TV 2005: A look back at some of the events, fads and flops

Two trends marked TV's tumultuous year, but only one drew headlines. 'Twas ever thus in a business where the art of the deal often buries the deal of the art.

The story that got everybody's attention was television's move off the scheduling grid and at your disposal. A series of agreements — ABC and Apple, CBS and Verizon, NBC and DirecTV — put shows like "Lost" on iPods, cellphones and laptops at the local cafe. Cable carriers upped their on-demand offerings.

This is hot stuff, to be sure. Networks frantic over losing advertisers to the Internet have found a short-term solution. More programs and related product will be developed exclusively for the Web and cable: dig the online seances that cbs.com hosts for "Ghost Whisperer" and the dating personals on Comcast.

The other driving factor in 2005 wasn't as sexy to Wall Street or as digestible to business editors. This was the backstory, if you will; a good word, since it looks behind the characters and programs that we liked.

What we liked, overwhelmingly, was feeling. Emotion spiked across all formats, from the weeperoo reality series "Extreme Makeover: Home" to psyche-stripping dramas like "Grey's Anatomy" and "House" to that memorable August week when Katrina forced reporters to abandon objectivity and voice outrage.

Why the passion for passion? It could be a cyclical shift, a reaction to the arch, Seinfeldian '90s. Or perhaps 9/11 uncorked our bottled-up sentiments, just as coverage of the tsunami and hurricanes and war in Iraq subsequently did.

Regardless, TV swiftly responded to this need. Unlike the film industry, it did not lose touch with fans — the Nielsen audience grew. Putting content on wireless and hand-held devices could reach neglected slivers such as 18- to 34-year-old men.

Yet the new multi-platform world may kill the days when TV commanded regal ad rates for delivering a concentrated viewership at a certain time. And nobody knows how big an audience really exists for a Tiny Town version of Pamela Lee.

It has implications for us, too. Will water-cooler gossip thrive exclusively online, killing office conversations? And what happens to random curiosity and a sense of community when we individually tailor our news and entertainment?

Those issues are waiting to be explored. Meanwhile, here's a look back at some of the events, fads and flops that made TV the best beat to cover in 2005:

CBS issues its report on Memogate, and "Evening News" anchor Dan Rather and CBS News chief Andrew Heyward later step down. CBS allegedly is courting Katie Couric, whose contract with NBC's "Today" ends in May 2006.

Hmm. While this might bring curiosity seekers to CBS, it's not clear how much hard-news credibility the chirpy, decidedly daytime-ish Couric possesses. Meanwhile, "temporary" replacement Bob Schieffer has lifted CBS's ratings 4 percent above last season. Go, Bob!

Elsewhere, Johnny Carson signs off for good on Jan. 23 but lives forever in every late-night talk show we watch. Although best-known and best-loved for his persona — dry, graceful and boyishly self-deprecating — he's the man who invented the format that rocks us from monologue to beddy-bye.

February

Kiddie cartoon "Postcards from Buster" draws wrath from the U.S. Department of Education for an episode briefly featuring two lesbian parents. Then PBS succumbs to a mounting indecency crusade by bleeping expletives uttered by U.S. soldiers in a "Frontline" piece on Iraq. Thankfully, Seattle's KCTS-TV airs the original, unexpurgated version. But more is to come.

March

The Mariners get a dismal season started on the appropriate note by abandoning their quirky, Northwest-skewing ads of the past for a new series of commercials based on a cheesy home shopping network. Quick, what's the marked-down price for a Bret Boone bobblehead?

April

Cable news completely disgraces itself by airing nonstop footage of a comatose, brain-dead Terry Schiavo under the dubious guise of "analysis."

Cable news hastily tries to redeem itself with worshipful coverage of Pope John Paul II's funeral. The late Pontiff is hailed for his work with young Catholics, his international diplomacy and his Reaganesque stand against Communism. Largely omitted are his rejection of gay Catholics, birth control and women serving as priests, and his failure to grasp the plight of Catholics in Latin America.

May

It's official, network TV has become the Fallopian Tube. The 2004-2005 season ends with conclusive evidence that female viewers now dominate tastes on every broadcaster except Fox. The networks try to close this gap by announcing a 2005-2006 season full of sci-fi entries. Oh well.

Speaking of which, the "Star Trek" skein reaches its 18-year conclusion with the finale of "Enterprise." But you can invent your own episodes on www.newvoyages.com.

June

Public broadcasting becomes a full-fledged political football. Amid evidence that Corporation for Public Broadcasting chair Tommy Tomlinson secretly hired someone to analyze the political leanings of Bill Moyers' guests, Republicans in Congress announce they want to yank a chunk of CPB funding from PBS and NPR.

July

Congress backs off. Following a rousing awareness campaign by PBS and NPR stations and appeals directly to the House and Senate by shrewd PBS president Pat Mitchell, almost all of the funding cuts are restored. Later, Tomlinson resigns.

Also this month, Steve Bochco's Iraq-set war series "Over There" debuts. Despite a lot of thoughtful chewing in the press (including this column), the series proves surprisingly uneven and viewers lose interest.

August

Al Gore debuts Current TV, a mixture of news and information packaged in trendy graphics and short attention spans designed to draw all those upscale, well-educated 18- to 34-year-olds that have nothing else to watch on TV.

The legacies of Hurricane Katrina will be with us for years. On television, two results were immediately notable:

Anderson Cooper's diatribe against the slow rescue effort resonated with viewers and made him a young man on the rise — a rise that eventually displaced the cool and dispassionate Aaron Brown as CNN's star anchor. Whether empathy can substitute for shrewd contextual analysis in the long run is an open question.

Second, anchor Brian Williams earned his NBC anchor stripes by blogging and reporting (on cable sister MSNBC) from the New Orleans Convention Center before anyone else. He proved he was more than just a tan-some guy in French cuffs. That said, coverage by NBC and its network brethren was disgracefully scant — c'mon folks, you couldn't tear yourselves away from those riveting August repeats for an epic disaster involving real people?

Finally this month, ABC's gloriously gifted anchor Peter Jennings died after a short struggle with cancer. His successors, named in December, are Bob Woodruff and Elizabeth Vargas, who start their "World News Tonight" gig Tuesday.

September

Amid much enthusiasm from markets like Seattle and Portland, the fall TV season debuts with an unprecedented eight sci-fi shows on the network schedule. Unfortunately, it turns out viewers are more interested in the ghosts and monsters end of the genre; futuristic fancies "Threshold" and "Invasion" quickly fizzle while "Supernatural" and "Surface" stick.

Meanwhile, rapper Kanye West says on a nationally televised benefit for Katrina victims that George Bush doesn't care about black people. NBC bleeps him on the West Coast feed because that so plainly constitutes obscenity — at General Electric-owned companies.

October

Nothing happened in October, other than the resounding failure of Martha Stewart's "Apprentice" on NBC. Hey! How about giving a show to Kanye West? His CD sales and fame shot through the roof after his Katrina remarks.

November

CNN issues a press release announcing its new schedule and some of us can't help noticing there's a certain Aaron Brown missing from it. Classy way to go, CNN.

December

But let us leave recriminations behind. In the spirit of the season — and surely one of the most ridiculously overhyped nonevents — Oprah Winfrey and Dave Letterman end their feud. Bill Gates appears on NBC's "Three Wishes" to fulfill the dreams of a young California boy. And ABC's woman-as-president soap opera, "Commander In Chief" emerges as the No. 1 new show of the 2005-2006 season, proving TV is indeed a place for dreaming.

Kay McFadden: kmcfadden@seattletimes.com