Flagging ‘Heroes’ Attempts Self-Rescue

[GrnMarvl14]

Source.

LOS ANGELES — When Ben Silverman, co-chairman of NBC Entertainment and its associated production studio, addressed a meeting of reporters in July, he confidently predicted that “Heroes,” the network’s biggest prime-time drama, was going to get even bigger.

Although the series had been off the air since the writers’ strike last year, Mr. Silverman said that Tim Kring, the creator of “Heroes,” had successfully addressed the problems that had plagued the show’s second season — confusing plotlines, scattered characters, questionable leaps in logic, all of which led to a shrinking audience from the critically acclaimed first season.

“We’re really confident, and we’re excited to see the audience respond and come back,” Mr. Silverman said, “and we think it’s going to be its biggest year ever.”

That has not happened. With ratings for “Heroes” down 20 percent from those of a year ago and regular third-place finishes in total viewers for its time slot, NBC took action last week, midway into the show’s third season. Two co-executive producers were fired: Jeph Loeb and Jesse Alexander, who also served as senior writers and oversaw much of the script development.

But questions remain about whether the series can be revived. Writers are already working on the 20th of a planned 25 episodes this season, meaning any changes produced by the firings are unlikely to be seen on the air before May. By that time viewership could well erode further from the estimated 8.3 million people who watched recent episodes at its regular time, Monday nights at 9.

The impetus for the firings came from the top, according to two people close to the production who spoke on the condition of anonymity. (These and others close to the show were not authorized to speak on the record.) They said that Jeff Zucker, president and chief executive of NBC Universal and Mr. Silverman’s boss, was greatly upset by an Entertainment Weekly cover story two weeks ago that said some of this season’s developments were “jump-the-shark preposterous” and concluded that the series “may no longer be a pop-culture phenomenon.”

“Last year’s bugs have been replaced by new ones,” the usually upbeat magazine reported. “And they must be stopped.”

An NBC spokeswoman denied that Mr. Zucker was directly involved in the decision to fire the executive producers. Mr. Zucker, Mr. Silverman and Mr. Kring would not comment on the series or on the firings, the network said.

The two people close to the show said that Mr. Zucker was part of discussions about the series’s progress since early in the season, when network executives began to fret that “Heroes” was not fully addressing the problems that became apparent in the second season.

“He was well aware of what was going on behind the scenes,” one person involved in the show’s production said of Mr. Zucker.

Mr. Loeb, whose work on Batman and X-Men comic books is well known among serious “Heroes” fans, would not comment on the reason for his dismissal, although he said he was proud of his work on the series. “I’ve been friends with Tim Kring for 25 years, and I will continue to be friends with him,” he said.

Mr. Alexander similarly declined to comment beyond a statement posted on his blog, at globalcouch.blogspot.com: “I could not be prouder of all the work I did on the show and wish all my Heroic Scribbler pals the very best.”

In the writers’ room there were disagreements about how to resolve the drama’s problems. Mr. Kring felt that Mr. Loeb and Mr. Alexander did not follow through on his request to keep plots simple and to eliminate extraneous characters, according to a person familiar with his thinking. “This was a many-months-long issue,” the person said. “He needed the creative team around him to embrace his vision.”

Two people involved in the show’s production and another who is close to the program’s principals said that Mr. Kring was intimately involved in almost every aspect of “Heroes.” That raises the question of how anything that appears on “Heroes” could fail to reflect his vision.

This season Mr. Kring wrote three of the first nine episodes, according to the two people close to the production, making him responsible for a third of the content that had been produced when NBC executives began to worry once more about the show’s direction. (Episode 8 is scheduled for Monday night.)

An NBC executive said that there was no immediate plan to replace the fired writers. Two experienced television writers were already added this season — Rob Fresco, who worked on “Crossing Jordan” with Mr. Kring, and Mark Verheiden, who most recently worked on the fan favorite “Battlestar Galactica.”

Yet on Friday, Entertainment Weekly also reported that Bryan Fuller, one of the lead writers in the first season of “Heroes” who left to create “Pushing Daisies” for ABC, is considering a return to “Heroes” if ABC fails to extend “Pushing Daisies” beyond the 13 episodes it has ordered for this season.

Mr. Fuller is known to be close to Katherine Pope, president of NBC Universal’s television studio, who also counts Mr. Kring as a friend. Mr. Fuller’s agent, Ari Greenberg of the Endeavor agency, said on Friday that there had been no negotiations about Mr. Fuller returning to “Heroes.”

That a series with the ratings of “Heroes” could be perceived as being in trouble demonstrates the upheaval in the television business. Among the group that advertisers most covet, adults 18 to 49, “Heroes” ranks eighth over all, according to Nielsen Media Research.

But that is down from sixth last year, an alarming sign because the series is among the most expensive to produce, costing more than $4 million an episode. NBC, like most television studios, has recently asked its producers to rein in costs.

One bright spot, NBC executives say, is that while only about 8.3 million viewers have watched the show during its regular time slot, nearly 2 million more record and watch it within a week, according to Nielsen. That is one of the highest rates of DVR viewership gain among all shows on television. The show also is among the most-viewed online on NBC.com and Hulu.com, the site owned by NBC Universal and the News Corporation, parent company of the Fox network.

The show might, in a sense, attract too many young viewers, those least likely to watch the series when it is broadcast and therefore more likely to skip the commercials that pay for the production.

Even after the shake-up it appears that Mr. Kring’s job is safe, and perhaps it is the sprawling nature of “Heroes” that saved him. The show is a big hit overseas, and the Web is bursting with sites devoted to characters’ back stories, plot decoding and fan discussions. Mr. Kring is deeply involved in many of those pieces, and there is genuine fear at NBC that no other person could fill all those roles.

