Why ‘Longmire’ deserves to be on another network

Courtesy of Reg Seeton, guest contributor

The cancellation of Longmire was so shocking to me that I want to take this opportunity to thank everyone at CarterMatt for allowing me to come out of retirement to write this guest post. After a 17-year career as an online entertainment journalist, I rode off into the digital sunset last year and never looked back. That is, however, until A&E canceled the popular Western crime drama Longmire, the highest-rated scripted drama in the network’s history. The sudden cancellation prompted me to get back in the saddle and share a few thoughts on why Longmire deserves to be picked up by another network.

Over the years I’ve covered A&E’s evolution into scripted series television. In recent years from The Cleaner and Breakout Kings to The Glades and Longmire. With The Cleaner and Breakout Kings, both shows certainly had potential but something didn’t feel right from a production standpoint. There was something inaccessible about both that kept you at arm’s length. They just missed the mark. The Glades, however, felt somewhat awkward at first but eventually hit the mark as it evolved into a mature scripted series on par with mainstream television.

With Longmire, the Wyoming set (New Mexico filmed) crime drama hit the bullseye from the very first episode. A&E got it right after several years of perhaps trying too hard. As a result, Longmire not only turned out to be a scripted hit but also one of the best shows on television. Praised for writing, casting, cinematography, and its portrayal of Native American culture, Longmire was the accessible scripted hit that A&E spent years trying to cultivate for the network.

But perhaps the deeper core issue behind the cancellation is the fact that A&E didn’t own Longmire outright. It’s owned by Warner Horizon, which means external spending for A&E and shared profit with partners. Both The Glades and Longmire were produced by external studios whereas the upcoming scripted series The Returned is owned and produced by A&E Studios. But none of that means Longmire doesn’t deserve to resurface on another network. It’s much too good to be gone.

Just this week writer Craig Johnson, author of the Longmire series of novels, revealed on Facebook that A&E made the decision to cancel the show after ratings fell from 4.2 to 3.9 million between the second and third seasons. The move was made despite the fact that Longmire still had a sizable audience in total viewers with an average episode close to 4 million. Johnson went on to add on Facebook that the popular Western crime drama “was still holding steady at close to 6 million” with adjusted PVR / DVR recordings. And the “adjusted” number of nearly 6 million on cable is nothing to laugh at when it comes to viewership and advertising potential (PVR or not).

If you look at the Nielsen cable television ratings for the week ending July 20, 2014 (Bloomberg), as a sample, Longmire recently ranked 16th out of the Top 40 shows with a 2.2 rating. Compare those numbers against TNT’s Major Crimes for that week, the top rated cable show with a 3.4 rating, and Longmire is still in good shape despite the gap between their positions.

For the week of July 20, Longmire was significantly behind TNT’s 3rd ranked Rizzoli & Isles (3.2 rating) but only moderately below TNT’s 6th ranked new drama The Last Ship (2.5 rating). Interestingly, Longmire managed to beat TNT’s new drama Murder in the First (1.8 rating) in the 30th position for that week while only falling slightly behind its home network competitor Duck Dynasty (2.3 rating) in the 11th position.

So, what do those numbers tell us? Obviously it’s not the whole picture but rather an interesting snapshot of the show’s potential. Longmire is indeed a stable summer show on cable television with the numbers to compete in the scripted drama arena. On a network that values the monetary potential of scripted dramas, Longmire has a lot going for it as an established series. Only a year earlier during the same timeframe Longmire ranked 14th with a 2.3 rating across 2.6 million Nielsen homes (Bloomberg). When 33 out of the top 40 cable shows were either wrestling, reality, reruns, news or sports, Longmire held its own at 16th and 14th respectively for the past two seasons during the same summer period.

It’s no secret that networks and advertisers have long coveted the lucrative 18 to 49 age demographic. But “the times they are a changing,” to quote the great Bob Dylan. Although the majority of Longmire’s audience is rooted in the older 25 to 54 demographic, it’s an accurate reflection of the world we live in today. The balance of disposable income is shifting more toward the aging Baby Boomers and an older generation. That means the 18 to 49 demo carries a little less advertising clout than recent years since new younger viewers are more economically challenged. And the cancellation of Longmire could very well be a huge missed opportunity for A&E to get with the changing times, as a larger percentage of the population grows older with more disposable income. As the demo shift indicates, Longmire could be a win for another network that recognizes how the times are changing.

Interestingly, last year during the 2013 Television Critics Association summer press tour, even CBS chief research officer David F. Poltrack confirmed a change in how the mainstream market views the 18-49 demo. “This 18 to 49 demographic is a smaller percentage of the overall population in numbers,” Poltrack told The Wrap in 2013. “So why would anybody sell – this is what we tell advertisers – why would you want to continue to sell and focus your selling on a shrinking part of the total population?” But despite Poltrack’s confirmation, you could also make the case that more within the younger demographic have shifted to watching cable programming than mainstream network television.

If A&E really did cancel Longmire because it wasn’t pulling decent numbers in the 18 to 49 demo, did they shoot themselves in the foot? Did A&E underestimate the disposable power of its older demographic? Judging by the reaction of older Longmire fans within social media, with many vowing to never watch A&E again, we may soon have an answer to that question. It appears Longmire could very well be another network’s gain from a legitimate missed opportunity. However, we won’t know that for certain unless Longmire does get picked up for another season.

At this point, both the ratings around Longmire and the changing demo numbers can be seen as an opportunity. If anything, at the very least, they make the case that Longmire has plenty of potential even with an older demographic with disposable buying power. Quality and creativity aside, Longmire deserves a shot with another network simply based on good ratings and its total viewers despite their age, which may prove to be the show’s underlying and unexpected strength.

With a cast headed by Australian actor Robert Taylor in the role of sheriff Walt Longmire, the crime drama also featured popular former Battlestar Galactica actress Katee Sackhoff, acting veteran Lou Diamond Phillips, Bailey Chase of daytime and Damages fame, Cassidy Freeman from Smallville, and Adam Bartley who broke out after roles in Justified and Criminal Minds. It’s a cable cast that captured lightning-in-a-bottle both in terms of chemistry and accessibility to the depths of their characters through intelligent, engaging and provocative writing.

Add to that an award winning recurring cast that included Gerald McRaney, Charles S. Dutton, A. Martinez, Peter Weller, and Graham Greene, and Longmire achieved the level of acting quality on cable necessary to become a hit. If that wasn’t enough, Longmire featured some of the best Native American/First Nations actors in the business, from Graham Greene and Zahn McClarnon to Eric Schweig, Irene Bedard, David Midthunder and Nathaniel Arcand to name only a few. To say that Longmire was deep in the acting department is an understatement.

From an even deeper level of writing, the main characters of Longmire engaged the Native American culture in ways that show just how far we’ve come as a society with regard to respect, tolerance, acceptance and compromise. It’s about how two cultures can co-exist and work together while embracing differences and remaining independent of one another. Is this not all that’s good in what we’re striving for today as a society? Although the Native American culture within Longmire has its own unique identity, the series doesn’t work without it. One doesn’t work without the other. That’s what makes it so intriguing yet socially relevant. In many ways Longmire preserves the mystery surrounding Native American tradition in today’s modern world while giving viewers an opportunity to learn from the past. It’s a brilliant layer of mystery on top of a traditional serial drama within the mysterious Wild West that still exists today.

Simply put, Longmire deserves to be picked up by another network. It’s much too good to be gone!

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Thanks to Reg Seeton for his thorough analysis on the show and its future. If you want to follow him on Twitter, you can do so @RegSeeton.

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Photo: A&E