If budget was a concern, I still maintain that the show could have been saved by having the MoG leave W&H, under whatever circumstances and with whatever amount of bloodshed was necessary, then, next season find Angel Investigations holed up in some skanky shithole of an office, broke, bereft even of the Hyperion. Have less elaborate sets generally, except in cases where the storyline of the ep called for a set piece, which would mean spending less money on scenery. With the quality of the writers that ME has/had in the stable, they could have had a plotline which had them rebuilding themselves as Fighters of Evil in the aftermath of this season’s Final Battle, having to deal with the would-be new representatives of the Wolf, Ram and Hart in this dimension, doing a fair amount of damsel-rescuing in the process, and still have a rocking good show.
May the WB develop festering boils on its collective penis.
[1) Not silly, because when NBC was writing out their “Friends budget” they knew that they had a big payday coming with the series ending. Also, may I point out that you’re full of shit in ways other than I originally realized? The Network doesn’t get syndication money. The Studio gets syndication money. The Network pays the Studio $/episode to show the show in first run (“licensing fees”), then the Studio pays the actors salaries. If the Network price isn’t high enough to cover the Studio’s costs, then the Studio eats the difference until it can make it up in syndication fees. If the network doesn’t recoup the licensing money in advertising fees, they have to eat it. See how much money UPN lost on Buffy for a good reference.
Angel’s budget was around $2.5 mill/episode prior to this year, now it’s closer to $1 million. Historically, the only data I found for it’s licensing fee was for 2000-2001, and that had the WB paying $1million/episode. That’s $1.5 million/episode that Fox had to make up in syndication and DVD sales in the past. And at $74,000/30 second spot, even $1 million/episode takes 16 minutes of ads to break even. How many minutes of national ads are there in an hour of prime time programming?
If the WB replaces Angel with content that it’s creating (so WB is the studio), then they get the ad revenue AND the syndication revenue and any auxillary revenue (DVD, what have you). It’s really easy to see how the WB will be making more money with a show other than Angel.
I see, ad revenues on first run programming have no correlation to ad revenues on syndicated programming, I get it now. Hopefully, you now see that the only money the WB makes off of Angel is ad revenue, which makes the chart a lot more relevant now, doesn’t it?
Isn’t it nice to live in your own little world where you don’t have to listen to the opinions of people who aren’t rabid fans?
Yeah, I think the pitting’s getting off topic. Cancelling Angel (for whatever reasons, whether they make sense or not) is one thing, rubbing salt in the wounds of fans who are upset over the cancelling with a smarmy video montage is another…
I have a hard time vilifying WB. They picked up Buffy when the Big3 cut it loose. And even though Buffy was never a huge money maker for them, they gave Angel a shot. How many network execs would stick their necks out that far these days? Very few, I’m afraid.
From what I’ve read, TPTB at WB were true fans of both Buffy and Angel and stayed its inevitable execution for as long as they economically could. How many times did either or both show appear on the “Save This Show” list? A lot. WB gave it way more chances than most networks would to find an audience. And they couldn’t, for whatever reason. At the final count, it was the lack of an audience that killed the show, not some heartless WB exec.
WB was also classy in putting the writers and actors on notice that this would be the end so that they could put together some sort of finale. They could have taken the pussy way out and just announced in May that it wouldn’t be renewed. Surely that wouldn’t have come as much of a shock to any of us. So thank WB for giving the writers opportunity to end the series on a high note versus a weak warble.
And LordVor does have some points about the writing this season. After last season’s stellar finish, this season should have kicked ass. They had momentum, they had a new lease on life…and they blew it. At a time when it was imperative that they keep some of the Smallville audience, the show started with a mew instead of a ROAR. The episodes had no continuity, no focus, hell, even MY interest was lost. By the time they got back into stride, it was too little, too late.
So sorry to beam sunshine on your piss parade, but I actually applaud WB for giving me countless hours of quality entertainment by backing both Buffy and Angel as long as they did. I’m just quite sad that the gig is up.
