October 6, 2007
On its second week airing, NBC's fledgling Journeyman was down under a million viewers from its debut figure of 9.2 million last week to Monday's 8.4 million. At this early juncture, it's still far premature to say much about the numbers except that Journeyman may still manage to take advantage of a strong lead-in from Heroes.
For those who've become early fans of the show, series creator and executive producer Kevin Falls clues us in on some little known creative and behind-the-scenes details via his personal blog on NBC's official Journeyman site.
October 5, 2007
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Journeyman has emerged as NBC's most steadfast new show, managing to retain all of its audience and actually build in key demographic areas. The Sci Fi drama has been a critical success with fans as well, beginning to generate a low roar of buzz centered on its gradually accreting mythology and intelligent character treatment. It's Achilles heel, however, continues to be the misconception that Journeyman's core concept has been over done. I spoke briefly with Journeyman creators Kevin Falls and Alex Graves directly about that criticism.
September 24, 2007
The fall season is officially off to a start tonight with some of the most hotly anticipated shows returning, and with them some incredible time slot battles. While the war between reality competition megalith Dancing with the Stars, NBC's Chuck, and Fox's Prison Break begins at 8pm, CBS chugs along with its two hour blog of alternative programming in the form of two new half-hour-sitcoms, The Big Bang Theory, and Rules of Engagement, sandwiched between the can't lose lead-ins of How I Met Your Mother, and Two and a Half Men. The real shake up of the evening may come much later, during the 10pm battle between fixtures The Bachelor, C.S.I: Miami, and NBC's prolific newcomer Journeyman.
September 18, 2007
NBC has been determined in the weeks leading up to the beginning of Fall TV season to get people to watch their new shows. Chuck, Life, Journeyman, and Bionic Woman are currently available online (at Amazon.com), at Blockbuster and On Demand. NBC is looking to go one step further by utilizing their sister networks to air repeats of all four of their new shows, as well as some second year series whose ratings don't stack up to their reputation. This new campaign from NBC will see weekly encore broadcasts throughout the season and a couple of mini-marathons to kick the Fall season off.
September 17, 2007
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Journeyman seemed a complete loss at first. Not only was the concept of a time traveling do-gooder overdone, many times, but the series co-starred Moon Bloodgood who starred in an extremely ill fated sci fi drama last season named Day Break, which was, you guessed, a time travel story. So the timing, by some estimations, couldn't be worse for a show like this. Journeyman, however, is finding a cult following already, if not through the pre release of the pilot NBC made available through Amazon and DVRs everywhere, then through the massive amounts of illegally distributed copies that circulated the web through bit torrent sites.
September 14, 2007
In conjunction with our 2007 Fall TV Guide, BuddyTV will be publishing exclusive interviews with the creators and showrunners of some of the hottest new shows this fall throughout the week. Check back all this week for interviews with: Cane Creator Cynthia Cidre, Viva Laughlin Showrunners Tyler Bensinger and Stephen DeKnight, Chuck and Gossip Girl Creator Josh Schwartz, and Reaper Creators Tara Butters and Michele Fazekas.
Though they may not have a sci-fi track record, Kevin Falls and Alex Graves are nonetheless impressive creative talents whose new show on NBC, Journeyman, is one of the best of the fall season. Created and written by Falls, and directed by Graves, who also serves as executive producer, Journeyman follows San Francisco reporter Dan Vasser (Kevin McKidd, Rome) as he suddenly begins jumping through time at random. BuddyTV spoke with both Kevin and Alex about the creation of the new show, how their experience with Aaron Sorkin on The West Wing helped them, and their thoughts on airing Mondays at 10pm beginning September 24, following Heroes. Below you will find a transcript as well as the mp3 audio file of the interview.
September 11, 2007
I'll admit it, I get nervous every time someone without a significant science fiction pedigree enters the genre, particularly when it is a ‘hit maker' like Tim Kring (Heroes), or now the duo of Kevin Falls and Alex Graves, who both have Aaron Sorkin blood on them from their experience with The West Wing, and in Falls' case Sports Night. Kring, of course, insulated his lacking comic book and science fiction sensibilities with royalty from those ranks, Falls and Graves are much more hands on with Journeyman. Any notion that Journeyman would be a ‘me-too' high concept show was gone within the first 10 minutes. The fact of the matter is, Journeyman is a whole new genre.
September 10, 2007
In BuddyTV's 2007 Fall TV Guide, we assessed each night to see which shows the major networks were pitting against each other, and determined which ones would emerge victorious in the ratings war.
It couldn't be more appropriate that the most hard fought time slot war this fall will involve superheroes and time travelers. Monday night could easily be called the battle of the lead-ins, with all networks banking on easing viewers into like-minded programming, and away from their remotes.