With all of the other distractions I’ve been experiencing of late–and I don’t need to regurgitate how it spiraled out of control yesterday–I completely missed the fact that last Friday night the USA Network debuted a brand new spanking new scripted original, the second of its eight episodes actually premiering tonight at 10 PM ET on a good old fashioned linear cable channel. Had I been less distracted on my birthday last year, I might have noticed what USA INSIDER’s Jill Sederstrom hyped on her employer’s site so perhaps I wouldn’t have been quite as surprised as I was to see an encore opportunistically scheduled after a WNBA game earlier this week:
USA Network is adapting The New York Times best-selling Anna Pigeon book series as part of its bold new programming slate…The series will focus on titular character Anna Pigeon, a woman trying to flee her traumatic past by becoming a park ranger — only to find herself embroiled in a series of crimes committed in the vast American wilderness…Premiering in 2026, the series will bring the perfect blend of intrigue and mystery as Anna tries to rediscover herself, while solving the perplexing crimes she encounters along the way.
“Anna Pigeon is a former city slicker who became a park ranger after a devastating loss changed the trajectory of her life forever,” an official synopsis explains. “While Anna tries to outrun her demons, her focus turns to solving crimes that have taken place within national park grounds, no matter who or what gets in her way.”
And amidst trying unsuccessfully to outrun my own demons yesterday I almost missed the proof-of-performance that SCREEN RANT’s Hannah Gearan dropped last night:
There is a new hugely popular show in town for the USA Network…As per Deadline, the USA Network just broke an eight-year-long record drought with their new scripted series. Anna Pigeon, which debuted on August 7, is now the highest-rated USA scripted series in just under eight years. In order to achieve this record, the series averaged 2.25 million total viewers over its first three days. Its viewership success is supplemented by its social media traction. To date, the first Anna Pigeon trailer released online has boasted over 9.5 million impressions.
Judging by the look of her thumbnail headshot, I’m gonna go out on a limb and profess that Gearan probably wasn’t old enough to stay up late when USA was delivering way more viewers and, yeah, even more social media impressions when it was a major player with a distinct brand with the full support of NBC Universal. They were squarely between the polar extremes that TNT’s “We Know Drama” lineup with its heavy emphasis on procedurals and the “There Is No Box” strategy that my FX employers backed into with the quirky and HBO-aspirational array of critically acclaimed and typically well-watched hours that I would gleefully and opportunistically report on in the same manner than who remain at the now Versant-owned entity did yesterday. USA had its own nomenclature for its strategy, which the clearly more seasoned Jeffrey Harris of COLLIDER lovingly and accurately mused about in March 2024:
The “Blue Sky” Era arguably began in 2005 when the network rolled out its “Characters Welcome” marketing campaign. However, the beginning of the era can also be traced back to the debut of the hit series Monk, starring Tony Shalhoub, in 2002. Monk set a new tone for scripted dramas on USA Network. It kickstarted an era of fun, quirky, light, and character-driven shows. It’s difficult to define the meaning of the “Characters Welcome” Era because it lasted over ten years and encompassed a diverse group of shows. Many of the shows that defined the “Characters Welcome” Era were dramatic comedies, or dramedies, as the popular colloquial industry term refers to them.
An additional aspect that made these shows destination television viewing was their sublime casting. Since they were character-driven pieces, they all featured tremendous ensemble casts. The “Blue Sky” Era was memorable because every week, each show was packed with electric chemistry, and inter-character dynamics were a key to their success. Shows like Burn Notice, Royal Pains, Suits, Psych, White Collar, and more had that in spades. Each show had something fun, unique, and different to offer, and the characters’ adventures were always memorable. It was truly a renaissance for quality television programming. Looking back upon the “Blue Sky” Era, it was a time when the network was spoiled by success.
But by the time that 2017 benchmark came around those “blue skies” had gotten cloudy and downright elitist. For as beloved as Rami Malek’s tour de force as MR. ROBOT was and the nichy comic book adaptation DEADLY CLASS that I worked on was able to generate millions the levels of impressions that ANNA PIGEON is now approaching thanks solely to the presence of the clickbaitable Lana Condor they never came close to the broad appeal and yes, appointment television that USA had with its Blue Sky approach.
From what I saw last night, ANNA PIGEON is at least trying to make good on that self-stated attempt to return to its glory days. It’s got some quirky elements of its own and an appealing lead in Tracy Spiridakos, who at least has some past credits of her own with the quickly forgotten NBC series REVOLUTION. If you’re otherwise not familiar with her, that’s likely because her biggest role was on the Canadian series MAJORITY RULES!. And yes, ANNA PIGEON is indeed produced in Canada (she’s a ranger in Glacier National Park) via a consortium that includes the production entity Cineflix and the HBO-friendly northern cabler CRAVE, which these days you might better recognize as the source of HEATED RIVALRY.
In an era where cable networks are bragging about a three-day aggregate of a third of the number of viewers that it once got with a single telecast, such financial alliances and compromises are a necessary evil, even if it means that a network still called USA is importing its originals. It’s therefore less like an echo of its Blue Sky days but more like the last gasps of WGN America after its colossal misstep in rolling out the FX playbook along with its creators that I also participated in a decade ago crushed what was left of Tribune’s desire to create original content of its own. My Sony colleagues relied on a similar Canada-centric model to roll out a Jerry O’Connell-fronted drama called CARTER that the folks that remained at WGN attempted to say was a continuation of the same sort of efforts that my then-employers and my former FX colleagues forged with the likes of OUTSIDERS and UNDERGROUND. CARTER’s ratings were a fraction of their predecessors, but the ROIs were far less debilitating.
But not even the economics of CARTER could stave off the inevitable outright demise of WGN America, and for as well-intentioned and responsible as ANNA PIGEON seems to be I can’t not draw a direct line to the fact that I only stumbled upon it following a far more promoted live sports event, which is part and parcel of the overall strategy of just about all linear television these days. Yesterday the 2026-27 NBA schedule was announced and its ABC and NBC partners will feature a +14% increase in the number of live broadcasts that will air on those free over-the-air iterations–good news for hoopheads, less good news for fans of scripted dramas. There’s only so many dollars to go around, and it’s crystal clear those in charge these days are hell bent on diverting more of them away from the latter.
I’d suggest checking out ANNA PIGEON while you can and hope against hope that if it indeed continues to find a following it might eventually pivot to Peacock, which needs all the decent original scripted content it can get it hands on, or heaven forbid Netflix, where its success with its SUITS acquisition rekindled the whole Blue Sky era debate in the first place. Or perhaps it could even land on whatever becomes of HBO Max–after all, the pedigree of Crave carries quite a bit of heft in this era. As for it being able to bring back the USA era that Harris so eloquently pines for? That forecast is still mostly cloudy.
Until next time…