Why CBS should renew Moonlight (2 years later)

You've read it all already "CBS sucks," "Moonlight rocks," "Alex O'Loughlin is amazing," " I love the show because ____." You've also read the bile and illogical rambling of certain fans. Case in point: a suggestion of whining turns into three pages of long-winded rants.

I'm not a Moonlight fan. I thought the show started off pretty bad and got better as it went on, so it's not like I really want the show to come back. I saw Alex O'Loughlin in a Super Bowl ad for The Back-Up Plan (which looks terrible by the way), and posed a question on Twitter asking if Alex O'Loughlin fans still wanted CBS to renew Moonlight, and got an overwhelmingly positive response. That got me thinking. There are several good reasons why CBS should at least consider bringing Moonlight back or another vampire show with Alex O'Loughlin.

CBS will never bring it back, and in the cold world of television, there are few success stories, so don't get your hopes up. There is reason in why CBS bringing it back wouldn't be the worst idea in the world, so I wanted to point them out.

1) Vampires

Have you seen the ratings for The Vampire Diaries and True Blood? The craze sparked by Twilight has created a legion of rabid followers that will watch anything vampire related. Put that on top of the already rabid Moonlight fanbase and the ratings should be fine.


2) Brand image

Fox has a solid bevy of shows, NBC has the Thursday comedy lineup, ABC has Lost and Grey's Anatomy. CBS is the network of crime procedurals and traditional sitcoms. It may bring in the ratings, but it doesn't look good for hardcore TV watchers. For the 2010-2011 season, CBS is continuing down the road with a Criminal Minds spin-off and Hawaii Five-O remake. This season CBS had success with NCIS: Los Angeles and The Good Wife riding on the coattails of NCIS while Three Rivers completely bombed. They gambled with medical dramas this year, but Miami Medical looks like it'll suffer the same fate as Three Rivers (and the probable fate of Mercy and Trauma). With each successive failure, CBS is reverting to what it knows best. It's a scary thought--one that seems imminently possible--that their lineup will be filled with not only crime procedurals, but also more crime procedurals spin-offs than originals. Two CSI spin-offs, one NCIS spin-off, and one Criminal Minds spin-off later, the outlook looks bleak.

Moonlight would add another much needed facet to the monolithic image as the network for old people. CBS renewed Jericho for a second season, but quickly canceled it after that. And there's the countless other genre shows CBS canceled after a few episodes. Moonlight has a decent chance to succeed and it work inject a different


3) Alex O'Loughlin

CBS is trying to bank on his seeming popularity by putting him in more of their shows. First he was cast on Three Rivers and now they're trying to get him for the Hawaii Five-O remake. I think O'Loughlin is better fit for Hawaii Five-O, but the role is still not optimal for him. What they have to realize is that he has to be in Moonlight or a similar show.