Slashdot Mirror
WB Cancels Angel
Ray Radlein writes "Despite a 36% increase over last year's comparable ratings, the WB Network announced today that they are cancelling Angel as of the end of this season." Unfortunate since this season was stronger than the last. " The link also makes taunting mentions of movie plans.
Or, can anyone say spinoff? The REALLY REALLY need to do a series about Willow...
The darkness... controls the music. The music... controls the soul.
This is really quite sad. I always thought the show was great. It had the correct blend of humor and action, and I liked the characters more than in Buffy.
Unfortunately, they did a major format change (they went from the underdogs to in charge of a mega-million evil corporation), and most of the original characters are gone.
But it was still one of the better shows on TV.
Hopefully they will have a chance to end the series with some sort of of finality, unlike Farscape.
They take a decent show with a devoted following off the air and replace it with something to catch an audience that will last for maybe half-a-season; such as a reality show or another lame comedy
Its basically what Fox did with Futurama; even though it had high ratings and a good viewer following, they kept manipulating its timeslot and pre-empting it over and over. Then they finally cancelled it because its 7:00pm Sunday timeslot (that was pre-empted by baseball or football four out of five times) didn't garner enough ratings for it.
At least we can look forward to WB presenting us with "Showgirls: The Series" or "Lawn Care Crisis: The Reality Show"
slashdot, news for crazed liberal socialist zealots
As the name implies, being the highest rated doesn't always mean that a show is going to stay. Two things can affect a show at that point to make it be cancelled.
Costs. This is what actually happened with Buffy that forced the move to UPN. Although it was a very highly-rated show for WB, the per episode cost had gotten to be in the (IIRC) $2.2 million range. If we assume that, say, Everwood generates $1.2 million on a budget of $300,000, and (in this peculiar example), Buffy generates $2.9 million, then we realize that ratings aren't what it's all about.
Who is watching? This feeds into the above, because certain fan-bases aren't as profitable as others. Way back in the day, CBS cancelled "The Beverly Hillbillies" because (despite high ratings) the only people actually providing the high ratings were older, rural people (Surprise!), and advertisers don't like them as much. Now, I would assume Angel's target and bulk of viewership is a younger, teen and twentysomething crowd, but I might be entirely wrong.
Or it could just be "creative differences". Maybe Joss is a bastard to work with. Maybe some new exec came on board who has a different, not so sci-fi direction for the network. Maybe Boreanaz had made some secretive noise about being sick of playing the same characters for 7 some-odd years. But more likely, I'd peg it to one of the above theories.
Angel was one of few shows worth dow... watching. I totally dig the combination of humor and darkness.
I guess the only good thing about this is that they can go out with a bang. C'mon writers, let's fuck us good in the last few episodes. Have Angel yearn for the Angelus years. Kill off Lorne. Kill off Gunn. Push Westley back into the darkness, and have him take Fred with him.
Boom, sooner or later... boom.
Belief is the currency of delusion.
Sad. Angel is one of only three shows I actually go out of my way to watch. It's always had a good mix of drama and humor. I also enjoy the fact that it has an overarching plotline, which rewards loyal viewers.
It's nice that they told Joss early so that he could wrap up the series. But it never feels like TV shows are cancelled at the right time. Either a show gets cancelled just as it seems to be hitting a good stride (Futurama), or it gets dragged out until it becomes a tired self-parody (Friends, and to some extent, The Simpsons).
Maybe after it finally wraps up, fans can look back on a very satisfying conclusion. But I tend to think that it had a couple of solid years left.
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!
I think some form of Pay Per View will prevent this from happening in the future. At present, Broadcast TV shows are payed for by advertiser who pay for "eyeballs" i.e. a lot of people within a certain demographic. This creates a powerful incentives to seek the lowest common denominator. Even cable shows suffer from this effect but to a lesser extent. But, if we could deliver shows to individuals at different prices, quirky shows with small but loyal audiences who were willing to pay a relative premium could survive.
You see, there's this little trick I've found for browsing Slashdot: Don't click on stories you're not interested in.
The pitfall is, you lose out on the opportunity to make fun of people for caring about things you find boring and trivial. But you save hours upon hours of time, which you can put towards important things like blogging, or trying out yet another test release of Fedora Core, or any of those other things that you personally enjoy but 99% of the world finds pointless and trivial.
Give it a try.
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!
I'm an Angel fan, but this was really no suprise. Some thoughts...
1) The writing for Angel recently hasn't been up to par with the Angel/Buffy tradition. The recent story line where they brought back that EVIL lawyer from the first season...meh. If they're not saving the world, then it ain't a Buffy/Angel story line.
For me, a recent low point arrived in the Cordelia return episode (two weeks ago). Angel tells her "It's not like I made a deal with the devil here" and then immediately turns to make lunch-date arragnements with a red-skinned, horned demon sporting a goatee. Give me a break.
2) All the actors in the Angel/Buffy series are talented and it would be great to see them move onto other projects. Actaully, yesterday I was thinking to myself that it would be cool to see James Marsters (Spike) have a role in some drama (not even a blockbuster - even a small, indie film). Now that they're not locked into the rough schedule of filming a TV show, it'll be possible.
Why isn't Nicholas Brendon (Xander) a star yet? Ditto for Amber Benson (Tara). It's a conspiracy, I tell ya!.
