ARTICLE - Why Are Zombies Better Than Stewardesses?

An interesting thing happened last night in the television world. In fact, a record was set. "The Walking Dead" set a new record for cable viewers in the key 18-25 demographic. It knocked out much of the more accessible network competition, but most interestingly, OBLITERATED ABC's "Pan Am." You can read more about the ratings race here.

What does this all mean? Here's my take:

Audiences are finally becoming slightly tired of retread and recycled ideas. Pan Am, is essentially, "Mad Men" in a plane. But Pan Am's high flying cocktail has also been severely watered down to make it more palatable for the wider ranging and more protected network audience. Making it, frankly, less appealing to a very loyal Mad Men audience.

A Mad Men audience, by the way, that had to live through some very harrowing moments this summer while AMC found its sea legs as the new power house of interesting, unique and extremely popular content. Its negotiations with Showrunners and Creators of their new shows (AMC's hit line up includes: "Breaking Bad," "Mad Men" and "The Walking Dead") were not model. All of its hits are coming back, but not without some bad press first and, even in one case, some lost talent in the form of a showrunner. The Walking Dead's success despite this bad press, the seeming lack of network support for the creatives and fairly major budget cuts is a good sign for the rest of AMC's line up. But the networks should have been shaking in their booties as they watched the zombies march.

Well, maybe not shaking but they hopefully took notice. Studios and Networks like sure bets. Shows and movies are expensive when done on the scale they do it on. They want to know the ground they're treading is one that will lead to profit. But here's the thing. "Pan Am" is not a horrible show. It's actually kind of ... good. But audiences last night said, 'we would rather watch this completely unique thing that we cannot watch anywhere else. That is unlike anything playing anywhere else. That is well crafted and well conceived. Something fresh.'

Keep an eye on the numbers. If audiences continue to trend towards "unique," then this could be a real rude wake up call for the most recent calculus of "profit driven creative content via the sequel/retread" that has dominated Hollywood for the past ten-fifteen years.

Creatives rejoice and long live the zombies!

UPDATE (10/25/11 11:30 am): AMC announces it will renew "The Walking Dead" for third season and international audiences break pay-tv records as they flock to the zombies.