Getting a Series Going

I cannot understand why television executives today believe a program can possibly find an audience in a single airing. I would think it to a network’s advantage to leave a show on, in a certain time slot, to allow it to build an audience. That way shows can get beyond the first dozen or so trite and copycat episodes and begin to become original; the cast members can find their own voices; the audience can begin to grow comfortable with them.

I never saw “The Paula Poundstone Show,” “South of Sunset,” the Faye Dunaway/Robert Urich series “It Had to Be You” or any of the other short-lived wonders of the new season, and I will never get the chance. Sure, they might have been terrible, but someone all the way up the chain must have liked them or the shows would never have passed the pilot-script state.

And if the TV network executives have so little faith in their own judgment, I would like to suggest they find another line of work and let someone with taste and character step into the programmer’s hot seat. I shall delight in forwarding my resume to any interested parties.

MARK W. NELSON

Glendale