Studio 60 Gets Full Season = Premature Pickup

For those who haven't heard Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip was given a full season order by NBC. Now, as I wrote before, this show has a lot of potential, but it has yet to prove it has any sort of staying power, and it's quality has been sub-standard. They were originally given an order for additional scripts. This was a good move by NBC. It would be a shame to scrap a show with this sort of acting and writing talent. However, this news of a full season pickup comes very soon after the script order announcement, and before any of the new scripts have been implemented. Those scripts better have been worthy of an Emmy nomination to get a full season order. The show has not shown any improvement since my last posts (if anything, it has gotten worse), so it appears that this pickup is premature.

Maybe the new scripts came in and they were so spectacular, a full season was ordered on the spot because it was well deserved. But it seems like the reality of the situation is that the same people who called this show brilliant originally are the same people making the decisions right now, and it would have been better to see if the new scripts and the corresponding new episodes connected with the audience before ordering the entire season.

NBC is not doing nearly as well as they expected to do this year, and I think that is the real reason behind this premature full season order. In fact, the show they are finding the most success with, Heroes, is one of the shows they were paying less attention to, this alone should tell NBC they may be off their mark in deciding what audiences would love to see.

Studio 60 does have the makings of a great show, but having potential and realizing it and turning it into something special are two very different things. If you remember I wrote about how Heroes was a show that had a lot of potential and that if you stuck with it, you wouldn't be disappointed. I think very few of us have been disappointed since we decided to stick around.