By Richard D. Moore
Question: Will Stephen King’s much anticipated show Kingdom Hospital scare the average TV Network executive?
Answer: No.
Question: Does anything scare the average TV Network executive.
Answer: Yes. But more of that later.
As most of you probably know, Stephen King’s new TV mini series Kingdom
Hospital is set to air this March. While I’m excited to see what King
has done with Lars von Trier’s source material (Kingdom Hospital is based
on his Scandinavian show The Kingdom), I still can’t shake some of my
reservations about King’s reinterpretation. These reservations are based
on previous TV adaptations of King’s books, along with material written
specifically for TV. While never as bad as some critics said, most of these
shows and movies when they aired, fell somewhat short of greatness. For me
the best of the bunch is The Stand; which I feel truly transcends the medium,
with both The Shining and It coming in close behind. Let’s hope it’s
alongside The Stand that we can place Kingdom Hospital rather than in the realm
of the senseless Storm of The Century, which to me was the mother of all disastrous
disaster pics.
Great, good, or average, kudos to King for using his clout to get a green
light for his adaptation of Lars von Trier’s masterpiece. If you’ve
never seen the original show, I urge you to seek it out. There’s a
slim possibility that one of the Networks might break free from the stagnant
pond that is late night scheduling, and air the show following Kingdom Hospital's
conclusion. Granted however that the possibility is so slim that if you really
want to see The Kingdom, you should abandon all hope of it happening and
either just buy a copy of the DVD, or order it through Netflix. To air the
original show, it would mean for once the Networks would have to do something
different from anything previously conceived; they would have to break the
mold of late night television and show something other than talk shows, dating
shows, and reruns of old sitcoms. They would have to grapple with the idea
that the adult population as a whole are not only intelligent enough to read
subtitles, but also, on occasion, can stay awake until one or two in the
morning. And that simply isn’t going to happen.
Still, in the world of my fantasy scenarios, I like to think that one of these TV executives might one day come up with the not entirely staggering idea of showing the occasional halfway decent late night movie. Who knows, maybe even a Friday or Saturday night double bill of old horror movies. For instance, something by Universal coupled with something by Hammer would be a treat.
It could be done easily enough, and as long as the movies they aired were at least twenty years old, there shouldn’t be any Network shattering repercussions. You might think it would be nice to see something late at night that was made during the nineteen eighties or early nineties, but really, that’s simply out of the question. You see, with something too recently made keeping viewers tuned in through the wee small hours, big name advertisers would have additional time slots in which to promote their products.
For example, let’s say that instead of showing M*A*S*H, M*A*S*H, Third
Rock, Spin City and M*A*S*H, Fox were to air a movie that’s pretty much
had its PPV, DVD, and premium movie channel run, say a three year old PG-13
movie like The Others. Let’s imagine that The Others aired on a Friday
night at 11 PM, running through to 1 AM. Now, if you were Blockbuster, you
might decide that this is where you’ll put your advertising rather than
during a Seinfeld rerun.
Moreover, if you did, it would cost less, because you are advertising outside
of Prime Time. And because you along with a bunch of other companies, were
no longer advertising during Prime Time, this would drive down the cost of
running ads during the golden time slot. And that, to the average Network TV
executive is something truly frightening.