can do the cancelled shows post sooner to the end of the season like I’m wanting to.

I don’t know what else there is to say in this post so I will end it with this paragraph. We’ll see if there are any new shows that wind up interesting me or shows that I don’t stay into at all. I doubt that I will be able to see all of the shows that I want to unless I can get them back on my TV tuner. I look forward to seeing them if I can and hope that I like them too.