Bones

Successful TV dramas are unfolding one episode at a time, and procedurals are taking notes

The upcoming Bones/Family Guy crossover is being promoted as something big and new because it’s an animated character appearing on a live-action show. But really it’s a very old-fashioned crossover where characters from one long-running show pop up on another long-running show on the same network. Though I guess Family Guy is more popular than Bones, this isn’t really the sort of crossover that’s done to boost a show’s popularity. It’s more the sort of crossover that happens when two shows are produced by the same studio, and so when the live-action show wants to do an animated segment, they arrange to borrow a character from their sister show.

Reports from the Banff World Television Festival are being filed by Diane Kristine, by Will Dixon, and photo uploads by Megan Cole.