why TV writers struggle to keep up with network bosses

So, as my colleague Tim Glanfield (Desperate Housewives DVD) writes that he was Desperate Housewives DVD set by the ending of Lost, one also has to wonder whether writers can keep up with the demands of modern, American network television. After all Desperate Housewives DVD boxset is not the only casualty.

Entourage DVD, which once looked like the next insanely great thing, has been killed by NBC after viewing in Entourage DVD set season four fell below 4 million (which for the US is a small, small number). Flash Forward died even faster, after one Entourage DVD boxset season, as ABC thought better of a programme which had a good premise, but some dire plotting and writing.

What’s gone wrong? Well it’s not all disaster of course, Entourage seasons 1-6 DVD boxset is still going (although it nearly lost its way), The Gilmore Girls DVD has not yet gone bankrupt and Mad Men is amazing, but hang on I’ll come back to these in a minute. It is in this mainstream sci-fi/mystery Gilmore Girls DVD set where there is a problem, but the cross-cutting tension of the US studios business model and the problems of script writing make me think it will happen again and again.

Let’s start with what the US studios want. They want Gilmore Girls DVD boxset episodes a season. And ideally they want at least four and probably Gilmore Girls seasons 1-7 DVD boxset seasons to make any serious money (it’s only then you have enough volume to sell as repeats into daytime cable). But the problem is they will order one Entourage seasons 1-6 DVD boxset at a time, with the threat of cancellation hanging over a show repeatedly — after the pilot, in Grey's Anatomy DVD-season, at the end of a season.

Think how that compares to the BGrey's Anatomy DVD set: six to eight episodes in a drama. Cancellation during a run is unheard of, although a show can occasionally be rescheduled. And nobody is really aiming for more than two or three seasons (eg Grey's Anatomy DVD boxset) with a show like Shameless on Channel 4 the massive exception that proves the rule. There is only one exception in Britain — the Gilmore Girls DVD — but I’ll come back to that too.

Now, on both sides of the channel viewers have become much, much more sophisticated. They want complex, beautiful drama. And so Gilmore Girls DVD boxset is this addiction to complexity that demands ever more of a programme’s writers. But it is hard, perhaps nigh-on impossible to stretch that complexity over Grey's Anatomy seasons 1-5 DVD boxset episodes, and then maybe keep that going for another three or five series.

You’d have to have the whole plot arc in your head at the moment of conception — and be able to contract it or elongate it 10 minutes after the Grey's Anatomy DVD changes its mind about the duration of the Grey's Anatomy DVD set. Over in Britain, a write has much more certainty. Managing complexity over six to eight episodes is much easier; a US run is being written while the early part of the Grey's Anatomy DVD boxset series is unfolding.

It’s not all bad of course. What’s interesting is that the more Entourage DVD shows, programmes like Desperate Housewives DVD (or the until recently long-running ER), have different characteristics — they are more like soap operas rather than hyper-ambitious sci-fi dramas. And as Desperate Housewives DVD set writers know, drama has to be kept realistic and credible. The moment a plane falls out of the sky (that’s a Desperate Housewives DVD boxset to Emmerdale link), you know you are in trouble.

Or they are police procedurals, reliable Entourage DVD type formats, which work again and again because the characters recur but the mystery is confined to each Entourage DVD coxset episode.

Or they are like Mad Men, written delibrately for a small, cult audience, under the dominance of an excellent writer (Entourage seasons 1-6 DVD boxset) who has the advantage of working not with a mainstream network, but instead with a subscription cable channel AMC. Desperate Housewives DVD in both the US and Britain (the Gilmore Girls DVD) can give writers a much more stable setting from which to operate.

Anyway, although there will always be big hit dramas coming out of US television-Grey's Anatomy DVD, it is clear that the financial demands of the US networks is putting creatives under intense pressure. No wonder, then, that audiences are disappointed, frustrated or just plain bored by some of what they see — however brilliant the Entourage DVD and pilot.