Why did Firefly fail?

POSTED BY: EricBall
UPDATED: Friday, January 24, 2003 23:20
VIEWED: 7920
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ERICBALL

Tuesday, December 24, 2002 3:58 AM

1. Ratings. Unfortunately, the success of a television series is measured by it's ratings. The ratings also impact advertising revenues, which is very important to the business side of television. For Firefly there was an, perhaps unrealistic, expectation that the ratings would be higher.

2. Probable lack of backing from studio executives. Although ratings are king, a show can survive or be killed by the studio execs. Firefly's ratings were improving (rather than falling), but the decision to cancel the show was still made.

3. Lack of patience (on the part of the studio). New television shows seem to have only the smallest chance of being renewed, and it seems that the studios aren't giving any new shows the chance to succeed. Many shows only become popular after word-of-mouth has had the time to do its work (i.e. during re-runs). Firefly was barely given enough time to be discovered.

4. Lack of effective target audience marketting. Unless you checked out the TV Guide new show issue, you could easily have missed Firefly.

5. Some people felt that the timeslot was a problem. Maybe if it followed Buffy or another show with a similar target audience more people would have watched.

6. Many people criticised the decision not to broadcast the pilot (and the episode order changes). Personally, I didn't mind the lack of a typical "Gathering" episode and thought that Joss et.al. did an excellent job fitting the backstory into the other episodes. (Although the pilot did properly introduce River.)

7. Finally, I think that a lot of non-fans were turned off by Joss's Western twist on Sci-Fi. Firefly just didn't fit the mold of ray guns, shields, and other SF tech. But those people also missed out on the exceptional character & relationship development which was the core of Firefly.

BROLAN

Tuesday, December 24, 2002 4:39 PM

It seems like it was a recipe for failure.

First take a Sci-Fi genre show and add elements (Western motif) that will alienate many of the potential viewers. Then replace the well-crafted pilot episode with a cobbled together confusing mess of a pilot.

Interrupt the schedule with baseball games so viewers are confused about when it is on. This also keeps them from getting “hooked” on the show or even able to tell their friends when this new show is on.

Roll all this together and it’s a miracle it even had the ratings that it did.

SIGNYM

Tuesday, December 24, 2002 7:07 PM

I think the title is misstated. Firefly didn't fail, FOX failed. Out of the 50 or so people that I contact every day, five started watching Firefly regularly within the past three weeks or so. Firefly wasn't a perfect show, but it was a very good one that would have found its audience given more time and some promotion.

FOX made a decision that probably doesn't even reflect it's own best bottom-line outcome. I don't know if it's because FOX executives don't think in terms longer than 3 months, or if there were creative differences between FOX and Whedon from the get-go... I suspect the latter.

DELVO

Tuesday, December 24, 2002 11:58 PM

Fox didn't fail. Their goal was achieved quite neatly. It's just that they had a really weird goal of destroying the show by creating excuses to cancel it. There's no other explanation for their deliberate sabotaging of it at every turn...

1. Shortly before the beginning of the season, Fox executives and PR people did a bunch of interview and appearance to promote their new series. Firefly was not mentioned once in any of the resulting interviews.

2. The time slot thing... knowing that they had the baseball contract.

3. Virtually no advertisements, except one very bad one that rarely aired at all and didn't seem to have really been designed to get anybody to want to watch.

4. No reruns in the weeks off between new episodes.

5. The episode order thing.

6. One or two other things I only saw recently but forgot.

It's been evident to me since before it began that Fox simply didn't WANT this show to succeed, so they were doing everything in their power to make sure it couldn't. Why they went through the pretense of actually putting it on the air at all I can only guess: an internal-politics power-play between bigshots at Fox, like one person or group of people trying to make another look incompetent?

QUEENTIYE

Friday, December 27, 2002 9:38 AM

^^I'm holding out hope that Fox intended to kill it so they could shop it out to another network...

Because showing that pilot last )and after the cancellation) seems to be ONLY so that some other network could see it and say - if we air that first, we can command an audience...

