creekdipper

Serious question: Why are there no traditional western shows (except Hell on Wheels) being produced for tv?

Is it the cost? That's the reason I hear most often stated. What I can't figure is, if that were the case, why were there 28 westerns airing on network tv in a single season at the height of their popularity?

I know there aren't a lot of big screen westerns, but the few that do get produced seem to do well at the box office. Deadwood was popular. The miniseries such as Broken Trail seem to do well ratings-wise. Semi-westerns such as Justified & Hatfields & McCoys seem to do well. There's a western channel with 24-hour programming, and lots of western reruns on cable.

Just wondering whether a traditional western such as Gunsmoke, Rawhide, Bonanza, etc. would flourish or flounder in today's market. By traditional, I mean good-guys vs. bad guys (if you're a fan of Gunsmoke, you realize that Matt Dillon could be a tough customer to deal with...exhibiting righteous anger toward the depraved, violent riffraff and threatening to beat them half to death on occasion...in addition to carrying on with his saloon owner/hooker/madam girlfriend) and not some revisionist western in which the lines between good & bad are blurred. Also, although I like the realism in many of the post-60's productions, I do get a bit tired of seeing everyone dressed in dusters like some spaghetti oater and seeing everything filmed through filters like looking through dust clouds. I miss the colorful vistas and fake western attire from the 60's shows.

Been up since 3:00 AM surfing and posting. Guess I just need to crack open a breakfast beer & cry in it mourning the dearth of the tv western genre.

Groucho

Check out Longmire.

OldBoy

I think Justified is a modern day western.

PhantomStranger

The truth is that the main audience that watches them are older males, aged 48 and up. They are one of the least valuable advertising demos for television since most older men are not susceptible to marketing messages. They used to be a huge lure for younger male viewers in the 1960s but that hasn't been true for decades.

davidh777

Check out Deadwood... wait, bad example.

Alan Smithee

Westerns are about the only genre that don't interest me, along with stuffy period British dramas.

Groucho

Combine them together and you get the John Cleese scenes in Silverado!

Red Dog

Probably because they suck, except for Deadwood.

dino88

All the horses were killed making Luck.

Ropes Pierre

you can't make a ham sandwich without breaking a few eggs.


All the westerns i see present gay men as fops, ala Jason Priestly in Tombstone. I would like to see a strong male gay protagonist.

Maybe the tagline could be "He kicks ass during the day and licks ass all night"

Tom Banjo

Beaten to the punch, but yes, Justified and Longmire are both great Westerns that just happen to be in a comtemporary setting. I highly recommend both.

creekdipper

Yeah, I mentioned Justified in the op but forgot Longmire. I still regard them as 'semi-westerns' (there were a lot of these even back in the heyday of the the tv western genre), though they feature the strong individual protagonist, rural settings, etc. Heck, even "Vegas" tried to cowboy up with Dennis Quaid as the Winchester-toting, horseback-riding sheriff facing off against casino boss Michael Chiklis.

Just wonder if the genre is dead and buried on tv. Even when a 'straight western' (set in the 1800's) is attempted, they usually do some anti-hero take (Hell on Wheels...which I really like...is a good example).

I hear a lot of people (mainly middle-aged and up) decrying the lack of "morality-based' programming (including westerns & pioneer sagas such as Daniel Boone). A lot of them say their kids really like watching the DVDs and reruns of older shows, but maybe they're just a captive audience. Usually the kids prefer video-game or sci-fi/fantasy-based stuff, in my experience selling DVDs to the public.

We do see some young 20's couples who are into Gunsmoke and the westerns, but they're a minority. The advertising and demographic reminder posted above makes a lot of sense and maybe answers my question.

I guess vampires have replaced the western heroes. Sigh. I kind of miss the old evil vampires that just needed a good stakin'. Back then, the only good vamp was a dead vamp.

Good times.

Tracer Bullet

Because Westerns haven't been popular for 50 years? You may as well ask why no one went to see vaudeville last night.

creekdipper

I think that the producers of Unforgiven, Dances With Wolves, the Lonesome Dove series of minifilms, 3:10 To Yuma remake, the TNT Sellect/Elliot westerns, Broken Trail, Open Range, and the like would tend to disagree. Movies such as The Lone Ranger didn't do well because they got horrible reviews and word-of-mouth (you could argue the same for John Carter & Last Airbender, but that doesn't mean fantasy stuff is dead).

