What has the Fox network got against its own sci-fi shows?
The Sarah Connor Chronicles. Dollhouse. Fringe. Why does the Fox Network make interesting sci-fi shows, then strangle them with scheduling?
Until finding its niche with American Idol, the Fox Network was known for its animation, its crude comedies, and its science fiction programs. Unfortunately, Fox has lately developed a notorious skittishness towards one of the programming staples that launched it, and I'm not talking about the lack of three-camera sitcoms or the non-dearth of cartoons filling the network's lineup. Science fiction, once Fox's bread and butter, is now becoming a victim of a network with bipolar disorder.
Out of the Fox Network's 15 hours of network programming, three hours of it is actual sci-fi, four hours of it is drama, and two hours on Sunday is animation, and the rest are game shows or reality programs. That means that 20 percent of Fox's lineup is blatant sci-fi, and other portions of it dip heavily into the genre. Every season, Fox unveils a science fiction program or two. See, by giving Fringe and Dollhouse and Sarah Connor Chronicles the green light, Fox is showing that it loves science fiction.
Yet two of those shows, Dollhouse and Sarah Connor, are on the day where television shows go to die. Friday night is the night when people do things like go out or go to the movies. Even if the geeks that might watch the new Joss Whedon show don't go out to the bars, they definitely attend movies like Watchmen. That's one of the reasons why Sarah Connor and Dollhouse scored record low ratings last week, officially moving the network one step closer to pulling the plug on the programs. Dollhouse has never flourished on Fridays, and Sarah Connor's ratings have dropped in its new home. Both these shows, while having dedicated fans, are also very expensive and may not come back next year.
Meanwhile, Fringe, the new series from J.J. Abrams, is one of the biggest hits of the new season. Or it was until Fox started to routinely preempt it for American Idol on Tuesday nights. February 10: Episode 14 of Fringe. Episode 15? Won't air until April 7. That's TWO MONTHS with no Fringe. How in the hell is the show supposed to survive two months off the air?! I know American Idol is what makes Fox all its money, but didn't they learn anything from the writers' strike? Cutting a show off in mid-season usually kills it. Why would Fox do this?
I have a theory. One of Fox's biggest ratings successes was The X-Files. It lasted 10 years and after a horrible first season ratings-wise, became one of Fox's strongest programs for quite some time. A lot of Fox's efforts in the sci-fi realm, namely Millennium, Harsh Realm, and The Lone Gunmen, were attempts to spawn a second X-Files utilizing some of the same crew. Millennium did well for a while, but Harsh Realm and The Lone Gunmen were killed off before even being given a shot at developing an audience, setting the tone for the way Fox would go on to treat Firefly.
One of Fox's biggest successes as a production company was, to speak of the devil again, Buffy The Vampire Slayer. Of course, it was successful for WB and not Fox, but that's beside the point. Because of Buffy, Joss got the green light for Firefly. Fox promptly killed Firefly by airing the episodes out of order, thus screwing the show's continuity. Now Fox, because of Firefly's cult appeal, gave Joss the green light for Dollhouse, which is on TV's death night.
Would Fox like to see its sci-fi shows succeed like Buffy and The X-Files? Of course they would. However, the Fox Network is a different place than it was in 1993 when The X-Files got years plural to prove itself. Fox is a company that, like all the other networks, needs instant results. If they can't get instant results, then they can sabotage other networks.
I think that Fox likes to keep big name creators like Whedon and Abrams tied up and off the competing networks by any means necessary. Fringe and Lost would be huge back to back. You don't think the CW would love to have a Joss Whedon show to give it an actual audience to go alongside Supernatural? You don't think NBC would love to have something (anything) to put on the air instead of the awful Knight Rider or another iteration of Law & Order? The CBS show The Big Bang Theory promoted Sarah Connor more this week than Fox has in a month simply because they had Summer Glau as a guest star!
By green lighting shows and deliberately tanking them, Fox keeps potentially successful programs away from the competition while still being able to say, “Hey, we're big sci-fi fans, you're just not watching the shows we put on!” Why else would they take a show doing fairly good ratings and move it to Friday, or take a show that should do better and start it out on Fridays? Why would they completely preempt an otherwise successful show for American Idol unless they wanted it dead?
