The only thing that could stop Empire’s continued meteoric rise, it turns out, was the hip-hop soap opera’s 12-episode Season 1 duration. As the drama ends its first season tonight — likely with one final week of record ratings — Fox needs to figure out how to keep Empire’s viewers engaged, and hopefully still tuned in, between Thursday and whenever the show returns for Season 2. As I wrote at Adweek,

In the interim, there are several opportunities for the network to capitalize on Empire’s massive audience and goose the network’s ratings, without tarnishing the still-expanding brand before it has a chance to realize its full potential.

I came up with eight feasible suggestions, including one of my favorite ideas:

Launch an Empire-centric hip-hop competition

In addition to maintaining Empire’s momentum, Fox would also love to find a new fall music competition to replace The X Factor, which bowed out in fall 2013. That’s one reason that Walden and co-chairman Gary Newman have been meeting with Simon Cowell about creating a new competition show.

Now, its best opportunity for not only a new competition show, but also one that doesn’t just feel like a Voice/American Idol clone, has just fallen into the network’s lap. Taking another page from Glee, Fox should mount a truncated version of Oxygen’s The Glee Project in the fall, in which aspiring hip-hop artists show off their vocal skills and compete for a featured role in Empire Season 2.

The network could run it in early fall, well before Empire’s second season, sprinkle in Empire cast guest appearances every week and tease new footage from the upcoming season. One essential element: the involvement of Timbaland, the show’s executive music producer.

This … is American Hip-Hop Idol!

There are plenty more where that came from, so make sure you read the whole story!

8 Ways Fox Could Keep Empire’s Momentum Going After the Season Finale

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I decided against a 10 worst list, because some shows — like Mixology and Manhattan Love Story — were clearly doomed from the start and promptly lived down to expectations. Instead, I’ve focusing on the year’s biggest disappointments: shows (and performers) who aspired to something greater, and perhaps even briefly achieved it, before it all came crashing down. Here is 2014’s Hall of Shame, in alphabetical order:

(Michael Desmond/NBC)

A to Z (NBC)

This sitcom — chronicling the A-to-Z relationship of Ben Feldman and Cristin Milioti —was one of the most promising fall pilots. Its stars had terrific, unforced chemistry. And then … nothing happened, for episodes on end. The jokes evaporated, and no actual stakes ever materialized. And how could a show set at not one but two different workplaces get away with never showing anyone doing actual work? After How I Met Your Mother, I thought the fantastic Milioti had finally found a part worthy of her talents. Better luck next season.

(Robert Voets/NBC)

Bearded best friends 

One of the most depressing developments of the fall season was the discovery that all the networks’ comedy development teams were operating from the exact same bland playbook: don’t forget to cast a bearded best friend! Like a virus, they popped up on almost every sitcom this fall, including Mulaney (Zack Pearlman), A to Z (Henry Zebrowski), Manhattan Love Story (Nicolas Wright) and Marry Me (John Gemberling). Now Gemberling is the last beard standing, not that I could really distinguish him from the other three.

(CBS)

Extant (CBS)

When I reviewed the Extant premiere this summer, I was excited about the sci-fi drama’s possibilities, both in storyline and the performance it was coaxing out of star Halle Berry, as an astronaut who returns from a lengthy solo mission to discover that she’s pregnant. A few episodes later, those optimistic dreams were the opposite of extant. Instead of learning its lessons from Under the Dome, which quickly squandered its beguiling premise in 2013, CBS repeated them all again.

(Ron P. Jaffe/Fox)

How I Met Your Mother finale (CBS)

While I was never a regular How I Met Your Mother watcher, I had been eagerly anticipating how series would pay off the story it had been setting up for nine (!) seasons. Instead, the finale confirmed everyone’s worst fears — that the Mother (Milioti again!) had died — and turned into How I Barely Met Your Mother. It was a legen — wait for it! — dary addition to the annals of all-time worst finales. (Make room, Dexter!)

(Ray Mickshaw/FOX)

Mulaney (Fox)

Out of all this year’s new sitcoms, I was most excited about seeing Mulaney, created by and starring one of SNL’s all-time great writers (and the man behind Stefon!), John Mulaney. And then I watched the first episode Fox made available, which was…awful. Soon after, Fox shared four more episodes, each one more depressing than the last. How could someone so innovative end up in something so conventional? Even worse, the show completely wasted its fantastic cast (including Martin Short and the underrated Nasim Pedrad).

(Fox)

Rake (Fox)

A year after Fox had scored big with a midseason drama featuring a movie star (Kevin Bacon’s The Following), it tried again with this Greg Kinnear legal series — and failed spectacularly. Billed as the law version of House, it lacked any of that show’s zest and wit. Kinnear’s Keegan Deane was less an anti-hero than an anti-character, as clunky a fit as the show’s silly title.

