I remember when I went to the FOX upfront presentation in 2009, and saw the Glee cast and pilot for the first time. It was one of those moments every now and then when you have that thrill, and know you are seeing something special.
Watching the series finale this past Friday highlighted both what made the series so great, and how far it had fallen since its stellar second season.
The First Streaming Hit – A Pop Culture Phenomenon
FOX debuted Glee in May 2009 following the season finale of American Idol. Its initial ratings were modest. If not for FOX’s brilliant marketing campaign, it might have been one of those failed pilots that just fades from memory. Over the summer, however, due in part to its memorable rendition of Journey’s pop hit, Don’t Stop Believing, Glee became a pop culture phenomenon, with millions of iTunes and Youtube downloads. People had access to not only clips from the pilot, but also behind-the-scenes stuff. Glee was, in a way, the first social-media driven hit TV show.
By the time Glee returned in 4th Quarter 2009, it was a success, and by the end of its first full season, it was a major hit, averaging roughly 3 1/2 million Adults 18-34, and more than 6 million Adults 18-49 and 25-54 each week.
It was a broad-based hit, not just appealing to its core kids, teens, and Adult 18-24 audience, but to older age groups as well. This was apparent to anyone who attended a Glee concert, as I did in 2011 with my wife and then 12-year-old son. The best way to describe it is a combination of a Rolling Stones and a One Direction concert. It was an event, packed with screaming teenaged girls (and boys), along with their almost as enthusiastic parents.
A Swift and Hard Fall
So what happened? In the beginning, Glee was a show that highlighted monumentally talented unknowns, who performed often times chills-inducing musical productions every week. At the same time, it tackled subjects such as bullying, gay teens, and being an outsider in high school in a groundbreaking matter-of-fact style that had never been addressed this way on network television. Aside from some uneven and silly storylines during its first season, it was fresh, innovative, and at times magical. And while the message was always an important element of the series, it never overshadowed the show. The show was always the thing.
When the message starts to be the show, however, viewers notice, and many start to leave. I was trying to figure out how best to describe why the audience started to rapidly decline starting in Season 3 (without offending any particular group). I asked my 15-year-old son and former Glee watcher how he would describe it. Without missing a beat he said, “It went from being a great FOX show to being an ABC Family show. The people who like ABC Family probably still watch it. People who like FOX left in the middle of the third or fourth season.”
In fact, during Glee’s third season, ratings fell from the heights of the year before, but were still on par with the show’s first season numbers. By 4th Quarter 2011, however, while ratings were holding up OK among the under-25 set, the 25-49 and older audience were leaving in droves. By 2012, two-thirds of Glee’s 2010 Adult 18-49 audience was gone.
Combined with a change of the show’s focus, as original cast members graduated, it was difficult to catch lightning in the same bottle twice. New cast members might have been talented, but they had nowhere near the charisma or chemistry of their predecessors, and did not click with viewers. Some of the segments during the last couple of seasons, particularly those featuring Lea Michele (Rachel), Naya Rivera (Santana) and Chris Colfer (Kurt) were spectacular. But the series had changed and it had already lost too much of its audience.
The series finale, which showed many scenes from the first season, was a reminder of how great Glee once was. That Glee will be missed.
Comments