The TV Column

Last one out of Pawnee, please turn out the lights

Parks and Recreation, starring Amy Poehler, returns to NBC on Jan. 13 for a shortened final season.
Parks and Recreation, starring Amy Poehler, returns to NBC on Jan. 13 for a shortened final season.

The word has come down from on high for all those who keep asking me when their beloved Parks and Recreation will return.

The veteran NBC comedy has been waiting patiently in the wings and finally has a premiere date for its final outing. The shortened Season 7 will debut at 7 p.m. Jan. 13.

It's going to be a quick run for the 13 episodes. The network plans to burn them off with back-to-back Tuesday airings that will use them up in short order until the hour-long series finale Feb. 24.

At least the show is getting some closure. That's more than is allowed too many series.

Still, the burn-off seems a bit cold for the steady Amy Poehler workhorse. Nonetheless, NBC Entertainment Chairman Robert Greenblatt tried to spin the announcement in a positive way.

"In an effort to give it the sendoff it deserves, we wanted to 'eventize' the final season," he says in a news release. "It's a sendoff that will maximize the show's cultural impact."

Yeah. Sure. Granted, the show was never the hit that 30 Rock or The Office was, but it was solid entertainment and we'll miss it.

It's becoming increasingly apparent that discerning viewers will have to go online for witty, smart comedies in the future. Examples: Community is sidling over to Yahoo, and Tina Fey's highly anticipated new The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, originally slated for NBC in the spring, was sold by the network to Netflix for two years. Look for it in March.

According to NBC, with a median viewer age of 41.7, Parks and Recreation was the youngest-skewing show on ABC, CBS or NBC last season. That's practically teenagers in the aging world of TV viewers.

See you online. I get a dozen TV questions and emails every week from readers who claim they aren't Internet savvy and watch TV in the traditional manner -- when a show first airs rather than recorded, On Demand or through an online streaming service.

According to a Nielsen third quarter report last week, the numbers for those who watch TV in the traditional manner are dwindling.

About the report, The Associated Press says, "Americans are turning away from live TV on the tube and tuning in to streaming services. That's bad news for cable and satellite TV providers. Americans are increasingly watching TV shows and movies on Netflix, Hulu, Amazon streaming and other services."

According to the report, the average American spends four hours and 32 minutes a day watching TV. That's a 4 percent drop to 141 hours per month.

Meanwhile, time spent watching streaming services jumped 60 percent, to nearly 11 hours each month. Caveat: Eleven hours is still a small fraction compared to live TV, but it's growing.

Nielsen spokesman Dounia Turrill said in a statement, "Content is still king, but consumers are shaping their own content-discovery experience, and the evolving media landscape has not lessened consumer demand for quality, professionally produced content. What has changed is the number and reliability of new media available to viewers."

Evidence of change: CBS and HBO have announced standalone streaming services. This trend may be why Fey's The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt will be a huge hit on Netflix (I predict), but would only have been a Parks and Recreation-esque modest success on the network.

Overkill? If you thought TV was overloaded with Christmas specials this time of year, you're right. It's like that every year now. According to Nielsen, there were 875 (!) hours of holiday programming toward the end of last year. That included specials and holiday episodes of regular series.

It can go too far. Animal Planet is planning Monsters Inside Me: Holiday Special at 8 p.m. Dec. 18. The synopsis: "Holiday cheer turns to holiday fear when three victims receive monstrous gifts of the near-deathly variety." Enjoy.

Meanwhile, here's some more traditional Christmas stuff airing through Sunday.

Today: Scrooged, 8 p.m., ABC Family. Fans of Bill Murray will enjoy his take on the Scrooge-ish Frank Cross in this 1988 film inspired by A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. The cast also includes Karen Allen, Bobcat Goldthwait, John Forsythe, Carol Kane, John Houseman and Robert Mitchum.

Friday: White Christmas, 8:45 p.m., AMC. Bing Crosby, Danny Kaye and Rosemary Clooney star in this 1954 musical loosely based on 1942's Holiday Inn.

Saturday: Miracle on 34th Street, 8:15 p.m., AMC. This is the classic 1947 version starring Maureen O'Hara, John Payne and a young Natalie Wood, who deal with Santa Claus (Edmund Gwenn) when he sets up shop in Macy's.

Sunday: Dr. Seuss' How the Grinch Stole Christmas, 8 p.m., ABC Family. A little bit of Jim Carrey goes a long, long way in Ron Howard's 2000 live-action adaptation of the 1966 animated original.

The TV Column appears Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday. Email: mstorey@arkansasonline.com

Weekend on 12/11/2014

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