The issue with Auteur Television

I've been rewatching Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip and Dollhouse, and I think that both shows suffered ultimately from the pitfalls of auteur television. I think that both could ultimately have addressed this, but in the end the auteur nature prevented necessary change. Really, this could be called pulling a Shyamalan, and the thing is, every show creator has done it.
Let's start with one of the early multi-show producers in the modern age of Network television, Garry Marshall(1). Marshall was the driving force behind the creation of Happy Days, which in its early days(before coining a phrase) was a popular, fairly acclaimed show. From this, Marshall spins off Laverne and Shirley(and Mork and Mindy, but that's another story) which becomes a popular show in its own right and the phrase 'a Garry Marshall show' came to mean a sitcom about young and fairly attractive people getting into hijinks. So he took this formula and made Joanie Loves Chachi, which was worthless saccharin TV and made every strength a weakness.
Marshall was not alone. Aaron Spelling had the Heights(young people connected by something with lots of drama). Steven Bochco had Cop Rock(innovative format cop show). Chris Carter had Harsh Realm(mysterious world with no answers). This is the problem with auteur television, that every creator eventually falls into the hype trap. Instead of making a show, they try and make 'a Joe Auteur Show' under the assumption that it will be a hit or at least critically acclaimed. Instead, they become a parody of themselves, pull a Shyamalan.
Why call it that? Because M. Night Shyamalan wasn't a bad director at first. Society may allow you to get away with saying that you saw the Sixth Sense ending coming and didn't think it was well done now, but I know that at the time, you thought Night was an up and coming director. But he got pushed to the wrong direction. Instead of making new films, he bought into the idea that the worst part of his movie was the best part. Rewatching the Sixth Sense (and a lot of Night's movies) what he does best is atmosphere and getting good performances out of actors. Remember, when this came out, Bruce Willis was Die Hard and Moonlighting. But instead of making atmospheric character pieces, he went with the twist. Because that was what 'an M. Night Shyamalan movie' was: a twist.
If you look at Dollhouse and Studio 60, they both have the hallmarks of a Shyamalan. Dollhouse is about superpowered teenage-ish girls, uses the stable of Whedon actors, has a slow-developing season-long plot arc, plays with the concepts of identity and morality, features geeks and geek culture, in short, a Whedon show. Studio 60 is walk-and-talk, politically themed, media-procedural, historically-pedantic, uses the stable of Sorkin actors and tries to combine deep misanthropy with hope, in short, a Sorkin show. But, there's hope. Steven Bochco followed the abject failure of Cop Rock with what many consider his best work, NYPD Blue.
Ultimately, I'm slightly divided. It's not like film is without these perils, I could just as easily have called this a Lucas or a Smith. But I'm just not sure in the end that television is a medium for auteurs. Television is a collaborative gambit that is immediately beholden to advertisers and focus groups and will do everything it can to pigeon hole a show-creator to drive ad buys. I don't know that television could produce a Kubrik, a Scorsese, a Campion, a Lee. I don't think it could even produce a Serling or a Ball or a Gelbart. In the end, I'm looking forward to the next projects by Sorkin and Whedon, hoping that they don't pull a full Shyamalan and go the way of the Happening.


(1)I want to differentiate the period of TV with underwriters from the period of TV with commercials, a shift that changed the format and standardized certain methodologies.