QT

QueenTiye, Companion Academy, class of 2006

JOHNNYREB

Friday, December 27, 2002 1:29 PM

Signym is right. Firefly didn't fail Fox. Fox failed Firefly. We can only hope against hope that Firefly is picked up by another network that doesn't have it's head stuck up it's . I have nothing but contempt for them. To Hell with the Simpsons, to Hell with King of the Hill, to Hell with 24, I have not watched 2 seconds of Fox programming since Firefly went off the air, and It will be a God damned cold day in Hell before I ever do. I hope Gail Berman, or whoever made the decision to pull the plug, steps on a nail. Grrrrrrrr

Viva Firefly

TYLOR

Friday, January 24, 2003 1:17 AM

One thing, I think Firefly really was set up for failure. I think the suits at Fox saw the pilot, went "what the Hell is that?" but realized they had contracted for x-number of episodes and decided to kill the series as best they could.

Exhibit A: Not showing the pilot. There was nothing wrong with the pilot, it was a good pilot. Why show it after the series was already moribund?

Exhibit B: Local radio. They would always have a long preview on for "John Doe" followed by a "right after an all new Firefly." They never put anything on about Firefly. Why?

Exhibit C: Shows like "American Gothic"

Quote:
Why? Because of the programming department at CBS. After moving the episodes they chose to show over four different nights, with two lengthy hiatuses, and neglecting to advertise the show sufficiently on its own network or in publications such as TV Guide, CBS put American Gothic on "indefinite hiatus." However, the Trinity Chamber of Commerce didn't let our town disappear without a fight. The show's fans were among the first to buy an ad in trade publications, and there were copious letter-writing campaigns and petitions. It didn't bring the show back, but AG will live on through their work.

from http://www.garycole.net/tv/ag/

or "Crusade." ( http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node=crusade) Odd drama shows that rubbed network executives the wrong way and that were deliberately screwed by them. Yes, Firefly know joins this select group of shows (which also includes Star Trek, the Original Series), which didn't fit into the narrow minded views of those who control the public airwaves.

MAKEN

Friday, January 24, 2003 1:19 AM

Wow! That sounds sooooo much like...

Wagontrain to the Stars!

Quote:
Originally posted by Brolan:
It seems like it was a recipe for failure.

First take a Sci-Fi genre show and add elements (Western motif) that will alienate many of the potential viewers. Then replace the well-crafted pilot episode with a cobbled together confusing mess of a pilot.

Interrupt the schedule with baseball games so viewers are confused about when it is on. This also keeps them from getting “hooked” on the show or even able to tell their friends when this new show is on.

Roll all this together and it’s a miracle it even had the ratings that it did.

JERRY

Friday, January 24, 2003 2:38 AM

1) Possibly, Firefly was too quirky and challenging to draw enough audience for a FOX show, no matter what. I think it would have succeeded on UPN, though.

2) FOX might have been able to make the show work if they put all their promotional might behind it. It needed a large initial sampling, since the quirkiness of it was pretty much guaranteed to drive off some of the initial viewers. Instead, they scrapped the pilot, which attached a stench of failure to the project and caused the episodes that were aired to confuse the audience.

3) Airing episode out of order and into the teeth of baseball-related preemptions prevented the show from acquiring momentum.

4) A bad timeslot. The show would have actually had a better chance on the also-bad Thursday, when competition is cutthroat but at least people are home.

5) Even with all of that, the show might have eventually rallied, given its high quality, if FOX was willing to tell the world it would last the season. They did that last year when 24 got off to a rocky start. Once people think a show is going to get axed, they aren't willing to watch it even if it's of interest to them. It would appear that the decision to commit to "Fastlane" in the timeslot instead won't do FOX any good.

6) What promotion the network did do failed to communicate the true nature of the show, which is not surprising as they didn't seem to understand the true nature of the show anyway.

ERICBALL

Friday, January 24, 2003 2:07 PM

One item I was not previously aware of:

two million dollars per episode

That's a Star Trek kind of budget, thus Fox TV would need Star Trek kind of ratings in order to have high enough advertising rates to cover it.

Perhaps with a lower budget (like B5, which managed with less than $1M/ep) the bean counters could have let Firefly last a while longer.

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