Real Life is always an excellent geek comic, but yesterday Greg really hit it on the head.
11 replies on “Why I Don’t Watch Sci-Fi on Fox”
Scapegoat I think people are being unreasonable about this. It’s obviously a production cost vs ratings issue – as it was for Firefly, John Doe, and Journeyman (that was on Fox, right?).
Can anyone with some real numbers claim a show that was getting lower ratings than any of the above ones was kept on for much longer?
Re: Scapegoat
I think people are being unreasonable about this. It’s obviously a production cost vs ratings issue – as it was for Firefly, John Doe, and Journeyman (that was on Fox, right?).
I don’t think people are being unreasonable. You can talk about numbers all you want, but the reality is that Fox doesn’t know how to market their shows or keep them on the air long enough to grow a following. Take Firefly as an example, they started off by showing the episodes out of order (this turned me off and I never watched it again while it was on the air) and then canceled it before showing all of the episodes that they had contracted for, and then didn’t even show all of the episodes that had been filmed. Fox did similar stupid things with other sci-fi shows as well.
I give you the BBC and Torchwood as an opposite example. I along with many others really haven’t liked Torchwood as a whole, but the BBC is giving it a second season none the less.
As far as John Doe and Journeyman go, if it doesn’t have space travel, futuristic technology or alternate technology it isn’t sci-fi to me, it falls more into the realm of fantasy. Don’t get me wrong, I like some fantasy (more D&D like though), but I hate fantasy shows being considered sci-fi.
Re: Scapegoat All true.
Nevertheless, there’s still <em>The X-Files</em>.
Re: Scapegoat
All true.
Nevertheless, there’s still <em>The X-Files</em>.
(Sigh. Tired of some sites using real HTML, others using supertags).
Stop believing what Fox tells you
I think people are being unreasonable about this. It’s obviously a production cost vs ratings issue – as it was for Firefly
That’s a cheap cop-out. They made decisions to kill the show, and then blamed "the market" and "ratings" for their decision. If Firefly was getting bad ratings, it’s because Fox were not airing them at the time advertised, if airing them at all that week, out of order, etc.
They did the same to futurama: They scheduled it after football, and every time the match ran long, the show didn’t air. And they then claim low ratings, when they aren’t airing it half the time.
Re: Scapegoat
I think people are being unreasonable about this. It’s obviously a production cost vs ratings issue – as it was for Firefly, John Doe, and Journeyman (that was on Fox, right?).
Can anyone with some real numbers claim a show that was getting lower ratings than any of the above ones was kept on for much longer?
This is a ridiculous statement. Fox knows to the dollar how much each show will cost it to run, they typically pay for an entire ‘season’ whatever that might mean anymore, and then air the show out of sequence, after sports events where it’s likely to be pre-empted and then cancel it after less than half the shows they’ve already paid for have aired.
Television programming isn’t particle physics, the broadcasters know how to build and retain an audience, and for some shows they will fight to the death to keep even long after they’ve jumped the shark, while the little gems they cast aside like nothing, losing their initial investment in the process.
The fact is networks don’t want successful shows, they want mega-successful shows or ultra-cheap crap filler till they find the next mega-success.
Re: Scapegoat
Television programming isn’t particle physics, the broadcasters know how to build and retain an audience, and for some shows they will fight to the death to keep even long after they’ve jumped the shark, while the little gems they cast aside like nothing, losing their initial investment in the process.
I can vouch for this. I have a graduate degree in particle physics, but still cannot fathom some of the stupidity I’ve seen from TV network (and movie studio) execs.
Uh, I’ve been pissed at Fox since Space: Above and Beyond. Throwing it on Sundays willy nilly so that you had no clear idea of when (if?) it would show, and if you needed to tape it (that’s a little bit before DVRs), you had to use a whole tape just to get one episode because the run over of the sports shows before it were extremely unpredictable.
deja vu I’m pretty sure I’ve seen a very-similar comic about either Firefly or Drive (both "FOX hates Nathan Fillion" casualties).
Re: deja vu
I’m pretty sure I’ve seen a very-similar comic about either Firefly or Drive (both "FOX hates Nathan Fillion" casualties).
Except that Drive truly sucked. I had stopped watching it before it was canceled ( I could only hang around through the middle of the third ep) It was kind of like the worst parts of Lost with the worst parts of Cannon Ball Run.
side note: deep img linking online comic authors tend to frown on deep image linking. people use their copyrighted work on sites without paying for it, and use the creators bandwidth to do it.
i know you included a text link to the main site, but the least you could do is make the image a link to the page it comes from…
…even better would be to create a thumbnail of the strip (hosted on bureau42) where the text is small enough not to be comfortably readable so you actually drive readers to the main site (where the author gets ad revenue)
Or: if you’ve already got permission from Greg to use his strip, say so in some small print … so you don’t alienate people who appreciate the hardwork comic strip creators put into their work
Scapegoat
I think people are being unreasonable about this. It’s obviously a production cost vs ratings issue – as it was for Firefly, John Doe, and Journeyman (that was on Fox, right?).
Can anyone with some real numbers claim a show that was getting lower ratings than any of the above ones was kept on for much longer?
Re: Scapegoat
I don’t think people are being unreasonable. You can talk about numbers all you want, but the reality is that Fox doesn’t know how to market their shows or keep them on the air long enough to grow a following. Take Firefly as an example, they started off by showing the episodes out of order (this turned me off and I never watched it again while it was on the air) and then canceled it before showing all of the episodes that they had contracted for, and then didn’t even show all of the episodes that had been filmed. Fox did similar stupid things with other sci-fi shows as well.
I give you the BBC and Torchwood as an opposite example. I along with many others really haven’t liked Torchwood as a whole, but the BBC is giving it a second season none the less.
As far as John Doe and Journeyman go, if it doesn’t have space travel, futuristic technology or alternate technology it isn’t sci-fi to me, it falls more into the realm of fantasy. Don’t get me wrong, I like some fantasy (more D&D like though), but I hate fantasy shows being considered sci-fi.
Re: Scapegoat
All true.
Nevertheless, there’s still <em>The X-Files</em>.
Re: Scapegoat
(Sigh. Tired of some sites using real HTML, others using supertags).
Stop believing what Fox tells you
That’s a cheap cop-out. They made decisions to kill the show, and then blamed "the market" and "ratings" for their decision.
If Firefly was getting bad ratings, it’s because Fox were not airing them at the time advertised, if airing them at all that week, out of order, etc.
They did the same to futurama: They scheduled it after football, and every time the match ran long, the show didn’t air. And they then claim low ratings, when they aren’t airing it half the time.
Re: Scapegoat
This is a ridiculous statement. Fox knows to the dollar how much each show will cost it to run, they typically pay for an entire ‘season’ whatever that might mean anymore, and then air the show out of sequence, after sports events where it’s likely to be pre-empted and then cancel it after less than half the shows they’ve already paid for have aired.
Television programming isn’t particle physics, the broadcasters know how to build and retain an audience, and for some shows they will fight to the death to keep even long after they’ve jumped the shark, while the little gems they cast aside like nothing, losing their initial investment in the process.
The fact is networks don’t want successful shows, they want mega-successful shows or ultra-cheap crap filler till they find the next mega-success.
Re: Scapegoat
I can vouch for this. I have a graduate degree in particle physics, but still cannot fathom some of the stupidity I’ve seen from TV network (and movie studio) execs.
Uh, I’ve been pissed at Fox since
Space: Above and Beyond. Throwing it on Sundays willy nilly so that you had no clear idea of when (if?) it would show, and if you needed to tape it (that’s a little bit before DVRs), you had to use a whole tape just to get one episode because the run over of the sports shows before it were extremely unpredictable.
deja vu
I’m pretty sure I’ve seen a very-similar comic about either Firefly or Drive (both "FOX hates Nathan Fillion" casualties).
Re: deja vu
Except that Drive truly sucked. I had stopped watching it before it was canceled ( I could only hang around through the middle of the third ep) It was kind of like the worst parts of Lost with the worst parts of Cannon Ball Run.
side note: deep img linking
online comic authors tend to frown on deep image linking. people use their copyrighted work on sites without paying for it, and use the creators bandwidth to do it.
i know you included a text link to the main site, but the least you could do is make the image a link to the page it comes from…
http://www.reallifecomics.com/archive/080226.html
…even better would be to create a thumbnail of the strip (hosted on bureau42) where the text is small enough not to be comfortably readable so you actually drive readers to the main site (where the author gets ad revenue)
Or: if you’ve already got permission from Greg to use his strip, say so in some small print … so you don’t alienate people who appreciate the hardwork comic strip creators put into their work