Are Viewers Finished with TV Reboots?
by EG
It looks like the power of nostalgia might be wearing thin. After most TV networks have gone wild filling their schedules with rehashed version of old shows over the past several years, it looks like viewers are starting to get tired of stale reboots and revivals. Read on for details.
TV executives delving into their companies' IP libraries in search of series to reboot, take note: Viewers are more interested in revivals of old shows than they are in remakes.
Also, they're just as interested, if not more so, in original ideas for shows as they are in reboots — but viewers would be very interested in a revival of Friends.
Those are some of the key takeaways from a Hollywood Reporter/Morning Consult poll on viewer interest in TV reboots. The poll arrives at the start of a TV season that features eight reboots or revivals airing on the broadcast networks now, plus a spinoff of a revival, and at least one more reboot due in early 2019.
The poll of 2,201 adults uses the term "reboot" as a catch-all for TV series that are either revived with their original casts returning, a la Murphy Brown or Will & Grace, or remade with the same premise and a new set of actors, like this season's Magnum P.I. and Charmed.
Respondents prefer the former type (usually called "revivals" in the industry) much more than the latter. Seventy-five percent said they would be very or somewhat likely to watch a reboot with the original cast that picks up where the original series left off; 63 percent would watch a revival with the original cast in a new storyline.
In contrast, only 35 percent said they'd be very or somewhat likely to watch a reboot with a new cast and storyline versus 51 percent who would be unlikely to do so.
Those findings don't surprise former NBC and Fox executive Preston Beckman.
"Shows are about characters and the actors who play the characters. Another actor could not play Tony Soprano or Jack Bauer," says Beckman, aka Twitter's Masked Scheduler. "CBS did not move forward with Cagney and Lacey [a 2018 pilot that didn't go to series]. Just slapping a title on a show with different actors in beloved roles is sort of cynical."
The current glut of reboots may overestimate audience enthusiasm for them, according to the poll. While a third of respondents said they're more excited about new TV shows than reboots, only 10 percent said the opposite (33 percent are also equally excited about new shows and reboots).
Get the rest of the story at The Hollywood Reporter.
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