'Desperate Housewives' was a surprise hit, ... If it holds up, if it's successful this year, certainly I think next year you'll see something else come on that tries to take advantage of it. |
[ABC and CBS] are just splitting a very limited audience, ... One will be cancelled and, even then, the other won't improve. |
[NBC is] not doing any worse than we expected them to be, ... We expected them to be down. The surprise is how well ABC is doing. |
ABC probably did as well or better than we expected. CBS and NBC were about what we expected would happen. |
All the program development stuff they were showing us, it looked like they were trying to put on a number of shows [that mimicked 'Housewives'], ... But the pilots must not have been good. 'Desperate Housewives' is a lot harder type of show to duplicate. |
Everything is down from four years ago. This still stands out as a big event. |
I do think it will beat the Olympics. |
I think 'American Idol' wins, except during the finals of the figure skating, if the U.S. is doing well or if there's some major scandal. |
It's not that the broadcasters struck out. There was just so much reality that there were more flops than successes. |
NBC is not drawing as many people from other networks the way the Winter Olympics usually does. |
Programming trends tend to run in cycles, as the networks program content that works until it becomes overly saturated. |
The networks need to get a handle on which shows are working [for the duration of the season] and which aren't. |
The one key thing going on this year is that NBC is not the No. 1 network going in. |
The success of Desperate Housewives does not mean people are looking for another soap opera, ... Good characters that they look forward to seeing week after week. |
You can have all the buzz in the world, and all that is going to do is get viewers to episode one. Now a show is going to have to live and die on its own. |