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Underground > Film, TV & Theatre >

Cancellation

09:28 / 15.12.02

I had a brief search for other topics on this, but came up empty - which surprises me. If I'm wrong, feel free to delete this.

We've had a couple of much loved shows bite the dust recently (I'm talking Farscape and Firefly in particular), and it looks as though the network is trying to bury Angel, too. Many of the cancellations have played havoc with what the series itself is attempting to achieve, most notably in the case of Babylon 5.

What to people think of this phenomena? Understandably commerce has created an extremely limited medium, in which ambitious series dealing with ongoing characters, storys and themes will get trashed unless they manage to pull in vast viewing figures (which seems to be increasingly rare). What do we need here? A change in the industry or writers who are able to deliver stories flexible enough to be tied up wherever and whenever the axe falls? A mini-series seems manoeuvrable enough to avoid these pitfalls, but would we want to see the ideas layed out over just five or six episodes?

Can anyone set the world to rights and suggest how the industry should be run?

12:53 / 15.12.02

Fist off...all the Neilson families. Up Against The Wall!

Look how bad the x-files got in the last few years, always plague by "Is this our last seasonitis". The ending they did finally get was laughable.
Then there's one of my favorite Chris Carter shows, Millenium, which had no ending whatsoever and then tried to make up for it by having the main character appear in an ep. of x-files. That had to be one of the worse ways to bring closure to a series. Not to mention the fact that it answered nothing from the show. It felt like a pity pat on the head.
All tv shows should come with a minimum 2 season contract.

Our Lady of The Two Towers

12:01 / 16.12.02

I always found the idea of Millenium a lot more interesting than that of X-Files, B5:Crusade gave more bang-for-bucks than the initial episodes of the original B5. TV execs are scared I suppose. But then their job isn't to show TV programs. It's their job to schedule filler between the ad breaks, that's what they do these days.

14:26 / 16.12.02

Actually, Millennium had three endngs. The apocalypse of the second season. Then the surprise renewal of the third, which lead to the ultimate betrayal and possible hope of the end. And finally that godawful X-Files episode with that one good bit with Frank not even wanting to watch the countdown and walking off with his daughter.

Ah, what a show...

18:15 / 16.12.02

i don't know about a minumum 2 seasons, but a single FULL season would be way rad, i mean if the tv execs don't feel too great about a show they could suspend it durning sweeps and then bring it back for the non sweeps, i just HATE shows that only 1/2season chance! if a show dinna do to well, after a full season of trying to find an audience, fine don't bring it back! but for a few months? or even 2 episodes? NO WAY! give it a full season...

Tryphena Absent

21:13 / 16.12.02

The rule should be give a show one complete season, if it gets a cult following it's assured a loyal fanbase and you should do right by it. If you're going to screw it up later by cancelling it mid-season or allowing a story arc that is going to be screwed up then just cancel it after that first season. The problem is that suddenly a steady number watching a show isn't enough, ratings have to be on the rise, they don't treat us right. I hate them. This should blatantly be in the hate thread in conversation... never mind.

21:27 / 16.12.02

if networks had to contractually comic to an entire season or two, you'd wind up with even worse shows on the market overall. no one would take a risk on anything if they knew it was going to cost them 40 million dollars without a net.

anyway, as long as shows like the sopranos are on, i could care less how many shows get cancelled. how much tv do you really need to watch?

Tryphena Absent

23:56 / 16.12.02

I'd agree but I don't like the Soprano's and I think the television in the US is absolutely appalling anyway- they don't commit to making a series because they're so ridiculously long and too often the programmes are awful because they're so repetitive. Why don't they just make the average season shorter, ask writers to construct a shorter story arc, then extend the idea if they like it.

Our Lady of The Two Towers

12:11 / 17.12.02

And how many of the shows that go on for years have a big audience straight away? Didn't it take two or three years for the X-Files to expand 'beyond' just being a cult show, and Buffy? Star Trek got cancelled twice and only became big on reruns, so cancelling shows after ten minutes doesn't make long term sense for having shows that will attract people so they watch the adverts.

13:09 / 17.12.02

It's getting to the point where I don't want to watch any science-fiction on television because who knows when it'll get cancelled. It's very frustrating, because I get emotional invested in those two-dimensional characters.

13:37 / 23.12.02

If a show gets cancelled in it's first season then on the whole I tend not to mind too much. Rarely does television (and particularly sci-fi) get really good until a couple of seasons in and so I find I don't mind too much.
When a show runs for something like 4 years though (Farscape, B5 for example) then I think things change slightly and the networks have a responsibility to the viewers. I understand that they're only trying to make money and if a show stops getting the viewers they will look to cancel but there should be some sort of contractual obligation to provide a certain number of episodes notice to the writers so the fans don't get short changed. Farscape for example got something like 2 days notice before they finished filming the final episode of the season. That's just plain ridiculous and the sci-fi channel should be ashamed of themselves. Not that I'm upset at all about it, oh no....

02:01 / 19.09.06

On the Carnivale DVDs, Dan Knauf talks about how happy he is he's working for HBO, where he will have the opportunity to do his complete "six season novel," without having to worry about getting cut off midway through. That reads pretty ironic now, but I think it indicates a bigger issue which is that the best TV shows are the ones with an overall arc in mind, and that move towards an ultimate destination. However, the very nature of the medium makes this so difficult.

