How Barack Obama and John McCain Ruined Heroes (And everything else on TV)

While everyone directly involved in the nastiness is being predictably diplomatic, Heroes' fan base is not. The release of Jeph Loeb and Jesse Alexander from what many see is the sinking ship of Heroes is rife with unspoken insinuations of blame for Heroes' warbling ratings performance – but is there any truth to it? It might be impossible to know, unless you were one of the many flies on the wall at Heroes HQ. In many ways, the move is a gamble on the behalf of NBC.

Loeb in particular was the architect of Heroes highly successful first season, employing his legendary comic writing chops. Both Loeb and Alexander had annexed their mojo from LOST to Heroes and both have reputations for being global supporters of new media. The lingering question is, did NBC fire the wrong guys. Maybe the decline in interest with Heroes had nothing to do with the writers at all.

Here's my theory, and it's backed with a bit of fact. Ever since the new television season kicked off we've heard stories of how individual shows are performing below expectations, yet little about how this is a universal phenomena. Guess what. It's a universal phenomena. The other fact which is surprisingly lacking from any serious discussion of any show's ratings struggle is that we actually know where some of these viewers have gone. The closer we get to today, election day, the better the news channels have been doing in the ratings. Once this is all over, those viewers will stop DVR'ng everything and get back to live viewing. The numbers of viewers watching prime time programming will increase. Will it be a huge increase? Who knows.

If you don't buy the notion that the election is stealing viewers – don't even try to tell me you don't know any politics junkies – then you'll think this is positively nuts: those who aren't addicted to political coverage may just be too depressed by the whole thing to tune in. The general mood in this country has been scraping bottom, everything we're doing has this air of political purpose, and even if you are able to keep your head it's just like Edgar Rice Burroughs challenged; keeping your head is one thing, keeping it when all around you are losing theirs is another altogether.

Face it, we are living in a time where real life drama is trumping scripted – but this is a temporary state of hyper vigilance that will be gone before we know it. Then, the over stimulated parts of our mind that long drama will forget all about paling around with terrorists, trooper gates, and $150,000 shopping sprees – we'll be back to wanting to agonize over whether Peter will get his powers back, or if Sylar is really a good guy. Once again, the outrage of the week will not be Joe The Plumber trying to use his blown up image as a hard working everyman to become a rhinestone cowboy but the fact that Heroes is underutilizing Matt Parkman. In other words, we'll be back to worrying about fantasies that really matter.