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Next week will be crucial for ABC’s new drama Pan Am. The network is expected to decide whether to pick up additional episodes from the 1960s airline soap/spy drama (ABC gave the Sony Pictures TV-produced show an order for five scripts last week), and Pan Am will have its highest-profile overseas debut on BBC2. So far, the period drama is off to a solid start internationally, performing stronger abroad than it has in the U.S. Pan Am, which has been sold in 107 countries by SPT, has launched in six. Ratings for five of them — Canada, Sweden, Ireland, Norway and Spain — have come in, and in all but one, Pan Am was the most-watched new U.S. drama premiere this fall. (In Spain, it was second to Person Of Interest.) In Sweden, Pan Am ranked as the country’s No. 1 foreign series premiere ever. In Norway, it was the second-highest-rated debut for a foreign series behind Prison Break. Now if only the Pan Am producers could slip Nielsen boxes to those Scandinavian families…
TV Editor Nellie Andreeva - tip her here.
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Interesting dilemma. Show is a clear loser here, but could be a big hit overseas. Would they keep it on air, if the show proved able to break-even?
Was the ABC exec who told a Pan Am writer to make the show dumb fired or still there? Why is Paul Lee trying to save the show. Will Steven Maeda make the show smarter? I hope the show can be fixed.
fuck yes
Does ABC care about international sales when the show is owned by Sony?
No.
And the numbers sound fake and Sony-spinned to save face. The original pilot was bad, the new one is not as bad but still crappy, the episodes that followd are plain dumb. ABC should kill it.
Yes, they care because they undoubtedly have a piece of it. Most network deals demand that the show either be produced at that network’s studio (when the vendor does not have the leverage to say no) or gives the network a piece of the pie. The question is: is that piece large enough to tip the scales in favor of keeping it on the network.
“Pan Am was the most watched new U.S. drama premiere this fall.”
gee. and how many new us drama premiere was in those countries? 1 or 2?
believe it or not most of your new stuff almost immediatley available in Europe.
believe it or not: no.
Here in Sweden there aren’t many “terrestrial” channels and STV, who air the show, usually pick up cheap deals to fill their schedule. I don’t know where their stats come from but I lost interest after the first episode – thin story line, bad acting, and no Leo!! Basically, usual syndicated “B” series crap. I cannot believe that this rated higher than Downton Abbey. Sounds like PR spin to me from somebody!
LOL. Apparently you know nothing about this subject, since Pan Am isn’t even aired by Sveriges Television, but by TV3.
Need a torch mate? You are so up your own arse! So I made a mistake about the carrier. Still, all Swedish Channels are crap so …. What subject exactly don’t I have knowledge of? This bland “pilot show” (there’s a pun there but you probably didn’t get it) is aimed at twats like you. Mindless morons with no social competence who like to argue with virtual opponents. Get back to the couch and watch your “medicine”. Twat!
You’re the a-hole bud, for writing such insulting stuff when you don’t even have your facts straight! Buy the way, the show is good, the women are enjoyable, and the use of real history makes it more interesting. (Of course you know it all, right? And what do I know, even though I am an an actor and writer with a Ph.D. who actually lives in Hollywood.)
Be series? Why don’t tou check out imdb an see just how D or B list they are. A lot of hot starrs on there. And I dont just mean hot as in yummy, I mean hot as in popular. Pardon my grammar and punctuation. iPad.
I really like the series Pan Am. It is so good to have something on television that is not some stupid piece of trash “reality” show. The only problem for the show Pan Am is that it is probably way too smart for an American audience.
Pan Am, while not a reality show nor grounded in reality, is still trash.
Pan Am’s problem is not that it’s too smart.
Pan Am is a pretty smart, quality show by broadcast standards. It’s only when you compare it to cable that it starts to look dumb. So its problem is that it falls inbetween the stupidity required to survive on broadcast and the expectations of viewers who have been spoiled by cable so that it’s hard to tolerate any broadcast shows now.
However, this week’s episode with the BS ending of the spy plotline was the dumbest yet.
