LOS ANGELES - After preempting the show for specials and movies throughout November sweeps, FOX has finally pulled the plug on Wanda Syke’s comedy. On “Wanda at Large,” Sykes played an outspoken comic recruited to work as a panelist and correspondent for a Washington D.C.-based Sunday morning political talk show. Originally, “Wanda” performed solidly in its Wednesday 9:30 p.m. slot, following “The Bernie Mac Show.” This fall, FOX moved the comedy to Friday night, where ratings have suffered.
It sounds like they were trying to kill it: preempting it; moving it to a graveyard timeslot. There must be some backstory we are not hearing here . . .
Sorry for you all, but for some of us, Wanda Sykes is the black “Fran Dresher”, but without the body. I find her voice grating and she’s never seemed to move beyond the sarcastic, angry black woman stereotype character.
her show was okay, but I expected it to be cancelled what with the horrible timeslot it was moved to (if i recall it was friday nights), I’m just angry that Fox cancelled a great show in Andy Richter controls the Universe, but they keep the dinosaur Simpsons alive… Fox should do us all a favour and end the bad Simpsons episodes and try to keep shows like Wanda or Andy or whatever. But what do I know? I’m not a TV exec…
Shuffling new shows around into different time slots and preempting them, has become a pattern with Fox, and tends to demonstrate foreshadowing for a show about to be cancelled. Now they can go and replace “Wanda at Large” with something lame, perhaps live broadcasts of high school talent shows or county fair farm animal judging. I just don’t get this channel anymore. Why even bother producing new shows at all if they’re just going to do is cancel them anyway? Might as well consolidate their good shows into three nights and for four nights a week air nothing but “Simpsons” reruns.
Sitcoms these days are crap, people. If you want to see an otherwise talented black comedian deliver terrible jokes, pretend to have a loving family and a quirky friend/coworker, watch the Tracey Morgan Show.
The Fox “let’s pre-empt then cancel” game is what did in Futurama, too. I’m not sure why they do this to shows – how do they expect a show to gain a following and get consistent ratings when people don’t ever know when the damn thing is going to air?
Feh on Fox again, I say. Feh on them. Feh on them all!
What could they possibly have to gain? I know next to nothing of programming, but why would a network spend tons of money to produce a show like Futurama, Andy Richter, Wanda at Large, then (after it gets good reviews and respectible ratings) torpedo it deliberately?
I thought money meant everything to TV networks; why would they sabatoge a potentially lucrative show?
I’m kicking myself for never watching this show, because it didn’t look that interesting to me. But now that Fox has cancelled it, I know it must have been great. In about ten years or so, I expect there to be a new cable channel dedicated to showing re-runs of cancelled Fox TV shows, and it will be the highest rated network in television history.
God DAMMIT! I loved that show last year; it the only new show that I watched. I haven’t seen it since it moved to Fridays, of course (who watches TV on Friday?) FOX has such amazingly bad management . . . the only show they don’t mistreat is the crappy reality-show-of-the-week.