Given Mr. Kring’s value to the franchise, Mr. Zucker and Mr. Silverman apparently did what George Steinbrenner sometimes did when he found his Yankees in third place: fire the pitching coach. While that solution might not directly address the problems on the field, it warns those who remained that they are on thin ice.

Pretty interesting article. Sums up a bunch of the little bits I've been running across. With any luck, they can hire some of the comic book-turned-television writers (or television-turned-comic book writers) to give the show what it needs. Maybe woo Brian K. Vaughan (Runaways, Y: The Last Man) and Allen Heinberg (Young Avengers) away from Lost.

 

[Jo-Jo]

Bryan Fuller is greatness (he wrote 'Company Man' in S1), but I'd rather Heroes get cancelled than Pushing Daisies.

I don't know if the drop in ratings is entirely the fault of the show. From what I've gathered, the shows that were able to survive the writers' strike are the ones that continued to air a handful of episodes over the summer. The shows that went off the air for ten months and tried to make a big comeback in September/October are struggling terribly. (Like Pushing Daisies. *tears of woe*) People have simply forgotten about them, or learned to live without them a little too well in their absence.

 

[Zeta]

I stopped watching when the plots started becoming waaay too similar to comic book stories that geeks already know. It seemed like the main point of the series was to take these great comic book stories that hardcore fans know by heart, and repackage them to be more palatable for main-stream viewers by getting rid of costumes and codenames. It stops seeming original, then. Season 1 is Watchmen. Season 2 is Apocalypse + The Legacy Virus. I haven't seen Season 3, but it sounds like the U-Men plot of X-men mixed with the Promicin storyline of the 4400. The characters were original. The plots are probably original for non-geeks. But for comic book fans, it seems like retreads of stuff we've already seen 1000 times with the iconic characters and style plucked out.

Also, the show CANNOT write romance and had a hard time introducing new characters and tried to focus way too hard on them before they'd earned their place with the audience, both of which really turned me off.

If the show isn't canceled, I'd bet money that Season 4 is the Dark Phoenix Saga (er, I mean Dark Claire Saga), Season 5 is the Clone Saga, Season 6 is House of Sylar, and Season 7 is Crisis on Infinite Earths.

 

[Jo-Jo]

^ As someone who doesn't read comics, that run-down you just did sounds kind of cool. In fairness, don't comic books use similar story-lines all the time?

Agreed that the romance in Heroes sucks - I liked Hiro/Charlie and that's it. And Daphne had better chemistry with Ando than Matt.

edit: Oh, come to think of it, I'd happily perve on Peter/Elle, too. Only because it amuses me when Peter acts like a manwhore - it's spooky how easily he can turn that on.

 

[GrnMarvl14]

^ As someone who doesn't read comics, that run-down you just did sounds kind of cool. In fairness, don't comic books use similar story-lines all the time?

What medium doesn't? Either in itself or taking plots and characters from others? How many movies are there about asteroids crashing into the earth? Or shows about fat guys and their hot wives? Or comics about heroes with some tragic flaw?

To me, it's all about the delivery. You can be similar without being repetitive. And part of that is in how people perceive the finished product. Two people can look at the exact same thing and one can find it wholly uninspired, while the other can see it as the greatest thing ever.

Personally, I see shades of various comic stories in Heroes, but I largely see it as an homage. Really...compared to Kring's OTHER attempt at super-heroes on TV...it's far better.

 

[bell02+]

I view them as Homages as well. Because to me it seems like the series is trying to take comic book plots and put them in more realistic situations making darker stories. The realism may have faltered a bit since season 1, but it still feels like a kudos to comic book stories.

Well, anyways, I hope this isn't more of a foreshadowing to a scale back of Heroes' production until it becomes some kind of messy canceled joke.

-----------
Edit: I guess I want to add, even though it isn't necessary... I like watching Pushing Daisies, but it is kind of is the same old police murder drama, just told through something like Dr. Seuss or Tim Burton's eyes. And I hate cop shows, so it's kind of a miracle that I watch Pushing Daisies. (I guess I'm just saying I prefer Heroes, and I don't see anything wrong with pushing daisies having a 13 episode season like most programs)

My biggest concern about Heroes is it being pushed out by 24 or something. It's key rival for the first season.

 

[GrnMarvl14]

This is SORT OF related, so I'm bumping this thread by posting this here:

Source.

If you caught any programming on NBC on Thanksgiving, you probably noticed all the promos for the networks upcoming shows, such as Superstars of Dance and Momma’s Boys, both of which debut in January and will air back to back on Mondays for several weeks, according to TV Guide.

As a result, new episodes of both Chuck and Heroes will be pushed to February.

As Newsarama readers are aware, the latter series has been plagued with problems in its third season – lowered ratings, a drubbing by critics, being targeted by Entertainment Weekly, and having two of its executive producers, Jeph Loeb and Jesse Alexander, fired.

Bryan Fuller, creator of the soon-to-end Pushing Daisies has strongly indicated that he will return to Heroes later this year. Fuller was a writer on the series during its first season.

Sucks about Pushing Daisies (though I've heard mention of it continuing as a comic, like Buffy did), but maybe Fuller can put the show back on track. And hopefully it WILL return in February...and will be much better. Kind of odd that Chuck's getting the same treatment...but I haven't heard much about how it's going this season, ratings and reviews-wise.

 

[Nekusagi]

I thought I heard Chuck was doing pretty well this season.