Question of the Day - Are the days of non-procedural scripted shows over?

Wow, we had a great response to yesterdays "Question of the Day" and there were lots of great replies and kind comments.

Todays, question (Thanks to Memento Man) asks, Are the days of non-procedural scripted shows over?

What do I mean by this?

To me a Scripted Procedural is a show like CSI, Law and Order, NCIS etc. These are shows that have the "case of the week" style story. Although there are running themes and character development that occur during the show, the show itself resolves around a particular case and normally is nicely wrapped up by the end of the episode.

With these shows, a viewer can miss a couple of episodes but can still pretty easily watch new episodes without missing out too much on the overall storylines.

Scripted Non-Procedurals(Serialized) to me are shows like Lost, Flashforward, The Event, Twin Peaks, Persons Unknown. These shows, the main focus is the overall mythology of the story and if you were to miss a couple of episodes you could find yourself wondering just what the hell was going on.

The first Non-Procedural that I remember watching was Twin Peaks, and it's still one of my favorite shows and I made sure I tuned in to watch it each week. These were the days before Tivo's/DVR recorders etc If you missed it you were out of luck. No catching up on Hulu etc.

Over the years shows like this have really struggled and you can see for the recent shows like FlashForward, Persons Unknown and now The Event that they struggle to get past the first season. It's very hard to attract new viewers due to their nature.

The last really popular Non-Procedural was LOST and even in it's last seasons the ratings declined.

So the question is, is the day of the Non-Procedural numbered? Do people want to invest time in these types shows. Are networks happy to provide throw-away shows and reality fares as they are easier to write, produce and the monetary rewards greater.

So vote in the poll and discuss in the comments.




You can see previous Questions of the Day here

If you have an idea for "Question of the Day" please leave it in the comments or email me @ thespoilergirl@gmail.com