Network TV season defies expectations

The hot stars on the TV screen this fall were supposed to be Playboy bunnies, Pan Am stewardesses and angry dinosaurs. Instead the winners were broke waitresses, snarky suburbanites and Snow White.

Welcome to the 2011-12 television season, where the costly shows that were supposed to be hits tanked and the ones that prognosticators had overlooked turned into ratings gold. Among the biggest disappointments have been NBC's short-lived "The Playboy Club," ABC's "Pan Am," which is struggling to stay airborne, and Fox's prehistoric drama "Terra Nova," which may end up going extinct in its first year. "Those shows got a lot of buzz and attention, and they just flopped," said Brad Adgate, an analyst at media buying firm Horizon Media. Each year, the networks spend hundreds of millions of dollars making and marketing shows, and advertisers drop billions of dollars buying commercials to run in them. If a show does not deliver the ratings a network promised advertisers, the network provides additional commercial inventory to the advertiser. For example, Fox's new singing talent show "The X Factor" delivered fewer viewers than advertisers expected, so the network provided what's known in the industry as make-goods. Ratings are not the only factor in judging a show's performance. On paper, "Terra Nova" has been a solid performer for Fox, averaging almost 10 million viewers. However, the show — whose pilot alone cost $15 million to make — is far more expensive than the typical network drama. Given that, Fox was hoping it would deliver a bigger audience. (Dec 27)