Saunders: May sweeps event a little desperate

Published April 28, 2007 at midnight

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May sweeps are losing their strong programming bristles.

Two years ago CBS was beating the drums for Elvis, a two-night docudrama starring Jonathan Rhys Meyers as the noted Mississippi native.

TV times change. Meyers shaved his sideburns, got a brush cut and now is pretending to be Henry VIII on Showtime's The Tudors. (He also just went into rehab, but that's another story.)

Also getting deserved CBS attention two years ago: the finale of Everybody Loves Raymond, which, according to Nielsen ratings, nearly everybody did.

A year ago the major May sweeps event was the ending of NBC's highly-praised The West Wing, which climaxed its seventh season with a presidential election and inauguration.

This May's sweeps highlight? Maybe the May 20 edition of ABC's Desperate Housewives featuring two weddings and an extra-marital affair on a honeymoon. How romantic.

Several soapy scripts will lead up to this event, including Sunday's desperate-for-scripts hour in which Gaby (Eva Longoria) and Edie (Nicollette Sheridan) battle over Carlos (Ricardo Antonio Chavira). Didn't Joan Collins and Linda Evans do that scene 25 years ago on Dynasty?

Another series, 7th Heaven, will have its second ending episode on May 13. Last year producers and cast members signed off the WB schedule after a 10-year-run. But a lack of viable drama projects on The CW ( the result of a merger of the WB and UPN), led to 7th Heaven's return last fall. It leaves the air (for good?) as network television's longest running family drama.

Bob Barker's leaving, too. The host of the long-running CBS game show, The Price is Right, will be honored May 17 during prime time in Bob Barker: A Celebration of 50 Years on Television.

If this year's sweeps seem lower key to you, it's because the role of blockbuster programming has been diminishing annually owing to high production costs, competition from cable and the Internet, and an overall downplaying of sweeps periods in general.

In the past, networks rolled out miniseries, expensive TV movies and extravagant specials during this ratings measurement period, which networks traditionally have used to establish advertising rates. Nowadays the emphasis is on cliffhanger plots in returning series.

A datebook of other May sweeps programs:

• May 3: Producers promise a lot of life-changing plots in a special, two-hour episode of ABC's Grey's Anatomy.

• May 7: A cast member dies on Fox's 24.

• May 9: Jericho airs its season finale with a wild gunbattle, while producers await word of whether the series will be shot down by CBS after one season.

• May 13: Survivor: Fiji airs its finale during a three-hour CBS extravaganza show from the Ed Sullivan Theater, amid all that sand and foliage that cover Manhattan.

• May 20: Jesse Stone: Sea Change is a CBS movie, bringing back Tom Selleck as a small- town New England sheriff in the occasional movie series based on Robert B. Parker's character.

• May 14: Frasier gets involved in the life of young Chris Rock on the season finale of The CW's Everybody Loves Chris. Actually, Kelsey Grammer directs.

• May 17: NBC's ER ends its 13th season (it will return in the fall) with a story that features Luka, Goran Visnjic's character, flying away to Croatia - maybe for good.

• May 22: Fox's American Idol begins a two-night extravaganza - its season finales. Enough said. Also scheduled on this competitive night: The finale of ABC's Dancing With the Stars.

• May 23: Lost provides its two-hour, almost mystical (confusing?) finale.

And last but not least, Fox's 24 offers a two-hour finale on May 21. A prediction: Jack Bauer will save the world again until next January.

Dusty Saunders is the broadcasting critic. saunders@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-954-5424

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