Pan Am is not a clear loser in the US, it’s just that ABC is having a really good season, unlike the previous years where most of their new dramas flopped. This season, Once Upon a Time and Revenge are both hits. And aside from Charlie’s Angels and Man Up, Pan Am is the ABC new series performing the liest well. But it’s stable, at a decent level (the evolution of the 18-49 demo watching the show over 7 weeks : 3.1, 2.6, 1.9, 1.8, 1.8, 1.9, 1.8) after Declining Housewives. Plus, they appointed a new showrunner, it’s sold in numerous countries and the scandinavians love it, that’s got to count for something. Don’t cancel Pan Am now, give it at least a back-9 order, it has a lot of potential.
A 1.8 or 1.9 STINKS. Those are not “decent” numbers, they are Cancellation City, and the show actually IS a clear loser. It drops a ton of the DH audience and has, from a good start of 3.1, crapped out to as low as a putrid 1.8. This shows that a huge portion of the audience disliked what it saw.
don’t bore me? (ROTFL) who brought up Pan Am anyway?
For Pan Am to make it, it needs to look and feel like the early-mid 1960′s. Mad Men pulls it off. Pan Am just misses. Mad Men shoots on film and the actors have captured the early 60′s vibe. The way some of the men on Pan Am look and act is just not early 1960′s.
omygod that poster is so ugly.
@Mol, Suburgatory is also a huge hit.
so pan am is the highest new american show here in ireland. pretty interesting since its the only new us drama shown on an irish station. anything else aired as new here has already been aired on british stations via bskyb which many irish people receive.
Pan Am is an easy show to watch. Great programming choice for that time period. Give it a full order.
I don’t think how an American show works internationally helps much here. Almost all American shows are sold abroad . I travel a lot and you can see in Europe all American shows , from big bombs as Swingtown to great hits as CSI Miami. They need to fill the hours there because they don’t produce as much TV as us.
Last year biggest hits in Eurooe were Game of Thrones and The Walking Dead. Everyone was talking about them.
You can take Hawaii Five O as an example, it got renewed here because of that syndication deal with TNT, even if here its making lower numbers than the show it replaced, CSI Miami , But internationally is doing badlly.In Australia they had to move it to another spot and it is right now the lowest rated US show for that network, Crimial Minds Suspec Behaviour got better numbers.. In England Terra Nova is getting twice the viewers Hawaii did and even Vampire Diaries gets better numbers.
So I don’t think it matters at all. Maybe for network press releases.
You don’t think it matters? Exactly how do you reason, sir? What is the purpose of a TV network, or let’s even say a company.. to make money. Selling shows to other countries usually results in more money. More money means that the studio will be able to take less money from the american distributor (such as CBS/ABC) to produce the show, and the distributor also gets a cut from international sales.
Everything matters, else it wouldn’t get sold in the first place.
One of my points was that ALL American TV shows are sold to other countries . ALL. The ones that perform great here as CSI and the ones that don’t and are canceled as The Defenders.
So if a show is not doing well here, there is not point to keep it because it is doing great abroad. The network just cancels it, tries a new show here and sell it to international markets in the same way they sold the one that they canceled.
Australia is airing Criminal Minds Suspect Behaviour these days. All is sold, the good and the bad. My point was not that it doesn’t matter to sell a show abroad, my point was that that’s not the reason to keep it here in the air. And that a show is sold internationally is not an excuse to say the show is a success because all is sold abroad. European networks are full with American shows canceled here in the first season.
I’m sure international sales count. What I don’t know is to what degree they count, and how bad a show’s American ratings can be, and still survive. That would make a very interesting subject for a follow-up article.
Pan Am’s ratings are disappointing but not necessarily fatal, which makes it an interesting test case.
I really enjoy Pan Am. It is a really great show. Christina Ricci and the other actors are faboulous.
That’s fine and dandy that it’s succeeding in Sweden and other parts of the globe, but for it to be a success, it ha to gain eyeballs here and better ratings and better storylines and stability if it wants to become a success. As I mentioned before, tomorrow nigth is the last episode before the show goes ona two-week break and network execs have given this show 5 scripts and a new writer to get it back on track or we’re going to see this show dead and gone by the year’s end. It’s now or never for Pan Am; a show that has potential but it needs to seriously get back on track with their story arcs and tone down the overacting as well.
There are 3 bits of information needed to explain how much if an irrelevant piece of blurb this article is.
