...I've just lost interest in most of the stuff on Disney Channel and Nickelodeon anyway. Maybe not so much that I can't talk off-the-cuff about it on a video setup (well maybe even that) but certainly to write for an hour or more (much more) about it. Maybe even to talk at length about it for 20+ minutes, let alone with editing/upload time.
The raw numbers and overwhelming preference for nostalgia interest bare this out. Both networks are in freefall and pushing nostalgia properties while, again most other reviewers of this stuff (who are mostly going to be on YouTube anyway like the aforementioned PieGuyRulezand NICKtendo) sway heavily into nostalgia reviews/retrospectives. I really can't blame them at this point.
I think instead of going into a super-detailed analysis of the last two years like I was going to do originally I think I'll just skim point-by-point starting with Disney Channel:
Big City Greens: ...people really like this show? It's certainly gotten better with more episodes and even the early episodes aren't bad by any means, but for me it's never risen above "it's ok." I only ever bothered to DVR two or three episodes - one or two when it first came out to check it out and the post-Moana "special" where their mom comes back. Beyond that I'll certainly watch it when it happens to be on (and in true Disney Channel fashion that's a lot) but I don't feel incentivized to go so far out of my way at all to watch it, unlike Gravity Falls or Duck Tales.
Duck Tales: well, I have all the episodes on my DVR and I'll watch them in whatever order it seems they need to be watched in (if you're familiar with the pre-break debacle you know exactly what this means)
Big Hero 6: ...I saw the first episode and it didn't really wow me enough to bother to watch any others. That's a major falling of many of these amazing-movies-turned-ok-now-we-have-to-do-the-same-thing-but-now-on-a-weekly-basis-with-no-budget
Milo Murphy's Law: ...it's been like 14 months between seasons.
Raven's Home: ...the quality has gotten better since we last looked at it, from "legitimately terrible" to "meh-tastic." It's still not anything like original That's So Raven, especially in quality
Coop and Cami Ask the World: this one is also pretty "meh-tastic." It reminds me of Season 2 of I Didn't Do It or the middle seasons of Austin & Ally with middle school-aged characters, or Girl Meets World without the pretentiousness of trying to be bigger than it ever will be or trying to be profound every single goddamned episode.
I guess what I'm trying to say is if Girl Meets World wasn't being such a tryhard at being profound every goddamned episode it would only be "meh-tastic" instead of "this pisses me off so fucking much I'm going to flood the writers' Twitter timeline with deeply disparaging insults every time I get."
Bunk'd: yeah this is coming back for a fourth season, go figure. It's been slowly getting better in Season 3 despite getting significantly worse in Season 2, and Season 1 was pretty awful as it was. With Pamela Eells O'Connell and her entire team vacating the Disney Channel business altogether and a new team taking over, I actually have high hopes, because it can only go up from here.
Andi Mack: Like I said before, they've pretty much just lost the plot. Season 2 of Andi Mack might as well be Season 2 of True Friggin' Detective. I mean it.
...and there's a new show premiering soon but it isn't here yet, so there. Still, that's not a lot of TV shows at all and that includes one that's in the middle of a between-seasons production hiatus, not to mention Big Hero 6 which has been MIA for a long while (though not including Tangled which is in the same boat but still "theoretically" a show on Disney Channel). So let's look at Nickelodeon:
Knight Squad: I haven't seen this show but it's on my DVR, that said ratings have been terrible.
Star Falls: again I haven't seen this but it's on my DVR, with ratings being so apparently dismal it had to finish out its run on TeenNick.
The Bureau of Magical Things: this doesn't really count since it's an import like I Am Frankie (another show I have on my DVR) but it nonetheless wasn't just banished to TeenNick very quickly, but wasn't even allowed to finish there.
Henry Danger: the only thing even a remote success in terms of live-action, I can see why they're so desperate to hang onto it from a ratings standpoint. In terms of quality...eh. Honestly Schneider's ejection has resulted in a noticable bump in quality and I'm inclined to think Mike will agree.
Cousins for Life: like I said in my one-paragraph review it's probably the best live-action show on Nickelodeon right now, at least one that as it looks for now has actual renewal prospects.
So there you go. Five live-action shows, no animated shows (excepting Spongebob and Loud House, which together make up 80% of the network and that is not an exaggeration)
and two if not three of those shows are out of production (or at least not coming back to Nickelodeon) guaranteed.
What I'm trying to say is, excepting DCOMs and NOMs (and I spaced out on the latest NOM because I forgot it was a thing) there's pretty much nothing at all to keep me coming back to the networks. I've just lost interest.
Back in 2012-2013 when I was really getting into this, there was a lot to keep even this late-20s-something coming back. Austin & Ally, Jessie (G.I. Jessie or no) and even A.N.T. Farm had enough basic quality for me to keep coming back. Hell even Fish Hooks every now and then. Good Luck Charlie, Liv and Maddie and Shake it Up were highly entertaining, high quality, fun shows. Hell even Dog With a Blog down to the likes of I Didn't Do It and Best Friends Whenever. Now it just seems like the network is rife with a bunch of cluelessness and aimless throwing plot items at the wall with nothing really sticking. And it really does seem like it's just going to go downhill from here. Even if, say, Disney Channel were to disappear and everything gets migrated to DisneyNOW/Disney+, that's no guarantee that any of these kidcom shows will improve because they just need better writers and crew desperately.
I'm not kidding, I blame Girl Meets World for this, but that's a different thing I probably won't ever get to anyway.
But regardless, how do you expect for me to talk about any of this now?
The networks seem to be doing better in animation (especially Disney) but the live action is really struggling and some animated shows can struggle with gaining viewers.
ReplyDeleteDisney and Nick sitcoms have always been mixed in quality(since the late 2000's at least), but I miss when they would at least be interesting. Raven's Home and such at least give me some things to talk about.
Stuff like Coop and Cami is just so generic. I know Disney sitcoms have a formula and this show has more things i like than some others, but they almost don't matter since I just don't care about it.
They need to mix things up more, is what I'm saying. Syndey to the Max has a chance and maybe Cousins for life is good but we'll see how they fair, and i bet the latter won't last too long.
Some of the cartoons are better than others, but most at least try and some like Ducks are quite good despite some flaws.
I've been getting more into Big Hero 6 ad City Greens (although it helps that i wasn't in love with the original movie so there wasn't too much to live up to, although even Tangled which i quite like has a series i'm really into).
Shame on Disney for waiting so long on Milo season that most of the season aired in other countries and ended up online. I quite the show even with Season 2's flaws and want a season 3, but I doubt that'll happen.
I'm still generally into both networks for the quality of the good cartoons, but they gotta fix things especially with the live action if they wanna keep a good mix.
Sometimes I think I'm growing out of the live action stuff but I'll re-watch some of the good stuff and still enjoy it, or find something fun to rip into in the bad stuff so i don't know...