The Adventures of Summer 2009 - In life and on cable!

The approach of Labor Day means the unofficial end of summer. Sure meteorologists and the scientific community will tell you that summer ends on September 22, but the three-day Labor Day weekend is the final salvo to the adventures and fun of another summer in America.

My memories of summer 2009 will include getting closer to friends and family and the American landscape thanks to my 2002 Mazda. Yes, my summer adventures were headlined by the great American tradition of the road trip.

Born of economic downturn or a renewed sense of spontaneity my travels this summer involved the car, not my typical airplanes or cruise ships. I banished my "if it's more than a four hour drive, I'll fly" mindset and experienced America in a new fashion - the rising sun over the heartlands of Missouri and Kansas; the power of majesty of the Mississippi and Ohio rivers; driving down US 1 along Florida's coast - definite treasures found on my summer adventures.

Watching television during summers of old could hardly be called a pleasant adventure - except for the quadrennial Olympics excitement. The big four television networks typically filled their summer schedules with cheap reality fare, game shows, talent contests, old unaired pilots, or by "burning off" episodes of cancelled shows from the previous season. Summer viewership typically sank to single digit Nielson ratings in response to the network offerings and summer's outdoor opportunities.

That was the case until summer 2009. Summer 2009 television viewership hit an all-time high this year - not because of the networks, but thanks to cable. For the summer of 2009, the average person watched 32.2 hours of TV a week -- compared to 29.8 hours per week in the summer of 2004, according to a Turner research report.

The spike in TV viewing is attributable to cable shows like Royal Pains, The Closer and Burn Notice -- all of which averaged over 7 million viewers, dwarfing broadcast fare like ABC's Defying Gravity and NBC's The Philanthropist, which have struggled to find an audience.

There was a time when networks would scoff at ratings like that, but more viewers now watch cable than network programming, and that marketplace expansion has diluted once-gaudy network numbers. Factor in the cumulative ratings of all of the disparate cable channels - including HBO, Showtime, AMC and FX, which are churning out critically successful series - and you have to wonder what cable knows and the big four doesn't.

Cable's biggest advantage over the broadcast networks is that it can provide viewers more options. The options stem from the numerous number of cable channels available; show concepts that meld with a cable network's niche audience strategy; the ability to schedule and promote one or two programming options instead of the networks seven nights a week schedule; and most importantly - dollars!

The basic cable networks (HBO and Showtime are in their own world) get money from subscribers as well as advertisers, but it helps even more that they spend less of it. They fill fewer time slots with fewer episodes of fewer series, which they repeat incessantly. They hire fewer actors and writers, and pay them less on average than the network norm.

It's amazing how much bang some of these series get for fewer bucks (notably AMC's Mad Men and FX's Rescue Me). But more often, the cost cutting can be spotted on air, in the form of smaller ensembles, fewer speaking parts, longer scenes (to cut down on setup costs), and an overall tinny, bedraggled look. As USA Today's Robert Bianco resently said, "If Lost had been made for USA Network, it would have been about three people whose helicopter crashed on Catalina."

In the end, despite the numbers and dollar sense strategy of cable, the question remains - Are any of these cable offerings any good? If you haven't seen them, are you missing out?

It certainly depends on your taste. Personally, I have been captured by the stylistic beauty of Mad Men and the escapism of USA's Royal Pains. Showtime's Nurse Jackie and FX's Rescue Me have also become "must see TV." HBO remains the leader for quality and creativity for cable series (though not necessarily summer fare) with Big Love, True Blood and Entourage.

The bulk of the rest is a mixture of bad (TNT's Hawthorne), mediocre (USA's Burn Notice), and pleasantly surprising (Lifetime's Drop Dead Diva).

Note - If you missed these summer television options, many are available online thru Hulu or On Demand from your cable/satelite provider.