One possibility is that television didn't change, but we did. Fringe took Olivia back into the tank and Walter back to the asylum, two "big" plots that didn't seem to have the impact that they should've (In part, I think, because they were done too early. Walter has to go back to the asylum? Big deal! He's only been out of there for a few weeks); similarly, Heroes' flashback to the start of the series to retcon/fill in the blanks and Smallville's disrupted wedding lacked the weight that their creators obviously had hoped for. Perhaps we've gotten too used to all the familiar tricks that television shows like to throw us at this time of the year, sadly.

Another alternative is that show makers - and even moreso, the people responsible for promoting the shows - have lost the ability to tell what would make a good sweeps stunt or not these days; NBC's Chuck is prime example of this. For all of their "Jordana Brewster is on Chuck! As his ex-girlfriend Jill!" promos, they missed any sensationalistic "And Chuck and Casey kiss!" advertisements for their ill-fated saliva swap. In general, advertising for most genre shows seemed to be lacking this year; maybe it's my love and overuse of Tivo, but I didn't see any advertisements even for shows like Life On Mars or Knight Rider, both of which are mid-level successes for their respective channels.

The third option is that, well, sweeps just don't matter anymore. As television makers start thinking DVD sales, online viewership, or even syndication, if they're old school, the notion of making "special sweep stunt" episodes may just not really seem as important as they used to. With ratings in general being problematic for most networks in the current environment, whatever pressure there may have been to perform especially well during sweeps may have been replaced by a continual pressure to just perform in general and stem the loss of viewers to cable and/or non-TV-related activities altogether, or else concentrate on producing shows that work with one particular demographic solidly, without spikes.

All of this may be pointless conjecture, of course; we'll have to wait until February to see what our favorite shows do for the next sweeps period to see whether this particularly flat month was an accident, or a sign of things to come.

While streaming TV online isn't exactly a new idea - we've been using Hulu.com as our procrastination tool of choice ever since they added Galactica 1980 to their line-up - what differentiates TheWB.com isn't just their io9-friendly selection of shows (As well as the two listed above, you'll also be able to find episodes of Angel, Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Roswell, Smallville and non-geek-but-awesome-nonetheless shows like Veronica Mars, Gilmore Girls and The OC, amongst others) but the fact that the channel will also be offering brand new series from creators like Terminator: Salvation's McG and Chuck's Josh Schwartz alongside their more familiar offerings.

Sure, the announced new shows don't sound that promising so far (Although we're looking forward to Chadam), but if the first batch do well, then we're hoping to see some more SF in future seasons. Until then, we'll be keeping ourselves occupied by looking for signs of Ron Moore's Battlestar Galactica greatness in his Roswell episodes.

TheWB.com adds six to online offerings [Hollywood Reporter]