In television, it's succeed right away or die. If a show like Fringe does good numbers, but not the expected or hoped-for great numbers, the easiest thing to do is save some money and kill the show. Rather than give Fringe a decent lead-in with a carry-over audience like House, Fox can just cram House and 24 together on Mondays to kill Chuck and Heroes and give Fringe... what exactly? Oh right, a vacation. Or worse, a completely unrelated lead-in show so that when Fringe loses half of American Idol's audience, Fox can justify shuttling the show off to Friday to replace whichever one of its Friday sci-fi shows dies first.
I wish I could give sci-fi fans some note of hope, but the shows that should live on get put on networks that conspire to kill them, and shows that should've ended two seasons ago (I'm looking at you, Smallville) linger on because their home network has nothing better to show. Fox's new network slogan should be, “If we can't have it, no one can!”
- 17 TV shows cancelled too soon
- 36 upcoming US TV pilots
- Pushing Daisies creator angling for new Star Trek show
- Has 24 recaptured its form?
- I can't wait ten episodes (or two years) for a TV series to get good
Find more by Ron at his blog, Subtle Bluntness and daily at Shaktronics and PopFi.
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Joss needs to go away from Fox on anything he does next.
It'd be lovely to see Dollhouse, Terminator and Fringe get the respect they deserve. Look at Lost. It's been a constant winner, and they show the season almost entirely in full, week to week. Shows do die when you bump them to fridays, and put huge gaps in the schedule. Sure, I can understand a week or two, but 2 whole months?! Thats 8 episodes worth of space filled with drivel.
Fox cancel way too much though. Which is either a sign of bad choices to begin with, or not sticking to their commitments.
Brisco County. Strange Luck. Wonderfalls. Harsh Realm. Lone Gunmen. Brimstone. Strange Luck. Keen Eddie. (And that's just off the top o' my head!) For years...no, for DECADES, Fox has been where good TV goes to die. Not to mention the way they deliberately scuttled Firefly. Remember the advertisements? "Come on down an' meet the wiiild and waaaaacky crew o' Firefly! They gots them a space hooker...and a naked girl in a box! Yee-Haaaw!" or some-such. (Basically, they advertised it like a sit-com.) Then they famously skipped the pilot (and, instead, aired the weakest episode first), and aired the remaining episodes hilariously out-of-sequence. Plus (and this rarely gets mentioned), Firefly aired during Fox's own broadcast of the World Series, which pre-empted some Firefly episodes until around midnight...and without any warning or advertisements during the bloody games themselves! Grrr. Argh. I loathe Fox with a passion. Hell, they're the reason I've basically stopped watching network television. (This said, I also think Dollhouse is, so far, quite weak...the premise has too many holes and, as far as I can tell, four out of five of Echo's personalities have been, well, Faith...and the fifth personality, the hostage negotiator, was just embarrassingly beyond Dushku's range. But I'm also fairly certain that Whedon's original vision was severely compromised by Fox during production...)
Great piece, Ron. Couldn't agree more.
TV's become a really frustrating experience, rather than a nice diversion. Do you wonder what will happen when more people have DVRs than don't? Seems like a big shake-up is fast approaching where it won't matter so much if shows are sent to the barren nights IF those figures are counted in the viewing totals, of course.
I can't picture if that will be worse for the lovers of quality NON-reality shows, or better. :c/ We'll see, I suppose...
That's the only theory that I think makes any sense, because no one could think that the way they air these shows will actually help them get an audience.
Musing on from that I wonder if its not part of the plan to boost the "cult" status of shows, maybe they think that they can invest for a season maybe two before they kill it (leaving some episodes unshown on tv) and then rake in the cash off irrate fans of the show as they rush out to buy it on DVD (blu-ray), using those unaired episodes to clinch the deal.
Ron, I think it's a common misconception that The X-Files is "science fiction." Sure it deals with aliens and the paranormal, but what drew that massive audience was how the show elevated itself beyond science fiction to "non fiction science fiction." People who would never consider tuning into conventional sci-fi fare could enjoy and watch it; it worked as interesting stories about interesting characters played by interesting actors, and everything else was just gravy. The X-Files show defies genre classification in many ways, but it's more a drama than a thriller; more a thriller than science fiction.
