At least Angela Lansbury and the rest of the folks behind "Murder, She Wrote" still have a sense of humor.
The long-running CBS mystery drama airs its final episode Sunday (7 p.m., Ch. 2). And the title of that episode? "Death by Demographics."There's no small degree of irony in that. "Murder" lost its Sunday-night time slot - where it spent nine seasons in the Nielsen Top 10 - last fall, due entirely to the show's demographics.
Quite simply, the "Murder, She Wrote" audience skews old. A majority of the show's viewers are over the age of 50.
And, as far as the networks are concerned, getting older is not getting better. Advertisers want to attract viewers between the ages of 18 and 49, and they'll pay a premium to do so. They don't much care about viewers over 50.
It's not fair - and there are lots of us who believe it's not even smart - but that's the way it is. Despite the fact that "Murder, She Wrote" was winning the Sunday time slot in household ratings, it wasn't making nearly as much money for the network as shows like "Lois & Clark" or even the now-canceled "seaQuest." CBS did better business with "Cybill" on Sunday nights this season.
The fact that "Murder, She Wrote" was the highest-rated drama on television for nine consecutive seasons (1985-94) - more than any other show in the history of television - was irrelevant.
So the show got shuffled off to Thursday nights, where it pretty much died. To its credit, CBS returned "Murder" to Sundays for its final four outings - which culminate this Sunday.
And "Death by Demographics" is a pretty routine outing. Jessica Fletcher (Lansbury) is in San Francisco promoting her new book. She hooks up with an old friend (David Ogden Stiers) who is the voice of the Bay area's classical music/er-udite talk station.
But big changes are in the works. The station is changing formats to something younger and hipper, and bringing in a outrageous young deejay to lead the charge. (Again, the irony fairly drips from the screen.)
There are the usual suspects, the various plots and subplots, and - as always - the main suspect turns out not to be the killer.
It's the same sort of story that "Murder, She Wrote" has been doing for 11 years now.
And, all sentimentality aside, that's part of the problem with the show. It's been doing pretty much exactly the same thing for 11 years now.
Lansbury is still one of the most charming, classy women television has ever had the privilege of making into a star. But the time has come - the time has actually passed - for "Murder, She
Wrote" to ride off into the sunset.
There's no tragedy in seeing a good show go off the air after making 264 episodes. That's an incredible run for any series.
The real crime in television programming is when a good show dies before its time. When a show that deserves an audience can't find it and gets canceled after a few episodes, a season or even two seasons.
Thankfully, that didn't happen to "Murder, She Wrote."
This isn't a time to mourn the show's demise. It's a time to celebrate its long, successful run.
(And don't be surprised if "Murder" returns as a series of made-for-TV movies for one network or another.)
The only tragedy here is that networks are generally ignoring the audience that "Murder, She Wrote" served. And that is a shame.
It's wishful thinking, certainly, but the final moments of "Murder, She Wrote" do address the issue. Seems that the fictional radio station in question discovers that it can sell commercial time for programming that appeals to older viewers.
"The advertisers seem finally to have discovered the idea that people like us are an invaluable segment of the market," says Stiers.
Would that it were so.
HIGH MURDER RATE: Over 12 years and 264 episodes of "Murder, She Wrote," there were a total of 286 murders.
That's a lot.
A total of 64 of those murders took place in Jessica Fletcher's hometown of Cabot Cove, Maine - population 3,560. That means that over a dozen years, 1.79 percent of the Cabot Cove population was murdered.
By means of comparison, if the same percentage of the population (as estimated in 1994) of Salt Lake City had been murdered over a 12-year period, that would have totaled 3,076 homicides - 256 a year, 21 a month.
If Salt Lake County had experienced the same murder rate over a dozen years, that would have totaled 14,236 murders - 1,186 a year, 99 murders a month, three murders a day.
I always told you that Jessica Fletcher was a menace.