Where are the cults worshipping
The Michael Richards Show
Fridays
House Calls
Delta House
Tales of the Gold Monkey
In short, yes, they are.
I loved Jonny Zero. I think Fox ran the introductory episode first, at least. But then they ran it out of order. A real mess.
I think there’s a reason there are no daytime sitcoms on Fox.
The decision to not give certain shows a chance may not make a lot of sense to the network as a whole, but I’m willing to bet that because of network politics, each decision makes a lot of sense to those making the decisions. With the big egos that producers and network execs are likely to have, it makes things even more complicated.
In the case of Futurama, it makes perfect sense for Fox to kill it. They needed to support it half-heartedly to keep Groening happy and producing more of The Simpsons, but they (probably) assumed that Simpsons would suffer from the split effort, and they weren’t making as much money on Futurama anyway, since they didn’t own it.
In the case of shows that are never given much of a chance, I’d guess that either an exec doesn’t particularly like either the show concept or doesn’t like the people involved. This exec isn’t high up enough to just cancel the show from the get-go, but is influential enough to undermine it to the point of quick failure. This helps the exec by making his influence more important than his literal job responsibilities might suggest, and by fulfilling his original claim that said show wouldn’t do well, thus making him a good predictor of future shows’ successes.
I still don’t know why anyone puts up with shows being run blatantly out of order, though. There’s just no good reason to fuck up the storyline like that. Doing so is pretty obviously sabotage.
Of course I haven’t seen every show that was ever cancelled in its infancy – that would probably take a lifetime. But based on word of mouth, critical acclaim, DVD sales, and my own enjoyment of said shows, I’m willing to stand by my opinion that they are indeed exceptional.
I mean, there’s a reason there are no daytime soaps on Fox. Which is, soaps can’t be run out of order!
This is also not unusual to FOX. Though they tend to introduce a lot of new, quirky shows that gain cult followings and then cancel them quickly. The ones I, for the life of me, can’t understand are the shows that are canceled after ONE EPISODE. I didn’t like the new Heather Graham sitcom (“Emily’s Reasons Why Not”), but it should have been given more than one episode before it could be accurately judged, IMO.
Yeah, I kind of wondered about that one. I watched the first episode because I just love Heather Graham THAT much - but I found it to be a pretty terrible show.
But one episode? The only thing I can imagine is that there were some big backstage problems that meant that it had to do fantastic out of the gate or it was getting the axe…
-Joe
Based on the above high-lighted paragraph, do you think that broadcast TV will serve as an introductory medium? Creators of shows will produce a two hour pilot and four or five episodes for a guaranteed day and time slot. Then, viewers will have the option of going to the website and purchasing the aired material and contracting for future blocs of episodes and other merchandise. There are a whole lot of details to iron out but I think my basic idea has merit. What do the other Dopers think?