Re: sf/f TV development news - 2012
Dollhouse was so bad it simply didn't deserve that second season and in all honesty it would've been better off without it (like that continuation of the 1st season finale that pretty much ruined the best episode that show had). Wasting resources on a show that doesn't deserve it, simply as an attempt to make up for canceling a good show is not a valid reason.
You thought
Dollhouse was bad, I thought it was brilliant. Opinions are beside the point, because obviously opinions will differ. The point is that the network stuck with the show and let it finish telling its complete story when most networks would've cancelled it far more quickly.
Fringe is an overall great show, but it had a scarily long stretch where it was so bad it was impossible to ignore its begging for a bullet in the head...
Again, your opinions of a show's quality have absolutely nothing to do with the question under discussion, which is whether it's fair or rational to claim that FOX is a killer of genre shows. Nothing you're saying here does anything to support that belief. If anything, just the opposite, since you're conceding that they kept the shows on far
longer than you thought they deserved. So you're undermining your own case.
Sarah Connor Chronicles, Alcatraz? I'm not sure you want to use shows as an example...
I did not actually use those shows as examples, so you're being completely counterfactual here. I think FOX did give
Sarah Connor the best chance it could under the circumstances, but of course it's ultimately ratings and cost that determine whether a show stays on the air; no matter how much a network may want to keep a show around, they can't if they're unable to bring in enough ad revenue to pay for its cost, and advertisers won't underwrite a show if viewers don't watch it. TSCC was a very good, intelligent show, but was perhaps a bit too sophisticated to hold an audience, and it was definitely an expensive show to make. As with
Dollhouse, it was lucky to get the two seasons it got. The old FOX regime would've cancelled it much sooner.
As for
Alcatraz, I can't imagine why you'd make the mistake of thinking I would've cited that show in support of my argument, because that show didn't last very long at all, and didn't deserve to. The bottom line is, no matter how supportive the network is, a lot of shows just won't work well enough to make it. Television is always a gamble. We've all seen so many shows in so many genres on so many networks get cancelled after half a season or less that it's bizarre for so many people to react as though it's somehow unique to genre shows or unique to one network.
A long history of canceling good shows isn't simply made up for by keeping undeserving ones on life support.
That is not a valid position, because your personal opinions about the relative merits of the shows in question are not objective truths. Many people would disagree with you that FOX only supported "undeserving" shows.
