New Shows on Fall Horizon Will Go Online

by Rob Walker | June 26, 2008 at 12:05 pm

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I admit it, I watch a lot of television. Hey, growing up on Prince Edward Island, there wasn't much to do in the winter, ok?

So I got into watching TV for all the wrong reasons (namely, boredom). But as I got older I began to appreciate good television on its on merits. Now I write my own scripts and would love to eventually work on a series of my own...but it's also a great excuse to watch a lot of TV.

That said, there's some great oldies that will be coming back, like a revamped 'Office', Heroes and numerous others. I'm especially looking forward to a final season of Scrubs, which has moved to ABC to work on a slightly more dramatic finale.

Unfortunately, 'The Bionic Woman' was dumped (possibly for good reason) and so was 'New Amsterdam' (the story of a man who couldn't die, which was actually pretty decent). Replacing it are a new version of Beverly Hills 90210 (no, I'm not joking) and a new Knight Rider series.

Some cool new shows are The Fringe, by Lost producer J.J. Abrahams, which follows a team of paranormal FBI investigators; Leverage, a smart and quick-moving show about a group of thieves and computer experts that decide to take on the real bad guys - corporations. Sort of like an A-Team for 2008. Which I hear they're making.

This one also sounds really neat, Crusoe, which follows the life of Robinson Crusoe, who in the novel was shipwrecked on a remote tropical island for 28 years.

Based on the legendary novel by Daniel Defoe, this is the tale of Robinson Crusoe. A young man leaves his true love to embark on an adventure, only to end up shipwrecked on a remote tropical island for 28 years, completely detached from the life he once knew. His desire to return to his wife and his strong and unlikely friendship with Friday are the only things that keep him sane. While stranded, Crusoe encounters enemies and braves the elements. Part MacGyver, part Castaway and part Pirates of the Caribbean, this is a contemporary morality tale about love, friendship and personal discovery. Crusoe is an aspirational tale of survival, rife with action and comedy.

Many networks are continuing the new tradition of taking their shows online, making their flagship shows (like Heroes) available to watch streaming on their sites after it airs.

NBC has announced it will begin to make public in real time the number of people viewing an episode at any given time, which will put pressure on other networks to do the same.

NBC.com will soon begin offering show-specific streaming data for its site. That’s great, it will help advertisers know exactly who is watching what so they can better target individual shows. One problem is that I don’t watch any shows on NBC.com, I can’t figure out who would stream shows there when you can on the other NBC-backed online video site, Hulu.