Mad Men is back on TV, and it couldn’t have come any sooner

I can not tell you how excited I was for the season 3 premiere of Mad Men this past Sunday- by far this is my favorite show on Television right now. The whole show is brilliantly written, the sets and costumes are amazing and the characters are perfectly casted.

Watching Mad Men reminds me how the major networks have fallen way behind when it comes to “must watch” shows. Since the days when the networks had amazing lineups with all-time great shows like Cheers, Friends, and Seinfield, the best shows (at least in my opinion) have always been on cable. The list of killer cable shows is endless – The Sopranos, The Wire, Rome, Weeds, Entourage and now AMC’s Breaking Bad and Mad Men. What happened NBC, ABC and CBS? Outside of a few good shows like The Office and Grey’s Anatomy, the networks seem to be pushing out bomb after bomb. Yes, the audience numbers are huge compared with cable but is that because of choice or out of habit?

Sadly, the downfall of the networks has a lot do with the stress to find an immediate winner and their knack of not letting shows build up an audience by either cutting them loose or changing their time-slot. Remember how Friends sucked for the first couple of years? Yeah, I think that show did alright. Of course part of the reason why cable has done so well is that they can and take more risks in regards to content, topics and story lines. Granted being on HBO allows more graphic language and nudity but the shows are powerful, compelling and generate serious excitement.

Don’t get me wrong, I am sure there are plenty of good shows on the Networks, but for me…none of them get me excited like Mad Men.

So, with all of that being said I have two quick ways the networks can bring some power back to their prime-time lineups:

• Take more chances
• Truly embrace digital

Tagged as: AMC, Mad Men, Media, TV