It seems that good westerns still get good ratings/DVD sales on the few occasions when they're made. There's a lot of made-for-video crap that's barely watchable, and westerns aren't going to be the blockbusters that Michael Bay films tend to be, but they get by.

You might argue that pirate movies haven't been in vogue for longer than westerns, but the "Pirates" franchise did all right.

I'd wager that some network willing to take a chance on a western might be pleasantly surprised. At least it would stand out from the Nth version of cop shows & procedurals.

And vaudeville is still around. It's now called "America's Got Talent".

Groucho

That show doesn't resemble vaudeville in any way, shape, or form.

PhantomStranger

Westerns also struggle to get made today because they primarily work in historical settings that don't include a lot of minorities, unless they are getting shot at by cowboys. Hollywood detests making entertainment with all-white casts, going so far as to include minorities in historical periods and places when there really wouldn't have been many non-white faces.

Notice how Hollywood basically ignores large swaths of European history these days for new movies and programs? Those now have to be made in Europe or they don't get made at all.

movieguru

The western genre died out many years ago and many of the people that watched them in them from the 1940's to the 60's have died off or watch the reruns. They likely wouldn't accept new western tv shows or movies and would prefer the classics.

Everything goes in cycles though. Musicals seem to be making somewhat of a comeback, but the people that watched the classic won't likely accept or like newly made musicals.

creekdipper

Seriously, although slightly off-topic, vaudeville as an assortment of acts is still around. The difference is in the technical abilities and execution of the acts.

Improvements in cinema led from one-reel shorts to silent films to talkies to color movies to cinerama to 3D to IMAX, etc. But they're still movies.

Stand-up comedy specials are modern-day vaudeville. The variety shows of the '60 such as Ed Sullivan were more advanced vaudeville.

I've never personally attended a vaudeville show, but the screen depictions I've seen show the same combination of musical acts, magicians, dancers, comedians, 'novelty acts', acrobatics, etc. that are featured on AGT. They even have "judges" (audience members with rotten vegetables).

If I'm totally wrong, I'm open for education.

Tracer Bullet

Ah yes, the ever popular "white people have it so hard" theory that is so popular nowadays.

Tracer Bullet

Uh, no. Vaudeville refers to a specific type of live entertainment that was popular in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries. While the things you mentioned could be traced back to vaudeville, holding them up as "modern-day vaudeville" is like calling a Macbook Air an abacus.

Tracer Bullet

Unforgiven and Dances with Wolves are over 20 years old and at the time, were very out-of-place. They got so much attention, yes, because they were good, but also because they were examples of big stars getting involved in the Western genre at a time when it had been dead for at least 20 years, probably longer.

I could point to 10 sci-fi movies made last year. I could point to 10 the year before. 10 the year before that. If 2 Westerns are made in a year, that's a banner year for Westerns.

creekdipper

Not wanting to belabor the point...and I understand that the rhythms of the performances were different in the theater environment with the 'barker' (or whatever they were called...you know, the guy who introduced the acts and told jokes in between) and all...but the types of acts still seem the same aside from the technical advancements, pyrotechnics, etc. (much more so than your comparison...which was admittedly funny). I mean, singing is singing, and a lady balancing plates on a unicycle doesn't seem that far removed from vaudeville acts.

But I'm willing to admit that live television isn't the same as live vaudeville (at least, the venues are different, and the raunchy nature including strippers, etc. that gave vaudeville its reputation are different.

But, meanwhile...back at the ranch....

creekdipper

That's exactly my point. If the movies mentioned had bombed, I'd say that the movie-going audience had passed by westerns (and I don't think Brad Pitt's Jesse James movie did boffo numbers, although the unwieldy title probably didn't help). And, although I thought that "Appaloosa" was a fine example of a throwback western, don't think it did well enough to justify filming the other three books in the series.

I'm sure that some will say that tv execs know their audiences and what seems likely to be successful/profitable, but isn't it likely that were a lot of tv execs who passed on the idea of adapting a series based upon a series of books about a clairvoyant's relationship with vampires or the idea of adapting a comic book series about a zombie apocalypse?

Tracer Bullet

You're confusing act with format. If I film Hamlet, it's a film, not a stage production. But it's still Hamlet. Vaudeville was a format which comprised a variety of acts, some of which are still seen today.

Tracer Bullet

I would say that audiences were interested in seeing those particular movies and not a "Western". Similar to how most people that went to see Gravity probably aren't sci-fi fans. And the lack of any sort of Western boom in the '90s is a testament to that interpretation.