Cancelling The Beverly Hillbillies. It was either #1 or close to it at the time. The show is still popular on Nick.
Can you imagine that happening today?
Canceling Space: Above and Beyond, royally pissing off the X-files producers (and writers) who developed and wrote it. Oh, and the fans who never saw the second part of the season ender. Sigh. The producers brought a lot of the actors over to the X-files as characters now and then.
Cancelling The Beverly Hillbillies. It was either #1 or close to it at the time. The show is still popular on Nick.
Can you imagine that happening today?
Canceling Space: Above and Beyond, royally pissing off the X-files producers (and writers) who developed and wrote it. Oh, and the fans who never saw the second part of the season ender. Sigh. The producers brought a lot of the actors over to the X-files as characters now and then.
The TV industry has nothing to do with it. It’s the ratings industry (most importantly, Neilson) that set up the sweeps to keep their costs down. They can’t afford to sample everyone 52 weeks a year.
Again, this is forced upon TV by another industry – namely advertising. There is no evidence that the younger demographic is better than older – especially now, as the boomers age. The assumption is that people developed brand loyalty early and stick with it, but there’s little evidence to back this up. Still, since TV shows can charge more for the “better” demographics, the networks will aim for that. After all, television is an advertising medium; it doesn’t matter what’s on, as long as enough people are watching.
The cast was indeed great, but the show was not up to their talents.
Bad choices, in in particular order:
Cancelling Star Trek – Actually, the demographic issue almost saved the show; NBC had discovered that the show had great demographics. They went to Paramount, who had already destroyed the old sets and asked for a committment to make the rebuilding worthwhile. NBC refused.
Alien Nation – it wasn’t so much that it was cancelled, but that the network kept telling the show that it would be picked up. Then the new season was announced, and no “Alien Nation.”
Bob – CBS kept moving the show around, so no one knew when it was being broadcast. When they renewed it, they insisted it be rewritten. All the interesting and quirky characters of the first season vanished, and two “big names” – Jere Burns and Betty White – were added. Their first episode was appallingly bad and people stopped watching.
The XFL on NBC – the network ditched its entire Saturday night lineup (which wasn’t doing all that badly) to showcase second-rate football. The result was the worst rated show in history.
"Who Wants to be a Millionaire" as the savior of ABC – Cashing in, ABC ran the show to death, with the assumption that it would be the killer app of TV shows. They even reduced the pilot shows they had in development, assuming that Millionaire could be thrown into any time slot to punch it up. The fad faded, ABC’s ratings tanked across the board, and they had nothing to replace it with.
Baseball on CBS – the network bid millions for the rights to all MLB games. Then they didn’t show them. Really. They didn’t start broadcasts until July, showed only one game a weekend, and generally threw their money down a rathole.
Saturday Night Live – No, not the NBC show. The ABC version, starring Howard Cosell. Howard, for all his strengths, was not someone the audience particularly liked.
Pink Lady and Jeff – Two stars who couldn’t speak English, in a variety show format. What was Fred Silverman smoking?
You can always tell which shows are the bastard children at the network. The ones that appeal to critics, and that don’t cater to the average dumbass. The ones that have a following, but that the networks don’t know what to do with. They’re the shows you just can’t freaking find. Saturday at 9 changes to Tuesday at 8, then Wednesday at 7, then alternate Fridays at 12:35, just after the latest Billy Mays spectacular, and then they fade out of existence entirely.
If they don’t know what to do with a show, find a crappy timeslot and keep it there. If it doesn’t work, then kill it. Mercifully, with a single shot to the script, not this bizarre and painful hunt where viewers pursue a show through the wilds of scheduling while it hemorrhages ratings all over the place. The worst part is that, when they finally put it out of its misery, the suits blame the low ratings the show was getting.
Yes, I am still bitter about ABC’s handling of Cupid.
On Dallas, when Patrick Duffy left the show, the Bobby Ewing character was killed off, in the beginning of one season. But, the ratings dropped during that season because NO Bobby-JR Conflict, so Dallas brought him back for the next season. In the Infamous Shower Scene, he says “I feel like my old self” and Pam dreamed that whole season. Unfortuately there was some good stories, that were wiped out, because of the “Dream Season”.
This was going to be my example from the '60s, but it slipped my mind until just now. I’ll point out that Homicide: Life on the Street got the same treatment from NBC – and the same timeslot.
Comedy Central’s scheduling of the debut of Joel Hodgeson’s (MST3K innovator) own show to debut opposite the season finale of the Simpsons (specifically the “Who Shot Mister Burns?” episode). AFAIK they never reran and it died an obscure death, I really haven’t seen Joel on TV since.
And they cancelled Strangers with Candy. Bastards.
Combat scheduling. The idea that you take your hospital drama and schedule it opposite the other network’s hospital drama in the hopes that you’ll suck viewers away from theirs. Am I the only one who thinks this is idiotic? Who thinks it would make more sense to schedule something else there? This idea that we have to put all the big shows on at the same time is just stupid. And yet, no one believes there’s any other way to do it.
The idea of the TV season. The idea that it starts at a certain time, ends at a certain time, and lasts only so long, with so many episodes. Wouldn’t it make more sense to have new shows starting all the time? The networks are already going there wiht mid-season replacements and summer shows, but why do we follow the almighty season anyway? Hopefully shows like “24” will instill the idea of mini-seasons.
And I know I’m one of the few here, but the idea that only cops, lawyers, and doctors are interesting.
A specific example is the current decision to place the only two shows on the major networks aimed at black audiences against each other. It’s bad enough that ABC and FOX have exactly one such show on their schedules. Effectively halving the audiences of each smacks of televised ethnic cleansing.
A specific example is the current decision to place the only two shows on the major networks aimed at black audiences against each other. It’s bad enough that ABC and FOX have exactly one such show on their schedules. Effectively halving the audiences of each smacks of televised ethnic cleansing.
In the short term? Yes, Letterman beat Leno for the first year they were both on. But in the long term, Leno has routinely beaten Letterman in the ratings – and the ratings are all that really count. Anything else is just your personal preference, and advertisers don’t pay to cater to your idiosyncratic whims.
Going with Leno ended up being the smart move for NBC.
Another blunder: NBC banishing Saturday morning cartoons in favor of teen sitcoms. It’s just not the same!
These days, they’d probably greenlight “Punky Brewster” for the TNBC lineup, and totally bypass the Punky cartoon spinoff. And then Glomer would be out of a job!
