Like most people I know, I very rarely watch anything on ITV. The channel just doesn’t seem to want to appeal to people with my tastes.
But recently that seems to be changing. ITV have been showing a couple of American import that seem to be aimed at people exactly like me. Firstly they started showing Dexter (to be honest I’m not sure how much I like Dexter, but it’s certainly non-standard fare for ITV) and then last weekend they started showing Pushing Daisies which, judging by the first episode, I’m going to enjoy very much.
ITV certainly seem to be very proud of Pushing Daisies. It has had one of the biggest advertising campaigns that I can ever remember from ITV. There have been trailers and posters everywhere for weeks. And it seems to be going very well for them. Most of the reviews I’ve read have been very positive.
But they seem to be on the verge of blowing it completely. The first series of Pushing Daisies contains nine episodes. And ITV only have eight weeks in which to show them. After that, some football competition starts. Much as I’d love to live in a world where quality drama trumps sport, I know that’s some considerable way off and that there’s no way that ITV will make way in their football schedules for something like Pushing Daisies. But even then their solution seems bizarre in the extreme.
They are planning to drop one of the episodes. The second one apparently. The one that is due to be shown next weekend. They think that it’s the only one they can drop without leaving significant holes in the plot. Is that really the best they could do? Couldn’t they squeeze an extra episode in one week? Show two episodes the first week? Or the last week (“Big Pushing Daisies Series Finale Night”)? I mean it’s not as though any of this came as a surprise to them. They must have known how many episodes the series had. And the start date for Euro 2008 has, no doubt, been set for some time. All in all I think it shows a strangely inflexible attitude to scheduling.
So just as ITV started to go up in my estimation as a TV company. I was just starting to warm to them and now I’m back to viewing everything they do with suspicion. Perhaps they really don’t care. Maybe they were only making a token effort at attracting viewers like me.
p.s. I hope it’s obvious, but I’ll be scouring bittorrent for the missing episode.