My agent told me yesterday that networks are shying away from *serials* such as Lost, The Nine and Jericho if they take off, they force-tune viewers, but most don't take off. They arelooking for self-contained standalones like the CSI and L&O franchises.
I just gave up on Jericho myself because it calls for too big a commitment of time for too little return... and this piece is interesting:
By Robert Bianco, USA TODAY
On TV, stretching out crime is a crime itself.
The networks have relearned a number of old lessons in this flat-so-far fall, such as it's unwise to introduce too many shows that look alike, or too many shows period. But in a year when so many new series were multipart, cliffhanging, continuing stories, the season also may hold a fresher message: All serials are not created equal, and crime serials are least equal of all.
That's something of a change from the preseason chatter, which tended to lump all serialized shows together. The focus then was on the sheer number of these stories and whether viewers would be willing to make the weekly time commitment such shows require. So far, the networks have given full season orders to four successful new hours, all of them serialized: Heroes on NBC, Jericho on CBS, and Brothers & Sisters and Ugly Betty on ABC.
Unfortunately for fans of the format, the only two series that have been officially canceled are also serials: CW's Runaway and CBS' Smith. And two other shows, NBC's Kidnapped and Fox's Vanished, have been moved to dump-zone time slots - Saturday at 9 ET/PT and next Friday at 8 respectively - and told to resolve their stories by December.

If you're looking for a common link among the fatalities, it's crime: Kidnapped and Vanished had intended to spend the entire season searching for a missing person; Runaway told the story of an accused murderer on the lam with his family while he tried to discover who was framing him; Smith followed the exploits of a group of sociopath crooks trying to avoid capture while they carried off their next caper.

Every TV show fails for its own reasons, from casting to scheduling. Stranded on CW, a network that has little discernable identity, Runaway never had a chance. Kidnapped and Vanished both would have benefited from more compelling heroes - and Vanished, from more coherent scripts. As for Smith, does it shock you that a show built around criminals who were not just loathsome but also lifeless failed?

Still, the shows' unifying mistake was to place demands on viewers without offering compensating benefits. If you want people to commit upfront to watching your show on a weekly basis, which is what a serial asks, you'd better give them something they can't get from CSI or Law & Order.
Certainly the two shows that inspired this flood, Lost and 24, fill the bill. Lost offers a sweeping combination of adventure, suspense

and visual splendor that can be found nowhere else on network TV. 24 audaciously uses time as an engine to propel a story that annually puts the world at risk.
In similar fashion, the fall's successful new serials spotted some empty niches in the TV landscape and found a way to fill them. From the candy-colored comedy of Ugly Betty and the comic-book sensibility of Heroes to the family soap of Brothers and the nuclear horror of Jericho, the shows are at least trying to give viewers an experience their more compact competitors don't provide.
What did the other crime serials have to offer? Vanished and Kidnapped tried to add layers of conspiracy and complexity to their stories, but in the end, many viewers probably felt they were being sold confused, over-extended versions of Without a Trace. You get a missing person on that show, too - along with better acting, better writing and a weekly resolution.
Which means the only thing the crime serials really added to the procedural mix was delayed gratification. In America, that's more of a detriment than a draw.
Still, there is one more serialized lesson at work here, and that's the one Fox learned last year when it canceled its murderous Reunion mid-mystery. People will be even less willing to commit to these shows in the future if they think they're going to be left hanging, which is why the producers of Kidnapped and Vanished have been given a few more weeks to wrap up their plots. (Fox is saying Vanished could continue with a new story, but it won't.)
In effect, the shows are being turned into miniseries, which is what they should have been in the first place.
Consider that another lesson.

Work is love made visible.
‹ Kahlil Gibran

I'm mostly thrilled with Jericho so far, but every single episode I find myself more and more wanting to be with one of the guys they sent out of town for information. I'm already tired of being stuck in this crappy little town; I want out, I want to see what the hell is going on.

If they would chill out a little bit with all the big moments they keep buring off at an impossible pace, I might get sucked into the town more.

pwt