Originally Posted by
BCR
If they wanted to do a reboot aimed at the 18-34 demo, putting it on network tv seems laughable. Does anyone 18-34 watch network TV, like ever?
The whole thing seems stupid.
I guess the reasoning comes from original Quantum Leap being popular with teens and young adults, so why wouldn't the reboot also be popular in a similar fashion?
But those were teens and young adults in a different time. There was no web. There was no streaming media. There were no smartphones.
When you relaunch a beloved program from 30 years ago, you're looking to capture the same audience from back in those days -- just 3 decades older. That's the whole point of using the same name and theme. This isn't the time to start inserting non-binary characters, or to stay away from casting white males.
For example, I would like to point to the show on the primetime network show with the oldest audience -- Blue Bloods. That's not a reboot of any kind, but its viewers are mostly elderly, and they know it. It features Tom Selleck, who was beloved to that generation from his Magnum days, and has a pro-police, pro-family, and sometimes patriotic theme. They don't try to get woke. They don't try to reinvent anything. This audience doesn't want that. It's still going after 13 seasons.
Its former lead-in was the Hawaii Five-O reboot, which again had an older audience, for obvious reasons. Again, this show did not try to get woke or do anything overly edgy or counterculture. That show lasted ten seasons.
Credit to CBS for understanding this.
It's possible that they simply felt that Bakula, who turns 68 this year, was too old to be believable in what is a semi-action role. There were a lot of physical elements to the original Quantum Leap, and would you really believe a 68-year-old punching people out half his age, or jumping from moving cars? I understand that, if this was their objection, and if they preferred him as a part-time character instead. When "The Rockford Files" TV movies aired in the '90s, this was one of the problems. James Garner simply wasn't believable anymore in action roles, given he was in his late 60s. But it looks like something deeper here.