Arrested Development's end of days

ABC Entertainment chief Steve McPherson said this Saturday that he does not "foresee" Arrested Development moving to his network when FOX officially cancels the show in the next few weeks. This is the third statement about the show coming out of the winter Television Critics Association press tour in LA. Earlier in the week, FOX head Peter Ligouri acknowledged that the shows return was "highly unlikely", which left ABC and the cable-network Showtime -who both expressed interest in picking up the show - its only saving grace.

Showtime's Robert Greenblatt said this past week that they are interested in the show and have had some discussions with 20th Century Fox, but they would only pick it up if series creator Mitch Hurwitz remains in charge, and according to reports, he's yet to make that decision.

I remain conflicted about the the future of the best comedy shows in years on broadcast TV. On one hand, I think the show should remain on TV, if only because TV is littered with so much anaemic, predictable slop. With reality TV still posting high ratings -the season opener of American Idol scored 35 million viewers on 1/17 - the fate of shows like Arrested, with its intelligent scripts that are not dumbed down, and that assume its viewers gets their jokes, seem to be all but doomed. While pulling an average of 4.2 million viewers, I realize the economic value between Idol and Arrested is great, it still seems logical to keep a show that may not pull in a huge audience, if only because it reflects an intelligence that is greatly missed on TV.

But, also, if the show was to remain on broadcast TV -such as ABC - it would need to lose some its large cast, plus Mitch Hurwitz would be forced even more to water down the humor, making the jokes more obvious and probably add a laugh track and make the show multi camera, i.e. cheaper to produce.

Anotherwords, Full House type show that is empty as unused diary.

Then, I would more pleased to see it go, than find it compromised like that.

Showtime has 20 million subscribers, meaning Development's broadcast average would make it a huge hit. And if the cable-net would pick up the show, while it would be expensive, it could help spur more subscriptions. It would also help the show, as it would no longer be restricted by language and other content that broadcast TV forces shows into. That does not mean that the F word would be used more (and which I always thought meant that the writer was poor; I mean its easy to swear). I just means the scripts could be more bold and not forced to pander to people who think TV Guide is the only "book" they read.