Friday 17 January 2020

How to launch a network?

Following the anniversary of Star Trek: Voyager I looked up what else started the launch lineup of the United Paramount Network. Two hours a night, two nights a week, and everything else was cancelled after thirteen episodes and I’d never heard of any of them before looking this up.

Marker, a Stephen J. Cannell case-of-the-week light adventure show putting Richard Grieco in Hawaii (with Gates McFadden as Higgins to his Magnum) as the estranged son of a billionaire who discovers his father gave markers to people who had helped him or he thought might need help, like a cosy Equalizer.

The Watcher, an anthology crime show hosted by Sir Mix-A-Lot as a guy with surveillance cameras everywhere in Las Vegas. Nothing creepy there...

Platypus Man, a semi-autobiographical sitcom about a TV presenter.

Pig Sty, a sitcom about five single guys in a New York apartment and their superintendent.

Cannell was a safe pair of hands, and the geographical variety was a good call, but they were all untried ideas, and with a Star Trek show as your flagship maybe you needed to go a little more geeky...

By comparison, The WB launched five days earlier with a variety of sitcoms and youth-oriented programming that at least lasted a while before becoming the station Buffy was on...

My only personal experience of something like this was the launch of the then Channel 5 in 1997, which was most of a day every day, and offhand all I can remember was The Jack Docherty Show and I think Hercules: The Legendary Journeys started pretty soon.

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