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Unfairly Cancelled Shows.

The thing is whether or not a show should was fairly or unfairly canceled is subjective and depends a lot on whether you liked the show. Plenty of viable shows are canceled even though they won't be replaced by anything that does anything better, but the shows clearly will never be winners either. Sometimes there's no studio support for a show, which seems to be a shame because it's a bureaucratic decision, not a monetary/ratings decision. But, sometimes they think the show is a creative success, but not a popular success and those are the shows most people are upset at being canceled (even though, objectively, they'd be the most deserving of cancellation because they aren't viable).
 
Well, despite the examples, the right wingers will nevertheless continue to claim that it's all only the ineffable workings of the invisble hand of the market, aka natural law aka the will of God. And hobbyhorse riders, like the Firefly fans, will rant endlessly about how their show was shafted, without bothering to explain why.

Does anyone have anything to add on the why, other than that interesting story about Gunsmoke?
 
COP-ROCK :shifty:
a ground breaking,
innovative show
that (at the time)
should have been given more time.
 
stj said:
Well, despite the examples, the right wingers will nevertheless continue to claim that it's all only the ineffable workings of the invisble hand of the market, aka natural law aka the will of God. And hobbyhorse riders, like the Firefly fans, will rant endlessly about how their show was shafted, without bothering to explain why.

Does anyone have anything to add on the why, other than that interesting story about Gunsmoke?
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Keep the politics and the trolling in the Neutral Zone.
 
Farscape. Firefly. The tinkering in Mork + Mindy. Trek TOS. Futurama.
Both incarnations of The Tick.
80's style Saturday Morning cartoons.
 
stj said:
TG Theodore said:
MeanJoePhaser said:
Just another thread to complain about FIREFLY getting canned.

I heard that The Beverly Hillbillies was still getting good ratings when it was canned by CBS, because the network wanted to dump rural themed shows
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It was canned because a VP's wife liked Gunsmoke and the only way to make room for it on the fall schedule was to kill two sitcoms.

--Ted
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I don't know the source for that. But noneconomic motives do play an occasional roles, even petty, personal ones.
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How about this-it was canceled because it was a big, honking piece of shit that had no business being on the air-PERIOD!!

Jim Aubry, the moron who allowed shit like The Beverly Hillbillies to be put on the air, canceled great shows like East Side/West Side in order to put on crap that made money for CBS, and also made fun of rural people. He thought that this crap (and himself) would last, but obviously it didn't, because society and people, changed. Airing an idiotic show about poor people made wealthy does nothing for the network or the medium, and William Pacy realized that; that's why it was canceled. Also, it was time for TV to grow up and get mature, and these rural shows just didn't fit in with what America was becoming (too bad that such maturity wasn't present by the executives at CBS for East Side/West Side when it needed to be on the air.) Those are the real reasons.

What is East Side/West Side?, and why is it better than shows like The Beverly Hillbillies? Here's a history of the show: East Side/West Side: An Overview

Here's the Wikipedia entry: East Side/West Side

Sadly, that's the history of most of the canceled shows we all know and like-canceled for complete and utter shit that's popular, and becomes 'classic' through reruns, but is still shit.
 
The urban sophistication of Gunsmoke is not obvious to anyone else I dare say. I dare add, the networks' commitment to the artistic improvement of US culture isn't obvious either. Since Gunsmoke was the ER of its day, it's not a bit obvious why it didn't deserve cancellation.

I repeat, please explain why cancellation was unfair. Also, please don't waste time explaining that all shows are cancelled for the good reason they aren't profitable (enoug.) That nonsense has been refuted already.
 
stj said:
I repeat, please explain why cancellation was unfair. Also, please don't waste time explaining that all shows are cancelled for the good reason they aren't profitable (enoug.) That nonsense has been refuted already.
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Since virtually none of us is privy to the decision-making going into a show's cancellation or rescue, I doubt any explanation will suffice here for any party involved in this debate.
 
^^^You may have a point. But to be fair, the annoying thing is not that the explanations aren't convincing, it's because there aren't any. How is it unfair to cancel an expensive show like Farscape after four seasons of declining ratings, for instance? The topic is actually interesting, so not discussing it is kind of frustrating.
 
^ and that is a good point that you make, as well.

However, to the average viewer who has little conception of the costs of a show, ending said series before its intended time, before it had a chance to run the course for its story (such as in the case of Farscape) constitutes being "unfair". Or in the case of Crusade and Firefly, before it really even got started, it can seem even more unfair to said viewers. Ratings are a harsh criteria, of course, but to someone like me, for example, who devotes himself to the story being told, it is painful if that show doesn't get a chance to tell the story.
 
Oh, the shows whose cancellations were very disappointing. I too have had my fair share of those. It seems I got off on the side track of shows which were cancelled despite having good or decent ratings.

My apologies for misunderstanding the whole topic.:(
 
Twin Peaks. My favorite show of all time. There has been nothing like it before or since its debut. Oh well, at least it got a prequel movie!
 
Neroon said:
stj said:
I repeat, please explain why cancellation was unfair. Also, please don't waste time explaining that all shows are cancelled for the good reason they aren't profitable (enoug.) That nonsense has been refuted already.
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Since virtually none of us is privy to the decision-making going into a show's cancellation or rescue, I doubt any explanation will suffice here for any party involved in this debate.
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Yep, the economic argument is a non-starter. We simply don't know and the corporate honchos will never tell us. That's competitive info and they would be insane to release it to the public. Why would they, there's nothing in it for them.

There may very well have been shows that had every economic right to survive but got axed anyway. I could see corporate hijinks happening every so often - some new head of TV development comes in and decides to axe the last guy's pet projects to make way for his own, so that perfectly healthy shows are killed off in the changing of the guard.

Other than that, I don't know why or how it would happen. The honchos keep their jobs by having economically successful shows. They aren't going to cut their own throats for no reason.
It seems I got off on the side track of shows which were cancelled despite having good or decent ratings.
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That's the problem. We don't know what "good or decent ratings" are for any given show because of the missing pieces of the puzzle that we'll never know. We can make educated guesses that certain shows look more expensive than others, and use industry gossip to ferret out cases where somebody's ego got out of control, but it's always going to be guesswork.
 
Pushing Daisies
Boston Legal
Star Trek - The Original Series
Star Trek - The Animated Series
Star Trek - Enterprise
Arrested Development
Keen Eddie
Darkwing Duck
Show Me The Money (William Shatner's game show, hilarious)
D.A.G.
The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles
 
Journeyman! I've been on a western kick recently, too, with The Magnificent Seven and Dead Man's Gun.
 
Black Lodge said:
Twin Peaks. My favorite show of all time. There has been nothing like it before or since its debut. Oh well, at least it got a prequel movie!
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ah yeah, it's being run now on Chiller, i remember having a huge crush on Joan Chen when that show first aired
 
Temis the Vorta said:
Yep, the economic argument is a non-starter. We simply don't know and the corporate honchos will never tell us. That's competitive info and they would be insane to release it to the public. Why would they, there's nothing in it for them.
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The worst kinds of governments are inbred, overtly secretive, and unaccountable.

We can make educated guesses that certain shows look more expensive than others, and use industry gossip to ferret out cases where somebody's ego got out of control, but it's always going to be guesswork.
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With Shark I've heard contradictory rumours of James Woods being 'difficult'.
 
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