'Fitting Network TV for a Toe Tag'

[ithildin]

Good article here on WIRED.

One of my favourite bits:

6. Don't break faith with your audience.

Broadcast networks routinely spend three months promoting a show that they then cancel after two airings. Or they get a few million viewers hooked on a serialized drama and then drop it midway through a season, leaving fans hanging. This simply never happens on cable, where if a series gets a 13-episode order, those 13 episodes are damn well going to air, even if it's just because there’s nothing else to take their place. Every time the networks reshuffle their grid in a spasm of quick-fix panic, they disenchant more viewers.

Amen!

Comments

[layla-aaron.livejournal.com]

Amen! Bring back 'Cane'!!!!! *slinks off after admitting guilty pleasure of Jimmy Smits*

[eiluned.livejournal.com]

Exactly! You hear that, NBC execs? You canned Journeyman, and there are a lot of pissed off fans out here who don't trust you to know a good show if it sat on your faces!

[meredevachon]

If only the network PTB would listen. I've pretty much stopped watching new shows on the big 5 until they've been on for a season. It's not worth the heartbreak when the network dumps them before giving them a chance.

[strangevisitor7.livejournal.com]

Great article too bad the netwrok executives will never read it

[lilliew.livejournal.com]

Yeah they did this to Jericho.

Now with DVDs and online programs, it's easier to just wait and see what lasts and not and then decide to watch it or to just enjoy it on DVD. It's not worth the agony of getting into a show only to have it canceled.

This is probably why I don't watch hardly any network tv anymore.

[pat-t.livejournal.com]

Moonlight. No wonder I don't really watch network tv any longer.

[sinanju.livejournal.com]

...and the vicious cycle spirals out of control. The networks stiff the audience time and again--and eventually the audience wises up and refuses to become invested in the show until and unless it succeeds....

[starhawk2005.livejournal.com]

*nods* It's sad really. How do they expect to garner loyal viewership, when we can't trust them to give our shows half a chance?

[dejla.livejournal.com]

I'll go with that. You have to give a show time to find an audience. Two episodes doesn't cut it.

13 episodes at least means you're not frustrating users who might not come back to watch anything.

They should probably switch to the British method, set it for 6 or 7 episodes, then worry about the next season once that's done. It would be cheaper all around, probably.