Market research suggests that people are loyal to shows, not networks. Fox is in the game of making money through its youth-oriented brand identity, not quality entertainment or commercial art. Look no further than "Arrested Development." There's no room for quality broadcasts if it's not a ratings bonanza. A sad state of affairs, but that's why they call today "The Death of Broadcast Television."
"How in the hell is the show supposed to survive two months off the air?!"
You seem to forget that there was already a THREE week gap between Fringe episode 106 & 107, and a SEVEN week gap between Fringe episode 110 & 111 (although they did show some Fringe reruns during those gaps). The ratings didn't seem to be affected... (http://fringepedia.net/index.p...
The bottom line is that that there are only 20 episodes to fill 36 weeks of programming. Sure, it would be nice to have 36 new episodes... but that's not how TV works.
I'm much more worried by the fact that two episodes were cut to make room for "Glee" and "Osbournes: Reloaded", making the season only 20 episodes, instead of 22.
I get where you're coming from, and you certainly have a lot of company out on the internet where your stance is concerned. But I think you are stretching for a number of your points.
To start, I assume you are talking about Terminator:TSCC when you say a show that was doing fairly good ratings. That's simply not true. Terminator was getting awful ratings on Mondays, struggling to reach 6 million viewers and a 2 in the demo. It was a shadow of what it had been in the first season. Moving House into that time slot more than doubled the ratings for the network. Yes, it sucks for Terminator fans, but it's perfectly understandable from the network's perspective. They gave up on the show, but not until after the fans gave up.
With Fringe, I think too much is being made of the break. You call the show a hit, but I would argue that Fringe is only a hit due to the good fortune of airing after House and Idol. The people involved with the show should be glad to wait for their post-Idol slot to open back up, because the alternative is for the show to stand on its own on another night, and the ratings would surely drop.
You have the beginnings of a point with Dollhouse. Premiering on Friday didn't do the show any favors. That could go a long way to explain the low numbers for the debut. It doesn't, however, explain the fact that the ratings have dropped every week since. What does explain that is that Whedon hasn't made a very good show. Don't take my word for it though, Whedon and Dushku have both gone on record saying that things get good at episode six. Well, extrapolate that. They're also acknowledging that things aren't so good in 1-5. It's written all over the web too. There are plenty of hardcore Whedon fans that aren't exactly enamored with Dollhouse.
It's also worth noting that Whedon has also been quoted saying that the move to Friday was a good idea.
I can't figure out why Whedon would get into bed with Fox again! From everything I've read, they've been messing about with the first few episodes of Dollhouse. After Fox's treatment of Firefly, I just don't get it at all.
Joss needs to go away from Fox on anything he does next.
It'd be lovely to see Dollhouse, Terminator and Fringe get the respect they deserve. Look at Lost. It's been a constant winner, and they show the season almost entirely in full, week to week. Shows do die when you bump them to fridays, and put huge gaps in the schedule. Sure, I can understand a week or two, but 2 whole months?! Thats 8 episodes worth of space filled with drivel.
Fox cancel way too much though. Which is either a sign of bad choices to begin with, or not sticking to their commitments.
Brisco County. Strange Luck. Wonderfalls. Harsh Realm. Lone Gunmen. Brimstone. Strange Luck. Keen Eddie. (And that's just off the top o' my head!) For years...no, for DECADES, Fox has been where good TV goes to die. Not to mention the way they deliberately scuttled Firefly. Remember the advertisements? "Come on down an' meet the wiiild and waaaaacky crew o' Firefly! They gots them a space hooker...and a naked girl in a box! Yee-Haaaw!" or some-such. (Basically, they advertised it like a sit-com.) Then they famously skipped the pilot (and, instead, aired the weakest episode first), and aired the remaining episodes hilariously out-of-sequence. Plus (and this rarely gets mentioned), Firefly aired during Fox's own broadcast of the World Series, which pre-empted some Firefly episodes until around midnight...and without any warning or advertisements during the bloody games themselves! Grrr. Argh. I loathe Fox with a passion. Hell, they're the reason I've basically stopped watching network television. (This said, I also think Dollhouse is, so far, quite weak...the premise has too many holes and, as far as I can tell, four out of five of Echo's personalities have been, well, Faith...and the fifth personality, the hostage negotiator, was just embarrassingly beyond Dushku's range. But I'm also fairly certain that Whedon's original vision was severely compromised by Fox during production...)