(Fred Norris/FOX)

Sleepy Hollow (Fox)

It’s the hat trick of Fox disappointments! Season 1 the Fox supernatural series was a delightful, wackadoodle wonder. And that’s what has made Season 2 so upsetting, as the series has undone so much of what made it addictive in the first place. John Noble, so vital to the end of Season 1, has been neutered this year, while Orlando Jones was stuck on the sidelines. There are still flashes of the trippy show that once was (and Tom Mison and Nicole Beharie remain terrific), but Sleepy Hollow suffered the biggest quality dropoff this year.

(Antony Platt/AMC)

Turn (AMC)

So intriguing in theory, so bland in execution. Still flailing post-Breaking Bad, AMC came up empty again with this uninspired Revolutionary War drama. It was somehow renewed for Season 2, and saddled with a longer title: Turn: Washington’s Spies. There, problem solved!

(Patrick Harbron/FX)

Tyrant (FX)

FX’s incredible run of essential dramas came to an end with this controversial Middle Eastern series, which finally offered one antihero too many for a network packed with them. And no, don’t remind me that this was renewed over the far-superior The Bridge.

(Virginia Sherwood/NBC)

Christopher Walken (Peter Pan Live!)

Two weeks later, I still can’t believe what I saw on Dec. 4. Walken’s Captain Hook was supposed to save Peter Pan Live! Instead, he almost sunk the show. That an actor who is so reliably riveting in everything he appears in — no matter how great or lousy the project itself is — could sleepwalk through a three-hour live performance was one of the year’s biggest stunners. Whether it was due to age or boredom, Walken lost a big chunk of his luster that night.

That was cathartic; now it’s time to praise television again! Check back Thursday for more 2014 TV VIPs.

The post The 10 Biggest TV Disappointments of 2014 appeared first on TV & Not TV.

Hundreds of reporters have assembled at TCA summer press tour, but as far as I’m aware, I’m the only one who wrote a detailed story about the fascinating panel with CBS, FX, Fox and Showtime’s research gurus, who talked about how audiences actually watch TV now.

“We’re in a new era of television,” said David Poltrack, chief research officer for CBS, noting that weekly TV viewing has increased 2% over the last three years, from 35 hours and 36 minutes to 37 hours and 50 minutes. “This is a golden era of television content, and the public is embracing television and engaging with television in a way that they never did before, because it is so much good programming.”

While I usually try to summarize my stories a bit here, there’s so much terrific information throughout the piece about delayed viewing lifts and multi-platform audiences that I urge you to read the whole thing yourself.

Charts: How we watch TV now

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TCA winter tour is finally winding down, but I wanted to write one last story about the various developments and announcements that I hadn’t been able to address in standalone stories. So for my final Quartz story from TCA, I noted six ways that TV is changing forever, including my observation that pilot season isn’t dead — yet:

Last week, FOX announced the death of pilot season, with Reilly explaining that “it’s highly inefficient” and “built for a different era” when CBS, ABC and NBC were the only three networks in existence. Instead, Reilly has already picked up several projects “straight to series” for next season, bypassing the usual pilot process so as not to waste resources on projects that will never make it to air.

Yet the other networks were quick to declare that while the business is indeed changing, pilot season is still very useful for them. “It’s frustrating, but also exciting,” said CBS’s Tassler, who noted that pilot season’s “compression of time”—in which pilots are cast, shot and focus-tested in a matter of weeks—gives way to “this creative adrenaline” that has delivered their biggest hits, like The Big Bang Theory. NBC’s Greenblatt noted that his network’s new hit The Blacklist “probably would never have seen the air had we not made a pilot, because it came from a relatively young, inexperienced writer. We weren’t exactly sure immediately from that script that we should order a series.”

Farewell, Pasadena!

Six ways TV is changing forever

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At Parade, I spoke with Tom Mison about his new Fox supernatural drama, Sleepy Hollow. He talked about how often the Headless Horseman, who figures prominently in the pilot episode, will be making return appearances:

It’s like in Jurassic Park, where you’ve got the T-Rex—that’s the Headless Horseman—and the T-Rex can roar and do his thing and leave. You know he’s going to come back, and you’ll love it when he’s back, but [in the meantime] we can battle raptors and the things with the fans on their side. Sleepy Hollow: It’s like Jurassic Park! There you go!

Tom Mison Takes on the ‘Iconic’ Ichabod Crane in Sleepy Hollow 

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At TCA summer press tour in July/August, I spent a lot of time speaking to the stars of fall’s most anticipated series — including several of my favorite freshman shows, like The Blacklist, Masters of Sex and Brooklyn Nine-Nine — for this Parade roundup of Fall’s Top 10 New Shows. Look for more extended Q&As with each star in the weeks ahead.

Fall’s Top 10 New Shows

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