The Murphy Brown effect and ABC's Last Resort

Clarke Hay­den: “Money respects money. Even more so in a bad economy.”

The Good Wife Wait­ing for the Knock 2012

A few months ago I was talk­ing to Joe Man­gia­cotti of Out with Joe telling him about the TV show Last Resort about a rogue group of US sub­mariners who steal their sub after dis­obey­ing an order to fire.

When I told him the pilot ends with the sub fir­ing a nuke war­head at the US he was incred­u­lous say­ing some­thing along the lines of:

Do these peo­ple really believe that Amer­i­cans are going to watch and sup­port a TV show where sol­diers are fir­ing on their own country?

Yes they really did, but via live at five they don’t any­more:

Fresh­man dra­mas Last Resort and 666 Park Avenue will not move for­ward at ABC.

The net­work has opted to can­cel both under­per­form­ing series, despite pick­ing up two addi­tional scripts for both.

This should be no sur­prise. Any­one who has fol­lowed movies over the last few years has seen pic­ture after pic­ture depict­ing US troops through the lib­eral mind­set crash and burn los­ing tens to hun­dreds of mil­lions for their studios.

Yet the same types who were sold on throw­ing their money away on those movies some­how bought the idea that it would sell in the more com­pet­i­tive Tele­vi­sion mar­ket with 100’s of other choices just a click away?

Why did they think it would be dif­fer­ent? Because their entire world lives within the bub­ble of the Mur­phy Brown effect.

Ladd Ehlinger explains:

For those too young to remem­ber, Bush the Elder and his Vice-​President, Dan Quayle, were both pil­lo­ried by the pop­u­lar sit­com star­ring Can­dice Bergen week in and week out for months on end. But it was not just “Mur­phy Brown,” it was a huge cho­rus of pop-​culture voices all singing the same tune, that Bush and Quayle were stu­pid, or evil, etc.

So when I say “Mur­phy Brown effect” I refer not just to the sit­com, but to the entire pop-​culture chorus.

And that effect drove the four most impor­tant words from these the hol­ly­wood reporter article:

…the crit­i­cally acclaimed drama star­ring Andre Braugher and Scott Speed­man, is aver­ag­ing 7.3 mil­lion total view­ers and a 1.7 in the demo. Thursday’s episode notched its lowest-​rated hour to date, attract­ing 5.8 mil­lion view­ers and a 1.2.

…the crit­i­cally acclaimed drama.

Media is all about open­ing doors to the right peo­ple. It’s the rea­son why so many idiots are will­ing to lose for­tunes mak­ing Tina Brown and Ari­anna Huff­in­g­ton richer. As long as the crit­ics come from that same Mur­phy Brown bub­ble, Hol­ly­wood will con­tinue to mar­ket to those fools in the mis­taken belief that it will make them.

It is the other side of the Mur­phy Brown effect. Ladd is right about how it tilts elec­tions:

Until con­ser­v­a­tives big­wigs rec­og­nize the fun­da­men­tal power of pop-​culture, and start invest­ing in the arts (movies, tele­vi­sion, music, etc.) to coun­ter­act this trend, they will con­tinue to remain irrel­e­vant, con­tinue to lose their coun­try, and con­tinue to lose elections.

But that same effect blinds film­mak­ers not only to their errors like Last Resort but the pos­si­bil­ity of profit wealth and fame from a con­ser­v­a­tive slant.

Just imag­ine if we had enough peo­ple in media who could pos­i­tively buzz a con­ser­v­a­tive show to any­thing resem­bling crit­i­cal acclaim and the money to back such ven­tures. Sud­denly con­ser­v­a­tives on the west coast would not worry about their next job if they spoke out or approved a script because there would be an out­let that could deliver profit and audi­ence to their endeavors.

Every day we don’t fight the cul­ture war on the turf of the arts, we are Israel let­ting Hamas shell us with­out response.

The arts are the ground where we must fight.