As poorly as "3lbs" was received last season it still outdid "Cane" by close to 2 million viewers year to date. With the success of Telemundo and the increasing numbers of hispanic viewers they may have thought this theme would have paid off. Didn't.

Last season development jumped on the "serial" drama bandwagon. Overloaded the schedule with serial dramas. Audiences rejected them because they didn't want to invest a year to see how shows like "Six Degrees", "The Nine", "Kidnapped" played out.

This season development once again jumped on a bandwagon...this time it was "the supernatural procedural drama". Once again there is no break out hit as per "Desperate Housewives", "Grey's Anatomy", "CSI".

It's been years since network development has produced a blockbuster scripted drama. Sorry but "Heroes" and "Ugly Betty" are way down in their sophmore seasons year to date in overall viewers and demo.

Writers are told to anticipate the "trends" of development and write for it. Development tells writers..."show me something I've never seen on the written page before".

That's why you end up with vampires, ghosts, goblins who are detectives, zombies, time travelers who bring the dead backl to life, etc. A mish mosh. Even with a huge, huge P&A budget "Pushing Daisies" loses audience week to week.

Perhaps development may consider focusing in on the state, the mood of the country, the economy, what people...the average folk who aren't in the top two percent are going thru...and encourage writers to write for their needs..."the audience". Remember them?

Otherwise audiences just may continue to flock to sites like youtube.com, the internet, cable where they'll find original scripted dramas like "The Closer" which networks said was too "southern" and wouldn't play in the north east, N.Y., Chicago, Boston, etc.
Just some thoughts.

Happy holidays to all!