1)only one show survived because it was a huge success abroad: Bay Watch. So much so that if you try to buy the seasons after the 4th, you have to buy the region 2 DVDs, you can’t find Region 1. And it was because it was huge in a market with a population of 82M, and a high GDP, Germany.
2)show is not sold at the same price for every country. No one expects that a network from Belgium (pop. 10M) to pay the same as a network from Germany (pop. 82M). Or a network from Ethiopia (pop. 82M) but 0.00005 of the GDP of Germany. Also selling to cable is not the same as selling to Network. 107 countries can mean nothing if they are the bottom 107 in population, or the bottom 107 in GDP.
3) the US population is 312M. The 5 countries mentioned, where it opened big, added together are 99M. Can they sustain a US Network show?
I just wondered why they don’t mention Portugal. Where it also premiered. It has a bigger population than Norway, Sweden, or Ireland. It’s economy is as irrelevant as Ireland’s. Why ignore it?
Could it be because in Portugal wasn’t even considered good enough for prime-time, and is filler for the 2pm slot on Sunday. No reason to believe that it wasn’t treated the same way in the other 101 it was sold to and also ignored in the article.
I didn’t even know this show existed until I followed the link from Fark. Doesn’t appear as if I’ve missed anything.
As someone who watches Pan Am faithfully, I consider this article good news. I’m not surprised the show is doing better overseas because the audiences over there aren’t as cynical and mired in political correctness. Nor are they so quick to overanalyze as the audiences in the USA and to a certain extent the UK. The continental Europeans know and appreciate entertainment for entertainment’s sake. That’s an attitude we here in the USA would do well in adapting. Also, I noticed the publicity that was used overseas to promote Pan Am was considerably different than in the USA.
Reading your comment it seems to me that you would be the mindless moron. You are also the only one who argued back via Internet. So, with this being the case, the show is obviously aimed at someone with a higher intelligence than you posses. Don’t get mad just because you don’t understand something. The world is 80/20. 20% being your above average. The ratings alone prove that theory. The U.S. Is full of dummies
A clear loser in a US audience means a clear winner in the intelligence department. Shows given the highest ratings by Americans is proof of that. So basically by your comment your showing us your IQ
So you are saying Charlie’s Angels flopped because it was just too intelligent for America? You are out of your depth in this discussion, I’m afraid.
“Revenge,” “Parenthood,” “Boss,” those are smart shows, even “Hart of Dixie” which hasn’t quite matured yet.
“Pan Am” is a piece of crap, no story, no distinguishable characters, extremely poor dialog, vacant over-acting on caliber with a high school play, and that’s an insult to high school plays, mocking viewers with its heavy-handed take on the ’60s (“we know what it was like and you don’t!”), no conflict, it’s a complete mess, it even makes Christina Ricci look bad. The biggest surprise is Jack Orman and Tommy Schlamme are behind it, who we know can do smart television.
After last nights episode I am loosing hope for this show…..I am starting to feel embarrassed for the crew(cast) & the ABC writers….The story lines are ridiculous & it is just down right dumb…..I think I am spoiled as I am a loyal follower of Madmen & Boardwalk Empire…..I have not followed a series on network TV for years & now I know why….I love the concept & the 60′s era but this show has turned out to be a huge disapointment……Each sunday night I sit down to watch this show & I just can not believe what I am seeing…Absurd hokey nonsense…I know TV is not going to be 100% realistic(it is entertainment) but it has to be some what believable……..It’s a shame because I think the show could have been so much better…..I do give the 60′s style, fashions & the pretty faces(male & female) a thumbs up. Unfortunately that is not going t cut it…..
Pan Am is on a station in Ireland RTE 2 that is losing viewers. The show got sliced and diced and left for dead by the Irish TV critics so if its still on air next year it will be a miracle. Don’t get if foreign markets are important why no press/publicity is done this side of the world with talent
JG….The US is full of dummies??? I just read that post….It always amazes me when I see people from other countries making that statement…..PAN AM is not a SMART show(unfortunately)….Madmen & Boardwalk Empire are SMART shows…..Stop worrying about OUR(US citizens) IQ’s & start worrying about yours….Your statement is stupid:(