Even 'Las Vegas' needs luck in Friday slot
By Mike Hughes
Gannett News Service
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HOLLYWOOD — As soon as you step onto the "Las Vegas" set, you're convinced.
This feels like a place where you could lose your inhibitions, your money, maybe your soul. It feels like Vegas.
It's small compared with real casinos but huge compared with other TV sets. Gary Scott Thompson, the show's creator and producer, seems delighted.
Struggling on a declining TV night (Fridays), "Las Vegas" has a big, flashy look and big stories that try it all — romance, mysteries and more. "Some people don't realize that we're (also) a comedy," Thompson says.
He's soon listing the fates of this fictional casino's owners. One was killed by a giant squid. That doesn't happen on your always-serious shows.
The casino's new owner is likely to last longer, simply because Tom Selleck plays him. "Las Vegas" needs Selleck as its one big name, after the departure of James Caan.
"Jim stayed four years, which is longer than I thought he would," Thompson says. "We really appreciated him."
Still, "Las Vegas" and others face a bigger question: Can anything get people back to watching network shows on Fridays?
In the old days, Fridays brought "Dallas" and "X-Files" and "Miami Vice" and interchangeable ABC comedies.
And now? "Friday nights, without question, are a challenge," says Stephen McPherson, ABC's programming chief.
Nielsen ratings reflect that. We looked at the first three weeks of October, adjusting for anomalies, and found:
That's the challenge McPherson was talking about. "We certainly haven't given up on Friday," he says.
As proof, he inserted one of his best new shows, "Women's Murder Club," at 9 p.m. Fridays. It did fairly well; its debut finished No. 25 in the weekly Nielsen ratings and its second episode was No. 37.
That's the best any Friday show has done this year, but they used to get much higher. Consider these Friday shows:
Those Friday comedies managed to grab a two-level audience. Kids and adults watched.
Then cable and satellite channels ended that. They split the market on Fridays, taking away the younger viewers.
That peaked on Oct. 12, when the Disney Channel premiered the movie "Twitches Too" and the comedy series "Wizards of Waverly Place." Those shows, the channel says, were watched by more than one-third of all kids, ages 6 to 14 — and by more than half of all girls that age.
That leaves dramas like "Las Vegas" stretching for an audience. Thompson has stuffed his cast with pretty people — Josh Duhamel, Molly Sims, Vanessa Marcil, James Lesure — some of them former soap stars.
When Caan left, Duhamel's character was promoted to president of operations; Selleck's character arrived as owner. When Nikki Cox left, Camille Guaty — fresh from "The Nine" — took over.
When the fictional casino was blown up, Thompson built a bigger one.
He has a big set, a big cast, big stories — and a night when audiences tend to be small.
