Jordin Althaus/NBCYou'd think it'd be a good thing to kick off the new fall TV season with great fanfare, with great expectations—and with the season opener of The Voice as your lead-in.
Yes, you'd think it'd be a good thing to be Matthew Perry's Go On, which premieres tonight, or rather re-premieres tonight after a London Olympics sneak.
You'd think.
But recent history shows the fates—and audiences—are not kind to the first new broadcast network show of the new fall TV season.
In the last five seasons, going back to the fall of 2007, only one show that was positioned where Go On is positioned (minus The Voice lead-in) survived to see a second season.
One didn't even make it to October.
The shows, from the most recent on down: Sarah Michelle Gellar's Ringer; the cheerleading soap Hellcats; the Melrose Place reboot; the 90210 reboot; and Nashville, a reality show, not the upcoming drama series (nor the Robert Altman movie).
Of those, only 90210 is still on the air; the others lasted an average of 16 episodes—Nashville lasted only two.
The curse-of-the-first could appear to be a CW thing, since four of the five above shows were CW shows.
But Nashville was a Fox series, and going back further, so was Vanished, a (one-and-done) thriller drama that was the first freshman show out of the box for the 2006-2007 season.
And going back one more fall, you'll find another non-CW show, and a rare success story at that: Fox's Prison Break, which got things running in 2005, en route to an acclaimed four-year run. (The season before that Fox led off things again, with the home-renovation/competition show, The Complex: Malibu, which ran for all of eight episodes.)
The lesson in this for Perry's Go On?
Don't get a head start on the season? Don't premiere in late August or early September? Don't shoot your pilot's speedboat scene in the studio if you can't disguise that you're shooting in the studio?
More like, don't even think of going out there alone and without the protection of a premiere-week launch—unless, that is, you're going out there in the company of Christina Aguilera. (That might work, too.)
And also, yes, learn from Ringer, and please don't shoot your pilot's speedboat scenes badly.
(NBC and E! Online are both part of the NBCUniversal family.)