But that wasn’t ME’s fault. There were a few conditions for the 5th season. One of them is that all the episode had to be stand-alone, MOTW type episodes that could be played out of order (in syndication) and pick up new audience members that didn’t otherwise follow the arc or storyline. Joss was told, in effect, to drop the arc formula he used for nearly every season of both AtS and BtVS, and told to increase the ratings.
He did both on the impressoin that if he succeeded, they’d pick him up. He told Bell the night before he heard the knews that he was confident in a sixth season.
The fact is, Joss kept up his side of the bargain–and the ratings did increase over last year. And they fucked him anyway. He should have just ignored them and done what he wanted, seeing how things worked out.
This is one of the thing that really bugs me. I know I comented on this above, but why the heck do netwok people think this, and why do they insist on inposing "no arc' restrictions on genre shows, but not junk like E.R. or other soaps. Do they really think that genre viewers ar that much dumber than soap viewers?
I think they’re thinking more in terms of the channel surfer who might become a potential regular viewer.
If you’re flipping channels and happen upon a show where some guy is fighting something big, green and scaly you might stop and watch for a few minutes, maybe even the rest of the episode. You may become intrigued. But if there’s a bunch of stuff happening that you wouldn’t understand unless you had seen previous episodes. With a more mainstream show like ER, you might have heard co-workers talking about it in the break room, and if not, you can say, “hey, I caught ER last night, and what’s up with…” and you’ll have a dozen people there to fill you in.
Genre shows do appeal to a more limited audience, and your average channel surfer might think it’s just too weird and tune out, but if you’re intrigued and realize that you aren’t going to get what’s going on because you haven’t been watching since the beginning of the season, it might be a bit of a turn-off. And if most of your co-workers have never even heard of the show, so there’s nobody to bring you up to speed on the plotline, you might not want to tune back in.
Of course, I discovered Buffy: the Vampire Slayer whilst channel surfing, and it took me a few episodes to get hooked. But then, I’m not your average channel surfer. I demand quality in my television.
Alternatively, you could write a letter to WB sponsors and say “You support those bastards? Well, I’m boycotting your products as long as you are advertising on their network.” And CC that to WB.
The WB may say “bah, fuck the fans” but would it make a difference if their advertisers starting wondering a bit?
“I’m bored, and you people aren’t swearing enough.”
Why not go find something you actually loathe and despise enough to counterpoint, instead of something you are obviously too intelligent, cosmopolitan, and well-read to have watched, thereby sullying your brilliantly blazing brain-pan?
I think it sucks that it was cancelled, and I am looking forward to the proposed Firefly movie. I haven’t seen the finale yet. If the WB did show some kind of “thank you loyal viewers, we’re your friends” tag at the end, I think it was pretty hypocritical. Since the latter point is all that’s being pitted, I don’t see how anything you’ve had to say is relevant anyway.
The Saving Angel campaign was a mobilized, highly organized campaign. To give you an idea, they raised over $20,000 (I can’t find the exact amount, but it’s probably closer to $30,000) for ads, charities, billboards, and a blood drive. They had an extensive list of WB execs, execs from other networks, and most importantly, sponsors and they sent postcards, faxes, and emails by the dozens in a very organized matter every week. For example, they would select seven sponsors and one network and maybe 3 media outlets every week and every single person associated with the campaign would send as many “Save Angel” postcards to them as possible…
The people behind this project were not dicking around. Anything you can think to do, anybody you can think to contact, they did.
“Notice that I call it ‘Television’ and not ‘TV’, because ‘TV’ is a nickname, and nicknames are for friends, and television is no friend of mine!” (lip quiver)
Count me in too. I lost Friends, That 70s Show, Angel, Enterprise, and The Chris Isaak show this year. I’m down to Scrubs, 24 and CSI. Oh, and a Canadian sitcom called Corner Gas that is the funniest thing I’ve seen on tv in a long time.