3) There are still dozens of hours of entertainment left for people who got to the series late:D I missed the first few years of Angel, so now I'll just watch it in syndication (did the same with Buffy on FX channel).
4) If everyone goes out and buys up all the Angel DVDs, maybe they'll resurrect the series (or a spin off) like they did with Family Guy?
5) Charisma Charpenter is going to be in Playboy later this year. Coming soon: Cordelia the Animated Series on SpikeTV. 'Nuff said.
I don't have cable or reception and I like it that way. I watch good shows on DVD when they come out - I like it that way. What I can't understand is why great shows get cancled. Now, I don't know if Angel is a great show or not - someday I'll rent it and see. But the list of really good shows that get cancled is insane.
Farscape and Firefly - I can't fathom why these shows got cancled, except for the fact that they were intelligent, interesting, and compelling. About two weeks ago, I watched the last Firefly DVD and the next day I watched the first Babylon 5 DVD. I know lots of you think B5 is great, but honestly, the acting, the plots, the characters, the effects, litterally everything about B5 was "B" quality - right down to the hulking slow walking "creature from the black lagoon" type monster in the 4th episode. Firefly went 13 episodes - B5 goes on for years. Makes absolutely no sense.
While I was watching the Farscap discs, I tried to watch Andromeda. I got through 3 or 4 based solely on the fact that Andromeda was cute. Otherwise, everything but the special effects sucked. For real - one character's costume was purple makeup and a tail attached to a belt as if it was some Halloween party. The stories and most the characters were just lame. And even if there were two interesting characters (the tech kid and andromeda), the lousy acting of everyone else and the boring unoriginal stories just can't compennsate.
I don't know what it is with the networks. They have no understanding of what is good. And I can't understand what it is with viewers - are we so deprived of sci-fi that we will accept anything at all? I'm bitter. Sorry for the rant.
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
Angel is another one of those shows that, at one time, WAS a great show. In my opinion, Angel "jumped the shark" after loosing Cordelia's character. NOTE I say loosing Cordelia's character, not loosing Charisma Carpenter from the regular cast. I'm also including all of last year when Cordelia was possessed by her demon baby (even though that satan/rock beast was cool). I hadn't realized how much of the weight of the show Cordelia was carrying until she was gone.
But I do want to say that I think Angel has done great things technologically and cinematically. They were one of the first shows to be presented in widescreen, and were one of the first -- and are still one of the only -- shows to be presented in High Def. No matter how far downhill the show has gone, nobody can take these kudos away.
Punctanym: alternate spelling of words using punctuation or numerals in place of some or all of its letters; see 'leet'
This sort of stupidity makes me glad I am a Nielson family this week.
Keeping track of what I watch has brought home to me how little I DO watch. Angel is one of the shows I watch.
The great thing is this datum will be entered into Nielson's computers - that Angel has a person making damn good money watching it, and NOT MUCH ELSE on WB.
Since most of television today is either
a) "Reality" shows (HEY KIDS! LET'S STAB EACH OTHER IN THE BACK TO GET AHEAD!)
b) Sit-coms (HEY KIDS! LET'S HIT THE LAUGH TRACK EVERYTIME SOMEBODY SAYS SOMETHING! THAT WILL MAKE IT FUNNY!)
c) CSI (HEY KIDS! LETS MAKE A SHOW ABOUT SCIENCE THAT GETS IT WRONG ON EVERY SHOW)
d) Law and order (HEY KIDS! LET'S PULL SHIT THAT NO REAL JUDGE WOULD TOLERATE!)
After all, you now have NBC (All "Law and Order", all the time), CBS (All "CSI", all the time), WB (All Pokemon, all the time), and UPN (All crap, all the time.) Yeah, I *really* want to run out and buy a HDTV.
www.eFax.com are spammers
You're doing yourself a disservice if you do not watch the second season of Babylon 5 before deciding if the series is any good.
When I watched the first season of B5 I thought it was nothing special especially with Deep Space 9 as an alternative. However, the story arc really tightens in the second and the wait between episodes suddenly becomes unbearable. This continous on towards the fourth season. Because of uncertainty as to whether there would've been a fifth season JMS had to wrap up a lot of story lines by the end of the fourth and so the fifth season ended up being a bit of dissapointment in comparison.
Never attribute to stupidity what can be construed as a monopoly preservation tactic.
Perhaps some of you have heard the logic that goes along the lines of:
In a buyer/seller arrangement, the buyer can make demands upon the seller. After all, the buyer can always just not buy the product. The seller will usually pander to the buyer as long as the seller gets the price that he wants. Note the term price. When you watch network television, you aren't paying a dime to the network. It's free. That means that you're not the buyer.
Who does pay money? Advertisers. They are the buyer, the network is the seller. You? You're the product.
This cancellation should be a good demonstration of this proposition: the buyer wants teenage eyes watching the TV, so the seller will arrrange for shows that will get as many teenagers as possible to watch it. So there we are: "your" show gets cancelled, you non-teenager, you. In turn they put on something that is likely to capture the (perceived) average teenager.
This isn't a cynical post, it's just a working through of logic, and a possible solution: if you want to watch the shows you want to watch, pay for them.
DVD sales potential has changed some of the thinking of the networks, but still the best way to pay for your shows is directly, through pay channels: HBO, Showtime, etc, etc.
I like being a customer (or a collaborator, see open source). It's why I'm willing to pay for good work. Try being a customer, you'll get what you want more often.