It seems that Family Net is doing a 'Rural Purge in Reverse'. In particular, they seem to have a vendetta against any musical genre that is not country or gospel, as well as dumping any show that has a general audience and replacing it with shows that appeal to either grandmas or 'Southerners'.
For September, they are dumping the syndicated version of Dont Forget The Lyrics from their weekday night line-up in favor of Sue Thomas FB Eye, a boring show that has country music for an opening theme.
They are also dumping the general-audience 100HuntleyStreet in favor of the crappy Movin On, a very dull trucking series that has country music for its opening theme.
The late night weeknight showings of DFTL are being replaced by... infomercials!
Jeremy.
Edited by jeremypatterson Hide / Show Replies
The one remaining showing of DFTL (Saturday afternoons at 5:30 PM Eastern) will be going to... Music Row Profiles.
Jeremy.
Derek [=McDouglas=]
Hey... On my ABC station, WEAR-TV in Southwest Alabama, they aired 3rd Rock from the Sun at 3:35am CT Every between two paid programming shows early Saturday and Sunday mornings. This is the only sitcom ABC is currently airing. Very screwed...
Could you add this?
Edited by kokoroanime Hide / Show Replies
Flawless Victree
This is just a suggestion, but can we change the trope's name to "Kablammed"? Since Kablam is a good example of this trope?
"Okay, yeah, I guess Ollie fits the goofy sidekick role, but being a princess doesn't mean I spontaneously sing about everything, 'kay?" Hide / Show Replies
No examples as a Trope Namer. Not everyone is going to understand what it means. Also, this type of question belongs into the Trope Repair Shop.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
It's super effective.
How does a video game, which isn't a continuing series with timeslots or anything resembling a "network", but an individual product sold in stores, usually with at least one year between instalments count?
Edited by OldManHoOh Hide / Show Replies
It can still be screwed in the same way: Not advertised, released in low numbers, released in a buggy form, etc.
We also need to compile the "blacklist".
J Michael Straczynski hasn't been able to make a single season of a show before some network executive koshes him over the head and rapes him.
Joss Whedon is just more recent, and thus more familiar to those on the internet.
Minear is of course "The Tim Reaper" - if he's involved, the show will be awesome, and the executives are already setting up the sacrificial altar.
Edited by FinalStarman Hide / Show Replies
It's not so much Joss Whedon as it is the shows that he makes: science fiction shows with relatively high per-episode costs and middling ratings. Those shows often get killed not just because they get middling ratings, but also because there are other shows competing with them that get both higher ratings and lower production costs.We tend to forget that it's not just ratings and costs that the Networks look at - they also look at the opportunity cost of having a show in a particular slot and time.
For example, let's say Fox has a choice of two shows for a prime-time slot. One is a science fiction show that costs $1.5 million an episode and generates middling ratings (with a strong fanbase). The other is a reality show that costs $150,000 per episode, and gets five times the ratings. Even better, since the reality show has no "stars" that carry over between seasons, the studio isn't subject to actors that might demand higher pay-raises as time goes on. Which one do you think they'll go with?
I'm a little uncertain of how the page description indicates this kind of thing is done on the basis that executives are trying to make themselves look good. First off, how would being in charge of shows that get cancelled cause you to "look good"? But the bigger thing is, from what I've seen at least, it seems this trope is invoked when a network simply doesn't have confidence in a show (whether said lack of confidence is justified is another matter) and decides to try to not bother putting investment into it, be that advertising for it (which is taking away from either direct profits from companies that pay them to advertise, or taking away indirect profits that a commercial for a more promising show would give), a good time slot, or number of episodes (a strong sign that a new show isn't going to make it is if the initial episode order is reduced to something below the usual 13).
So I'm unsure this trope is really that much about executives trying to kill shows than it is them not thinking a show really has much of a future (possibly for valid reasons, possibly for not-as-valid reasons), and "tucking it away" so it won't do much harm to your bigger hits. So I'm curious as to whether there's any real proof that the general reason for this is executives trying to get a show cancelled rather than executives not feeling a show has much potential.
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It's hard to say, really, because we don't have any way to judge it unless one of the creators/writers/executives talks about it.
In many cases, you're right. People forget that advertising and promoting movies (and to a lesser extent television shows) can be very costly, so the distributors will often cut their losses and let a show die when they think it's doomed to failure.
removed
- It's now been announced that Smackdown will move to Syfy in October 2010.
Not an example... Yet.
I'm surprised Stargate Universe isn't mentioned in here. It seems a very obvious case of being screwed by the network, what with getting switched to Tuesday for no good reason to compete with CSI.
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Shouldn't The Simpsons be mentionned here as they have parodied it a dozen times, especially with The Krusty Show. The Futurama parody is mentionned, so The Simpsons parody should be here as well.
She/Her
"Put it in a different time slot each episode, show it in the wrong order, bury it at Midnight, put it up against CSI... do everything you can to stop it from building up a regular viewing audience that's not quite big enough to warrant the budget, but just big enough to cause some trouble when you cancel it for not "attracting the right audience". "
Is the line really supposed to be "stop it", or make sure it happens? Because that's the kind of audience that these shows usually build up. Is the line supposed to refer to preventing it from building up an audience big enough to warrant the budget?
There seems to have been a massive amount deleted off the page by one unnamed user a few days ago. No reason was given for these mass deletions and the things that were deleted look fine to me in regards to the trope granted I don't know a lot about the shows/videogame/movie they talk about. Was this a proper editing job?
Edited by Tableau Hide / Show Replies
I wondered about that too. I'm of a mind that, in absence of a good explanation, tropers should just re-post their deleted entries. That's what I'm going to do as soon as I remember my password.
The explanation given (it was done in multiple edits, and it was given in the first of the edits) was that a lot of the examples either weren't really examples or were just people complaining about how a show was cancelled. Which honestly does seem to be what this trope has become; despite the warning that it shouldn't be about shows that just didn't succeed based on the fact the audience didn't watch it, that kind of "my show was cancelled! It MUST be those nasty executives who messed it up, because it couldn't possibly be true that maybe a large portion of the audience doesn't share my tastes!" thing DOES build up.
I'd like to restate again my dubiousness of this trope, at least how it stands now. It spends a bunch of time talking about how executives do this deliberately because they want to make themselves look good (without giving any actual source or back-up; it seems to be a big bunch of speculation). I'd prefer if this was significantly rewritten to talk more generally about how scheduling problems or lack of promotion can prevent a show from getting an audience and to be an example-less trope; if it applies, put it on a show's own page.
Warble
Anybody in favour of breaking it up into a, "Cartoon Network," folder and an, "Other," folder? Because a good chunk of this seems to be Cartoon Network or a closely related network...
Edited by Icalasari I wonder what a strip tease from a creature made of souls would be like? Hide / Show Replies
Hell, let's sort it by network instead of category; "Cartoon Network/Warner Bros.", "Disney", "Nickelodeon", "Fox", and "Other"; no points for guessing which will have the least entries.
These are the voyages...
Y'know, a picture of Joss Whedon would work well, as he seems to be the poster child for this trope in Science Fiction circles...
Be careful what you wish for, 'cause you might just get it all... Hide / Show Replies
Per TRS
, this is defined as "Network made a bad business decision regardless of intent that resulted in low returns, thus cancellation", as opposed to "Network intentionally sabotages the work", any form of speculation or audience complaining about Cancellation.
Patiently awaiting the release of Paper Luigi and the Marvelous Compass.