Great piece, Ron. Couldn't agree more.
TV's become a really frustrating experience, rather than a nice diversion. Do you wonder what will happen when more people have DVRs than don't? Seems like a big shake-up is fast approaching where it won't matter so much if shows are sent to the barren nights IF those figures are counted in the viewing totals, of course.
I can't picture if that will be worse for the lovers of quality NON-reality shows, or better. :c/ We'll see, I suppose...
That's the only theory that I think makes any sense, because no one could think that the way they air these shows will actually help them get an audience.
Musing on from that I wonder if its not part of the plan to boost the "cult" status of shows, maybe they think that they can invest for a season maybe two before they kill it (leaving some episodes unshown on tv) and then rake in the cash off irrate fans of the show as they rush out to buy it on DVD (blu-ray), using those unaired episodes to clinch the deal.
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Ron, I think it's a common misconception that The X-Files is "science fiction." Sure it deals with aliens and the paranormal, but what drew that massive audience was how the show elevated itself beyond science fiction to "non fiction science fiction." People who would never consider tuning into conventional sci-fi fare could enjoy and watch it; it worked as interesting stories about interesting characters played by interesting actors, and everything else was just gravy. The X-Files show defies genre classification in many ways, but it's more a drama than a thriller; more a thriller than science fiction.
Market research suggests that people are loyal to shows, not networks. Fox is in the game of making money through its youth-oriented brand identity, not quality entertainment or commercial art. Look no further than "Arrested Development." There's no room for quality broadcasts if it's not a ratings bonanza. A sad state of affairs, but that's why they call today "The Death of Broadcast Television."
"How in the hell is the show supposed to survive two months off the air?!"
You seem to forget that there was already a THREE week gap between Fringe episode 106 & 107, and a SEVEN week gap between Fringe episode 110 & 111 (although they did show some Fringe reruns during those gaps). The ratings didn't seem to be affected... (http://fringepedia.net/index.p...
The bottom line is that that there are only 20 episodes to fill 36 weeks of programming. Sure, it would be nice to have 36 new episodes... but that's not how TV works.
I'm much more worried by the fact that two episodes were cut to make room for "Glee" and "Osbournes: Reloaded", making the season only 20 episodes, instead of 22.
I get where you're coming from, and you certainly have a lot of company out on the internet where your stance is concerned. But I think you are stretching for a number of your points.
To start, I assume you are talking about Terminator:TSCC when you say a show that was doing fairly good ratings. That's simply not true. Terminator was getting awful ratings on Mondays, struggling to reach 6 million viewers and a 2 in the demo. It was a shadow of what it had been in the first season. Moving House into that time slot more than doubled the ratings for the network. Yes, it sucks for Terminator fans, but it's perfectly understandable from the network's perspective. They gave up on the show, but not until after the fans gave up.
With Fringe, I think too much is being made of the break. You call the show a hit, but I would argue that Fringe is only a hit due to the good fortune of airing after House and Idol. The people involved with the show should be glad to wait for their post-Idol slot to open back up, because the alternative is for the show to stand on its own on another night, and the ratings would surely drop.
You have the beginnings of a point with Dollhouse. Premiering on Friday didn't do the show any favors. That could go a long way to explain the low numbers for the debut. It doesn't, however, explain the fact that the ratings have dropped every week since. What does explain that is that Whedon hasn't made a very good show. Don't take my word for it though, Whedon and Dushku have both gone on record saying that things get good at episode six. Well, extrapolate that. They're also acknowledging that things aren't so good in 1-5. It's written all over the web too. There are plenty of hardcore Whedon fans that aren't exactly enamored with Dollhouse.
It's also worth noting that Whedon has also been quoted saying that the move to Friday was a good idea.
I can't figure out why Whedon would get into bed with Fox again! From everything I've read, they've been messing about with the first few episodes of Dollhouse. After Fox's treatment of Firefly, I just don't get it at all.
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It is unfortunate that most people still watch TV the way it was done years ago; at the time it was aired. I have been using DVRs since November of 2000. I get to watch all the SciFi I want without being a slave to the network programming executive's scheduling. My main DVR has four HD digital and two SD analog tuners. I never have a recording shcedule conflict. I get them all, and I skip the commercials too.
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