It's Always the Better Shows

[violiav]

Wolf Lake, CBS, 2001.

Eta: my name is Earl. I second The Gates. The River.
I'm surprised fringe has lasted this long.

[bara]

One of my favorite Animes.. Gintama.

Loved that one. Skip Beat was good too.

[wolfie]

Well just remember NBC cancelled Star Trek back in the sixties and look how that has turned out for them. Lol

Damn it you beat me to it I was going to say this same thing. They cancelled Star Trek due to low ratings, and here we are 50 years later and it's still a huge success and a part of our culture.

It's my understanding that sometime around 1970, the ratings system was changed (improvements in computer technology enabled the change) from "butts in seats" to a weighted system based on the value of different classes of viewer (i.e. a young professional with lots of disposable income was worth more than an old-age pensioner with minimal disposable income). Around that time, a lot of high-rated series were cancelled - because although they had large numbers of people sitting in front of the tube, they attracted people without much disposable income, who therefore weren't of much interest to advertisers.

One apocrophal story I heard was that NBC decided to "back-check" their previous season under the new system, and found that one show (Star Trek), cancelled due to low ratings, had an audience composed almost entirely of "high-value" viewers. The comment from the executive suite was along the lines of "Great move, guys - you cancelled a show that attracted the demographics we wanted".

[s_stabeler]

Actually, I think that was a later show- Star Trek did better during reruns and the films than it did during it's first run on TV. Besides, do you really think a show that turned out to be popular with a network's core demographic would stay cancelled for long?

[CaptainJaneway]

They cancelled Family Guy and after it did so well in syndication that they finally brought it back. Now there is Family Guy, Clevland Show and American Dad. LOL

They did the same to Futrama.

[Andara Bledin]

They did the same to Futrama.

Oh, hey, I haven't said "fuck Fox" for canceling Futurama, yet.

Though, really, it's found a much better home.

^-.-^

[crashhelmet]

Oh, hey, I haven't said "fuck Fox" for canceling Futurama, yet.

Though, really, it's found a much better home.

^-.-^

It still surprises me to this day that Married... With Children lasted 11 seasons and X-Files lasted 9 seasons, both on Fox. I think they need to fire who they have now and re-hire whoever they had back then.

[HYHYBT]

You want MORE episodes of Married... With Children!?

[mikoyan29]

You want MORE episodes of Married... With Children!?

I loved Married....With Children. But it might have been filling the right niche for me at the time.

[daleduke17]

It still surprises me to this day that Married... With Children lasted 11 seasons and X-Files lasted 9 seasons, both on Fox. I think they need to fire who they have now and re-hire whoever they had back then.

MWC - 11 Seasons
X-Files - 9
*COPS - 23
*Simpsons - 23
King of the Hill - 13
24 - 9 Seasons
Beverly Hills, 90210 - 10
House - 8
MADtv - 14
Melrose Place - 7
America's Most Wanted - 23
*American Idol - 10

Those are the longest running Fox shows I could find on their Wikipedia page (List of Programs Broadcast By Fox). I may have inadvertently omitted a couple, but that is a pretty complete list. Also, did you notice that most of these shows are from the 80s and early 90s? The rest of the shows are 6 seasons or less.

*- still active shows

[HYHYBT]

Wow, Cops... last year of high school, there were three social studies type courses. Everyone had to take a year of government and half a year of economics, and most people took law for the other half because very few other things only ran one semester. For law, every Monday's class consisted of watching the two episodes of Cops that had aired the night before. (I may be off which day it aired; it's been 20 years.) *My* assignment every week was to tape the show and bring it to class, as a backup in case anything went wrong with the teacher's doing it.

Point is, the show was unbelievably repetitive by the end of those four or five months. Have they moved on to new material, or is it still pretty much the same... and if the latter, why bother continuing production at all?

[Nekojin]

Point is, the show was unbelievably repetitive by the end of those four or five months. Have they moved on to new material, or is it still pretty much the same... and if the latter, why bother continuing production at all?

Because people like seeing other people suffer, especially when they have reason to believe that the other person deserves it. For the most part, Cops was very careful to only show incidents where there was no question that the guy that they were after was a Bad Dude, or that the person that they were stopping was a good citizen and nothing particularly bad happened to them. The show doesn't offer much moral ambiguity or shades of grey - there's the good guys (the cops), and the bad guys, and the occasional civilians-caught-in-the-middle.

In a sense, it serves the same sort of role that CS does - showcasing some of the worst in humanity, so that people can think to themselves, "I'm nowhere near THAT sort of behavior!"

[Racket_Man]

Cops was very careful to only show incidents where there was no question that the guy that they were after was a Bad Dude, or that the person that they were stopping was a good citizen and nothing particularly bad happened to them. !"

sometimes in the early days of Cops, the show did show bad things happening to good people.

The one segment I remember vividly involved a couple of guys getting pulled over inn a rental moving trailer. The pull-over was based on an anonymous tip that stated they were transporting massive quantities of pot. The police had a couple of drug sniffing dogs running around the truck and pulled all of the stuff out of the car and trailer out on to the side of the highway. All the cops found was like 5 joints in the passenger compartment. When questioned one of the guys stated he has just had a bitter breakup with his GF and was moving out of state/the area just so he could start over. He saw her "hand" in this situation. The cops realized the tip was VERY detailed in nature and coupled with the fact they only found a very very small amout of pot in the car, it seemed suspicious.

The cops had the guy call his EX and listened in on the call (and recorded it). the ExGF got real nasty on the phone after the guy explained what has just happened. The ExGF said she did it to spite him and hoped he got busted.

The segment ended with the cops saying that ExGF was going to jail for filing a false police report and the cops let the guy and his friends go (after confiscating the 5 joints AND help the guy repack his trailer and car.

[Nekojin]

sometimes in the early days of Cops, the show did show bad things happening to good people.

*example snipped*

Sure, but again, that paints the cops in a good light. They worked with the guy to straighten out the situation, and he effectively got a very light slap on the wrist (contraband confiscated, no long-term consequences), and otherwise just had a delay in his travel schedule - and had the satisfaction of seeing his vindictive ex's scheming blow up in her face, hugely.

The cops being filmed got to be the heroes, rather than the overzealous pricks that we know that some of them are.

[HYHYBT]

Still, it's a lot more interesting than what's usually on the show, or at least has been when I've seen it. And it makes sense that the police wouldn't act like pricks with a TV crew following them.