LOS ANGELES, July 24 (UPI) -- Serial dramas with multifaceted plots and characters with multiple relationships make up the latest strategy to hook viewers on U.S. television shows.
Networks have struggled to develop intimacy with an increasingly distracted audience facing a widening variety of entertainment choices, the Los Angeles Times reported.
TV executives are betting that serial dramas -- long stories, often wrapped around a riddle -- can entice addicted viewers to follow shows like "The Sopranos" in order to keep track of the characters and complicated plots, the newspaper said.
"In general, a TV miniseries, broadcast over several nights, has the tendency to intersect with and form a more quotidian relationship to viewers' lives," essayist and novelist Phillip Lopate wrote. "Its characters become members of the family," he said.
One of the problems with longer-range stories, however, is that a series runs the risk of cancellation before its secret has been revealed, like last year's Fox show "Reunion," CBS' own "Threshold" or ABC's "Invasion." Fans never got an answer to their riddles.
But the panic maybe be overstated. A newcomer could still tune into the third season of "Lost" and figure out enough to be know the characters had crashed, the newspaper said.
