Summer is the new Fall

by Larry Bills, August 8th, 2006, 8:00 am

“Hi. My name is Larry, and I’m a TV-aholic.”

Or so the salutation would go if there was a rehab program for people like me. I like to watch TV. Lots of it. You can easily find my favorite places around my house. They generally face the TV, have cushions with dents roughly the shape of my rump, and are in the vicinity of various table rings from various coaster-less beer bottles.

Lest you think this is sort of sad, don’t. I like it that way. I have a wife, a kid on the way, a regular job. In short, I do have a life. It just happens to be a life that contains mammoth doses of TV. You could even say that my habit helps me professionally, since juggling all those demands gives me wicked time management skills. (And the DVR is the greatest invention since, well, I guess the TV.)

But that doesn’t mean that I don’t need a break sometimes, and summer used to provide me that solace. When the airwaves replace the Lost castaways and those lovely Desperate Housewives with reruns and the latest midgets-dating-soccer-moms reality horror show that’s all the rage, I was left to hit the lake, catch up on movies and books, and generally relax. (See? I do have some standards.)

This summer, though, I’ve discovered that TV will not release me from its iron grip. You see, almost every cable channel is now backed by the deep pockets of their media giant parent companies like Time Warner and NBC Universal. So what are the cable channels doing with that money? Ramping up original programming and filling the summer void left by the hibernating broadcast networks. And what’s worse, a lot of these shows are actually friggin’ good! Damn them and their drive to excel! Don’t they know I’ve got other things to do?

If you’re a genre-loving fan boy like me, you’re particularly overloaded. Some of the best sci-fi I’ve seen in a long time comes in the form of Battlestar Galactica and the Stargates on the SCI FI Channel, USA Network’s The 4400, and even Spike TV’s new Blade: The Series. The broadcast networks are typically where science fiction goes to die (ABC’s Invasion and CBS‘ Threshold being this past season’s biggest casualties), but on cable, 3 million viewers a week is quite the feat. Toss in DVD revenue later and you’re rolling in freaky alien and vampire goodness.

And while the big networks don’t have to watch their backs quite yet, that could all change in another couple years. Some cable programs are putting up numbers equal or better than the nets. The Closer, TNT’s entry into the crime procedural, pulls in close to 7 million viewers each week and has helped that network become the top-rated cable destination. Star Kyra Sedgwick’s even up for an Emmy this year. USA Network’s Monk and the detective-posing-as-a-psychic comedy Psych also pull in big numbers.

I guess I’m just going to have to get used to TV being an all-year companion, and my DVR always backlogged. Maybe one of these days I’ll be able to relate to Sandy Cohen’s Zen-like quip on The OC, “A clear TiVo is a clear mind.”

Amen, brother.