You first have to get your script approved, then get your pilot picked up, huge amounts of work, with no guarantee anyone will even see it. If you've got this many limits, it would be pretty difficult to think of the overall five or six year plan. You can see in Buffy that it takes until the first season to really clarify the themes and arcs that would inform the rest of the series. And even after its success, Joss always designed each season finale to potentially serve as a series finale.

02:03 / 19.09.06

And with regards to a minimum run, networks always seem to buy 13 episodes to start, so I think the least they should do is show six episodes in the same timeslot, with no interruptions. If a show doesn't pick up an audience after that, maybe it just won't work, but at least make it easy for people to sample. Fox was perhaps the most guilty of messing with good shows, with the constant timeslot shifts for Firefly, Arrested Development and Wonderfalls.

ONLY NICE THINGS

10:53 / 19.09.06

And with regards to a minimum run, networks always seem to buy 13 episodes to start, so I think the least they should do is show six episodes in the same timeslot, with no interruptions.

OK - but now explain to me why, please. Networks are primarily although not exclusively concerned with a ratio of cost to advertiser desirability - a factor which includes audience numbers and audience demography. If they are moving shows, it's because they think they can take action which includes moving shows that increases the overall desirability of their programming. There's no moral obligation on their part to cosset a show which they feel is not pulling its weight regarding that desirability. They can certainly be challenged on their judgement - I think, personally, that Firefly could have been far more successful if it had been handled correctly - but they are making those calls.

14:53 / 19.09.06

I don't think there's any moral obligatioin to a show, but I also feel like you've got to make it easy for people to see the show, and that means showing it at the same time every week. If they think the timeslot's going to be so bad that they'd need to move the show a week after it aired, perhaps they shouldn't have put it in that timeslot to begin with.

Most of this comes from my struggle to watch the last season of Arrested Development. The show was moved around, pre-empted, shown on random nights, if you weren't already a fan of the show, there's no way you would be able to keep up with the changes. Admittedly, by that point I think they had conceded the show. But, Wonderfalls was an example of a show that got huge critical acclaim and was shown only a couple of times. A lot of shows don't hit right away, and sometimes moving them will help, but generally speaking, just try to make it as easy as possible for people to find the show, and that means actually showing an episode every week.

16:48 / 19.09.06

What do we need here? A change in the industry or writers who are able to deliver stories flexible enough to be tied up wherever and whenever the axe falls?

I think the later are desirable because even a quality show lives under the shadow of the axe (and often doesn't get a chance because of Lineup Roulette, where the network HIDES a show or just pre-empts it without warning). I think you can move towards an overall arc and still have satisfying finales, it'll just take writers who are masters of pacing.

I rather like the idea of writers forced to go without season-end cliffhangers too. I've never been a fan of using them in a finale - often the dramatic tension that's been built up by a season's run is lost during the months or even a year's downtime as fans wait for the new episodes. And when the show gets cancelled before they're resolved...oh boy.

A mini-series seems manoeuvrable enough to avoid these pitfalls, but would we want to see the ideas layed out over just five or six episodes?

I wouldn't mind seeing more direct-to-DVD miniseries put out, and having their continued success depend on renting and sales figures instead of ratings. There's that continuing push for DVDs these days anyhow, where people realized the really like being able to watch five, six episodes or entire seasons in a row without commercials and weeks between showings. Why not take advantage of that?

Maybe the idea of direct-to-the-shelf shows produced with the intent of making money on their own sales and merchandising instead of advertising revenue is a pipe dream, but I think we're moving closer to a time when the technology for a home-grown scene that does just that is more and more feasible. A budget would be nice, but good scripts and directing and a willingness to try new things would be better.

ONLY NICE THINGS

22:53 / 19.09.06

I wouldn't mind seeing more direct-to-DVD miniseries put out, and having their continued success depend on renting and sales figures instead of ratings.

Well, there's a definite possible avenue for series that have a small audience in TV terms, but which don't cost that much to make and can rely on a dedicated audience - something like the Sopranos or Arrested Development. Or, alternatively, things which have a very small but very dedicated fanbase which doesn't mind very low production values, and does not mind low sales in turn, like Colin Baker's The Stranger. You could mmmaybe do that with Firefly, but you'd need to change the model somehow.

22:14 / 20.09.06

I don't think totally new shows would work with a direct to DVD format, but for the biggest names, particularly Joss Whedon, I think that distribution method would make perfect sense. If Serenity was released as a direct to DVD movie, with half the budget it had, it'd probably have made a bigger profit, and I think an ongoing series of Buffy DVD movies could make tons of money.

To some extent, HBO relies on this model, because it's subscription based. If enough people subscribe to watch a show, it'll continue. I think direct to DVD makes a lot of sense, considering so many people are starting to watch shows primarily on DVD, and it's only a matter of someone taking a risk on the right material to make it work. And, looking at the Buffy example, there's no reason you couldn't do a Buffy direct to DVD movie, and give it a small theatrical release with no advertising or a cable broadcast before hand. The Whedon fans would still go, and buy it on DVD, and you'd wind up with just some extra money.