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What Has Fox Got Against Its Own Sci-Fi Shows?
brumgrunt writes "Dollhouse. The Sarah Connor Chronicles. Fringe. Three science fiction shows that Fox commissioned, put on the air, and — in the case of at least one of them — has won rave reviews. But why does it seem that Fox is trying to kill some of its own shows with crazy scheduling decisions? How can Fringe survive after being pulled for two months, and what hope is there for Sarah Connor and Dollhouse on a Friday night?"
Firefly's handling was a travesty. Great show that was scheduled to death.
But Dollhouse sucks on its own. It's Fantasy Island with anorexic girls.
Fox did the same Episode Shuffle with Dollhouse that was done with Firefly. I heard a critic say that the Bow Hunter episode was originally episode 6, and some of the plot had to be cut out because it involved stuff that hadn't occured yet being the second episode. Also, the very beginning of the series, the motorcycle sequence, was a complete addition by the executives at fox.
/rant
But yes, Dollhouse is no Firefly, due to Dr. Dusku's Horrible acting ability, and the fact that the only real "character" is the programmer guy. A blank slate is not a character.
Whether or not there is some sort of god, I'm not supposed to say/god is a word and the argument ends there-Smog
The same thing happened in 1979 with Battlestar Galactica. The network green lighted the show. Heavily promoted it and it was doing well. The demographics were great. Show with the most college graduates watching had the under 35 crowd going for it. So why did it have to die?
In a word, production costs. An hour of Galactica could cost 1 million dollars which would bring in 2 million dollars. Thus a 1 million dollar profit. On the other hand 30 minutes of Happy Days and 30 minutes of Mork and Mindy would cost the network a total of $250,000. But it would bring in 2.5 million.
So do the math. Decent sci-fi show 1 dollar out for every dollar in. Cheap but good rated comedy gives us 2.25 dollars out for every dollar in.
The network starts looking at that time slot and sees that it can put in 2 sitcoms, or a Law and Order, or a CSI and make twice as much money. At that point the show has to die.
In the case of classic Glactica they put the show in hiatus. Then brought it back without advertising, they changed what time it was on. They changed what night it was on. The fans were to loyal. They would hunt the show out and find it each time. The ratings were not dropping fast enough. They had to convert the show into "Galictica 1981" (shudder) to finally kill the thing.
As with most business decisions. Follow the money.
vi +
My understanding is that thus far the shuffling has been largely done by Whedon, despite a lot of claims to the contrary. Whedon rejected the pilot, for example, as it just didn't fit together. The major issues with Dollhouse are that Fox has been, apparently, very heavy handed with the first few episodes (and given thus far we've had one good one, one OK one, and two dreadful ones [2, 4, 1 and 2, respectively], it's safe to say they've not done so to the show's credit. Supposedly Ep6 or 7 is where it starts getting "good".
BTW, does anyone else have problems with the notion that Fringe is "Sci-fi"? To my mind, paranormal investigations are anti-sci-fi. But, whatever. I hope Fringe dies. And T:SCC, well, I think Friedman's entirely to blame what happened to it, not scheduling. The show has been utterly awful this season, seventeen shows (well, minus that cool one with Cameron spending her evenings in the library investigating the robot from the 1920s) of utter, unrelenting, depression. Unfortunately, I can't see how this could have turned out better, given that if Fox or WB had decided to take it over, we'd probably have a Ted McGinley terminator chasing the Connors by now, with the Connors defending themselves using their hilarious new canine terminator.
Someone give Friedman some anti-depressants.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
I know a guy who was president of Fox TV in the 90's. I used to get the impression (listening to him) that the network was always working against itself (they had had something like 6 presidents in a row lose their jobs in brief stints). I recall talking about Jennifer Love Hewitt's failed series that was a spinoff from "Party of Five". When I asked him about show he said "They guessed her horrible. They should have put her in a tube top and forgot about it". Since then whenever I hear the expression "screw up a wet dream" I think of Fox Entertainment.
Fox is like Circuit City. They cut their good stuff and bring in new and inexperienced stuff because it's cheaper. Every time a show becomes more popular, with each renewal, writers, actors and others negotiate for higher pay. Fox does not look for viewer loyalty and clearly does not see this as important to their bottom line. They, instead, seem to be focused on short-term gains and returns. They are the most capitalistic of the networks and the results speak for themselves.
It doesn't matter to them that viewers who care about the long term enjoyment of a series will often avoid getting hooked into a show because it is run by Fox as there are plenty of people who are willing to watch and their numbers are sufficient and their advertisers don't seem to care either, which leads me to the next point. If you would like to teach Fox to behave and keep their best series, you have to complain to the ADVERTISERS, not to Fox. Fox will not listen to viewers -- they are short-sighted to the point that they take viewers for granted.
I wonder actually how much has to do with Rupert Murdoch (say his name three times and he appears, so be carefull.) There was an interview a few days ago in "Portfolio" with Paul LaMonica's discussing his new book, "Inside Rupert's Brain." From the article:
MM: You describe Murdoch has having almost a kind of attention deficit disorder -- he gets obsessed with something for two or three years, then forgets all about it and moves onto something else. Recently, he's been taking a lot of criticism for his fixation on newspapers. Is it just a phase?
PL: That one I think is going to be a little more difficult for him to outgrow. Clearly he did kind of have that phase with satellite television and with online media...but with newspapers, simply because it is a business he grew up in, it may be a little harder for him to let go that infatuation, especially since The Wall Street Journal is something he's hungered for for at least two decades. Anything that's a kind of ego-driven type of media business, which in many cases books and newspapers are, it may be difficult for him to give that up even if it's not fiscally a growing part of his business.
Bark less. Wag more.
Alright I took time to read the article, and I think it's just a lot of FUD. After all, Terminator and Dollhouse have not been canceled yet. And Friday is not automatically a death slot:
Millenium - three year run
Sliders - three year run on FOX plus two more on SciFi
X-Files - a little known show of moderate repute that lasted 11 seasons
Now granted FOX is known for canceling scifi and fantasy shows throughout the 90s, however Joss Whedon said himself that those execs are long gone. The new executives are willing to stand behind their shows and let them grow, especially if the show has a strong online following, as is the case with Fringe, Terminator, and Dollhouse. Bottom Line: I'm not concerned.
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