TVSquad

Everyone seems to have an idea on how Heroes can be improved. I think it's still good, but ratings are down, fans are fleeing, and it's probably not a show new fans can get into. Now creator Tim Kring has an idea.

For next season, he'd like to see more self-contained episodes instead of a long continuing storyline over the entire season. He talked about what he intended to do with the show and what the future might hold at the Creative Screenwriting Expo last weekend. He wanted to give NBC a show like Lost or 24, one with a serialized storyline that would have fans coming back each week. Now he says he's not sure if that was the right decision, describing those shows as "an absolute bear to do." He thinks that the way that people watch TV nowadays is a lot different than just three years ago, because of DVRs and online viewing and all that, and that has changed how viewers watch serialized dramas since they don't watch them live every week.

When the new fall schedules were announced last year, one of the shows that I was most looking forward to, ABC's mystery-drama Traveler, wasn't on the schedule. Which was sort of surprising since it got a lot of positive buzz in the upfront presentation that the network gave. And then we had all of the serialized dramas failing badly (The Nine, Smith, Daybreak, etc) and it seemed like Traveler would never premiere.

But ABC has announced that Traveler will indeed make it's debut on May 30, at 10pm. The number of episodes has been trimmed a little, and it looks like it's going to be one of those shows that will have a definite end, maybe like a long miniseries, so viewers won't feel cheated. Which is good news for TV fans these days, I guess.

... Two Programming Blunders.

It's been an interesting year for network TV, especially since the new fall season began. The set of pilots that the networks presented to audiences were at the same time the highest-quality and hardest-to-follow in years. That's why, in mid-season, we're now seeing that most of those pilots have either quickly disappeared or are hanging on for dear life.

Of course, this is all the networks' fault. The short-sightedness they used when programming their schedules this year has been mind-boggling, causing more viewers to scurry to other sources -- cable, YouTube, BitTorrent -- for their entertainment. Here are two of their dumbest moves: