Fox has canceled DRIVE

Hey River! I think it has been available on iTunes and on Drives MySpace since the beginning. I watched the first 3 eps online on that Tuesday.

Deb

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

I'm beginning to believe that the only thing the networks are interested in nowadays is making money. They could not care less about entertaining people. The fact that they cancel the shows with poor ratings means that they aren't making them much money, not that they are entertaining to watch.

The point about reality shows is valid as well. I dispair for the population. Reality TV is one of the worst things to ever happen to television, right up there with commercials. Besides, the only REAL REALity show out there is Cops. If people actually believe that those reality shows are totally real are outside of their own mind. They have no value either. Look at Joe Millionaire. The whole premise was about of shallow, gold digging women fawning over a man that none of them knew or cared about. It was about the money only. As is the same with networks. Fox, NBC, ABC... all of them.

It really is a shame. Who knows how good Drive could have been? Who knows how many years Firefly could have run? Firefly could have gone for a very long time and been fulfilling to a great many people, but it's academic now. We may never know, as the entertainment was lost to money. It's as if a network is going to go bankrupt if it has ONE show with less than 400% of the population watching it.

Many of you have mentioned DVR's. Another excellent point. People have jobs, school, or both. Time is a commodity that is NOT in abundance anymore. DVR's lets us watch what we want WHEN we want, but ratings don't take that into account. There is no way to know how accurate Ratings are anymore, so they are now obsolete. At a large station where there are several good programs, or several good programs on several good stations, people will watch them ALL. Watching one live, maybe, and recording the rest. There is NO way to tell what people are watghing without asking them.

I fear that as long as TV is as competitive as it is, deep, involved, quality programs will keep losing to cheap, fast, easy to make, fast food TV.

Zen Buddhist to the Hotdog Vendor: "Make me one with everything."

"It really is of importance, not only what men do, but also what manner of men they are that do it." - John Stuart Mill, 'On Liberty'

Si sic omnes

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Interesting point, and very well said BTW.

Now don't get mad at me, but I think that if Firefly had been given the time to develop, and allowed to picked up some momentum, it would have gone for about 6 seasons before it got canceled.

-River

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Quote:

---

Originally posted by Vanguard:
I'm beginning to believe that the only thing the networks are interested in nowadays is making money. They could not care less about entertaining people.

---

Actually, TV has always been about making money (selling advertising). The difference is that networks used to understand that (A) you can make money by entertaining people, and (B) audiences aren't "found," they're made by exposing viewers to a show (and thus a product being advertised).

-----
We applied the cortical electrodes but were unable to get a neural reaction from either patient.

NOTIFY: N  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

For all the discussion about shows like X-Files, there seems to be a tendency to forget that they didn't *start* as a serials. The first season was a collection of self-contained episodes that gradually started hinting at a larger arc. Firefly also had this property. As a result, I think one could have come in mid-season without much problem. They also satisfy the needs of casual viewers, since an episode can be missed without much consequence.

Shows like Prison Break, Lost and 24 are more problematic, since you really do have to be there from the start. Recent media developments make it possible to "catch-up", but it does seem to be a riskier proposition for the studio, since those that most likely to be able to use the technology are probably not Nielsen viewers.

I don't personally like the serial. My attempts at viewing 24 suggest to me that the format contributes to "flabby" story telling. I gather that most of my friends that watch Lost think that the show really has become lost, while I felt there was a noticable decline in quality during the third season of BSG, which makes me wary about investing time in future serials.

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME