TV 2008 Year in Review

December 18, 2008 - Welcome to IGN TV's Year in Review for 2008. Things are winding down here at the IGN offices as we get ready to take off for the holidays -- Tuesday, Dec. 23, is IGN TV's last publish of the year. We'll be back with our regular updates on Monday, January 5. Until then, please enjoy our 2008 Year in Review!

State of TV
2008 was an odd year, as it began in the middle of the writers' strike. Most series continued to air new episodes in January, as scripts that were written prior to the strike were being filmed. Some new series launched in the first couple of months, such as Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles and Breaking Bad, only to have shortened inaugural seasons due to the strike.

Talk shows were hit the fastest by the striking writers, as only Late Show with David Letterman and Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson returned to the air with new episodes in January, thanks to a deal brokered between the WGA and Letterman's production company, Worldwide Pants. The other late night talk shows also returned, but without their writers, making for awkward monologues, time-wasting stunts and pretty boring stretches instead of witty jokes and funny skits.

The writers' strike ended in February, as the showrunners returned to work, but the prolonged strike had wreaked serious damage on the television landscape. There was little time to get scripts written and episodes filmed before shows began going on summer hiatus, and if networks chose to put shows back into production, it would have to be for a small number of episodes. This meant that shows like 24 wouldn't return at all in 2008, and many new, unproven series (like Pushing Daisies and Dirty Sexy Money) would vanish from the schedule only to return in the fall, which resulted in much lower ratings and viewer awareness than they started out with.

The shows that seemed to do the best in the ratings post-strike are the ones that were rushed back into production as soon as the strike ended, giving fans a burst of new episodes before summer reruns kicked in. NBC ran new episodes of nearly all their Thursday night comedies -- The Office, 30 Rock and My Name Is Earl -- but oddly let Scrubs hang out to dry in what was expected to be its final season. Thankfully, ABC (sister company of Scrubs production company ABC Studios) picked up the show, to give J.D. and friends a new life in 2009.

One of IGN's favorite series seemed to actually benefit from the strike-imposed break and shortened season: Lost. The break between aired episodes was just one month, but the production break was much longer, giving the Lost writers time to evaluate what they'd done in the first nine episodes of the season and spin that all around to wrap up loose ends and storylines like they've never done before in the season's final five episodes. The result was a shorter but much tighter season than usual.

The strike hurt many more shows than it helped, however, and completely changed the networks' plans for fall programming. With little time to do the normal writing and shooting of pilots before episode orders needed to be made, the broadcast networks had to do things a little differently. Most of the networks chose to renew freshman series that were pulled due to the strike, in many cases saving shows that would have been on the chopping block in years past, such as Pushing Daisies, Eli Stone, and Lipstick Jungle (all of which would end up being cancelled as the fall 2008 season began). Two networks went a little outside the box, with NBC choosing to order several series (including My Own Worst Enemy and Crusoe) without even shooting a pilot and The CW network renting out its Sunday night line-up to an independent production company (an experiment they gave up on when the series turned in underwhelming ratings as fall began).

Mixed in with all the reruns and the onslaught of reality TV (which only increased during the writers' strike) during the first half of the year, a handful of series grabbed our attention, such as John Adams, Death Note, and The Spectacular Spider-Man. As summer series began (a little later than usual, and with shortened seasons, once again thanks to the strike), more gems surfaced, such as HBO's Generation Kill miniseries, Mad Men: Season 2, and Burn Notice's second season. The fall saw all our favorite series finally returning with full seasons (unless the Screen Actors Guild decides to strike, as they've been threatening to do). The small group of new fall series had just a few hits, among them CBS's The Mentalist, FOX's Fringe and HBO's True Blood. 2008 also marked the final seasons of two highly acclaimed and well-respected crime series, The Wire and The Shield.

And as 2008 comes to a close, television continues to feel the effect of the writers' strike, as ratings are worse than ever for new series and many returning shows, perhaps as a permanent result of the public being forced to find other sources of entertainment when their favorite shows were on a strike-enforced hiatus. It's also possible that the Nielsen ratings system is antiquated, placing too strong an emphasis on the traditional "Nielsen families" and not factoring in enough of the other ways TV is being watched, from DVRs to iTunes and Hulu. In any case, 2009 brings with it a promise of a return to normalcy and a plethora of fan-favorite shows (such as Scrubs, 24, Lost and Battlestar Galactica) finally returning to the air.