What the Yankees and CBS Have In Common

Joe Torre is no longer the manager of the New York Yankees. He turned down a contract offer with a base salary 33% lower than what he made this year. An overwhelming number of media pundits and columnists are taking the time today to call Torre a "class act" and to castigate the Yankees for disrespecting the contributions of Torre over the past twelve years.
I'm not a Yankee fan. In fact, I belong to the Yankee Haters Club. Anybody who beats the Yankees is fine by me. And in further fact, this entry isn't even about Torre leaving the Yankees. But today I feel much the same as those pundits and columnists do, because the CBS Television Network essentially is doing the same thing that the Yankees did, albeit for just one week.
"Without A Trace" is not a ratings monster, but it is a respectable performer and one of the best-written shows on television today. Last season, CBS disrespected the show by moving it from Thursday nights, where it regularly beat "ER", to Sunday nights, where it's ratings were decent but not great. This season, I thought CBS had seen the light by moving the show back to Thursdays. Indeed, right from the open of the fall season, "Without A Trace" was outperforming last year's Thursday night entry, "Shark" by a healthy margin. So what does CBS do to reward old reliable? Last night they pre-empted it to bring us the premiere episode of "Viva Laughlin", easily one of the worst new shows of the year.
I'm sure the network's strategy was to put this turkey in a primo time slot so the legion of "Without A Trace" fans would see it and hopefully follow it to it's regular time slot on Saturday nights. Two problems: One, "Viva Laughlin" in no way, shape or form resembles "Without A Trace" so it's doubtful that audience would really follow the show to Saturday night; and two, all this maneuver does is ensure that a large number of people will now know that "Viva Laughlin" is the proverbial vacuum cleaner. I bet after the first 15 minutes, NBC's "ER" and ABC's "Big Shots" got a huge influx of viewers courtesy of CBS.
One thing the networks say they've learned over the past couple of seasons is that viewers don't like seeing a lot of reruns sandwiched between new episodes, so shows like "Lost", "24" "Heroes", etc. now are airing straight through with no repeats. I wish the networks would also remember another thing about viewers: We don't like our shows pre-empted so you can give us a "sneak preview" of a show you already suspect has little chance to succeed. I guess I should be grateful, though. Thanks to CBS, I got to bed an hour earlier than usual last night, giving me much more energy to write today!