The concensus here in CS seems to be that Fox Sux. I guess Fox News is one thing, but the main channel seems to be the home of a fair amount of long lived and good, or at least entertaining, shows:
24, Prison Break, AI, Bones, House, Simpsons, Family Guy. Wasn’t X-files originally on Fox?
Sure, they blew it with Firefly, but other than that, is there any reason to think that it’s worse than ABC, CBS and NBC? There’s a lot of crappy reality shows on each network, as well as some really good stuff.
I was going to say that 24 was the only one of the shows you mention that I watch, but more importantly I agree that all the networks seem to offer junk.
The problem with FOX (if there is one) is they seem to want to gamble on strange but quality shows but then ‘chicken out’ and either cancel the show without giving it a chance at all or sabotaging it by playing musical chairs with its time slots so any audience the show could have found vanishes and so justifies cancellation through the reason of poor ratings.
So occasionally they get a big hit in spite of their treatment of it but mostly they let good programs go by the wayside which pisses off anyone who got involved in those shows (btw Family Guy which you mention was canceled by FOX but renewed on fan protest).
Don’t they tend to have the slimiest reality shows, or is that all the networks now? I seem to remember “Who Wants to Marry a Multi-Millionaire” was on FOX, and that set a new low at the time. We watched it simply because we couldn’t believe anyone would actually humiliate herself like that.
Charlie Tan: “Sure, they blew it with Firefly, Arrested development, Greg the bunny, The Tick, both live action and animated, The Critic, Futurama, Action, The Adventures of Brisco County jr, and hell lets toss married with children in there since they never got a proper final episode.”
Fixed that for you 
Well, all the specials that pander to the audience. When aliens attack by kicking you in the nads four, that sort of programming.
They also have an annoying habit of trying to kill their best shows (ahem, “Futurama”).
DigitalC, I know you meant no ill will, but please do not change the wording of another poster when using a quote box.
And don’t forget Undeclared.
Undeclared sucked! Undergrads for life!
I don’t think you can put Arrested Development in there. Don’t get me wrong, I love that show, but Fox gave it plenty of opportunities, people just plain didn’t like it.
3 seasons, 2 with a Simpsons lead-in. I can’t blame Fox for that one.
Speaking of back in the day, look at Briscoe County Jr.
One problem Fox has is that they take risks on shows which, while very good, may not connect well with their core audience. Briscoe did (and didn’t do) just that.
Skip has already issued a warning on this, but I’m going to cite chapter and verse, just in case anyone else is confused: Please read Rules for Posting at the SDMB and note especially Post #11 in that thread.
I have edited the offending post to show y’all how you can paraphrase someone within our rules.
Didn’t FOX also (un)do WONDERFALLS?
Family Guy did a good job enumerating the Fox cancellations.
Hmm, my apologies i had no idea that was a no-no. Won’t happen again.
Arrested Development was on for three years. How’d they blow that?
You tend to think of shows as going on forever because the great ones sometimes do, but three years is a fair run for a show with low ratings.
All horrible ratings. And I’m not sure those are actually good shows.
Four seasons.
Brisco County Jr: Low ratings, not really that good. Married With Children, it’s a TV show, not a retirement party.
I mean, everyone’s entitled to their opinion and I’m sure you could even find someone somewhere who liked “Manimal.” But a lot of the shows people complain about FOX cancelling weren’t really all that good, in my opinion, including - and I know I’ll catch huge, huge hell for this - Firefly. And even when they were good, or at least had a chance to be good, they simply couldn’t draw viewers.
Were it not for FOX, you’d never have seen a single episode of any of those shows. There’d be no Simpsons, either, which would be a dreadful shame.
While these days they pretty much expect shows to catch fire day one and keep going up, many great shows never did well except by building up an audience slowly. Liekwise, those shows you list generally had a good concept and solid cast, and came together well, but lacked the smoothness most productions got after being around a coupla years. It’s quite uncommon for shows to be all that good until they’ve been on-air two seasons, maybe three.
These days things are a bit diferent, but it’s partly because the netowrks are changing the way they do dramas.
True enough, but when you’re talking about a flagship show of the network that had been on the air IIRC literally from the beginning, the people involved deserve better than to find out from strangers the way Ed O’Neill did. The network had to have some idea that they weren’t going to renew the show and they could have done things better if for no other reason than simple respect for the people and acknowledgement of the money that the show generated for them.
The Critic was an ABC show. It wasn’t on Fox.