Ah, network executives. They can't leave well
enough alone, can they? Always tinkering, moving, shifting our favorite shows around, thinking that they've found the
"magical combination" that no one else thought of, just to eke out another tenth of a ratings point. When you
look at some of the moves they've made, you wonder if they're just doing it to justify their oversized salaries. But
even that can't explain some of the doozies that network higher-ups have attempted over the years. After the
jump, I'll give you five of the dooziest moves in TV history, ones that spelled disaster for either a hit show or a
network. Also, there will be some honorable mentions, because five is just not enough for this dopey crowd.1. NBC's "double-decker shit sandwich" - That was the term NewsRadio creator Paul Simms used to describe NBC's practice of scheduling mediocre sitcoms in the slots between Thursday's "Must-See TV" shows. Remember The Single Guy, Caroline in the City, Union Square, and (gulp) The Mike O'Malley Show? They were all in the timeslots between hits like Friends, Seinfeld, Frasier, Will & Grace and ER, losing tons of audience and weakening the overall Thursday comedy lineup which started strong with the Cosby/Family Ties/Cheers/Night Court combo of the mid-Eighties. Once Friends left, there was nothing to step up and take its place as the anchor of the night. NBC's trying to rebuild the night with My Name Is Earl and The Office, but is already on shaky ground with the generic-looking Four Kings. Is there an order up for a single-decker shit sandwich?
2. Removing shows for sweeps - All the networks do this, and it's frustrating as hell. So what if Scrubs is underperforming a bit? Why piss off the remaining fans the show has left by running Game Show Bloopers or some rerun of Law & Order in its place for a month? Yes, I know the ratings you get during sweeps set the advertising rates for the next non-sweeps period. But is Anheuser-Busch going to pay American Idol results show rates for an ad on The Bernie Mac Show? If they're that dumb, then how do they make so much money?
3. The overexposure of Millionaire - When it premiered in 1999, Who Wants To Be a Millionaire was a massive success, and it's no wonder; the sight of Average Joes earning big pots of money in high-pressure situations was instantly attractive to people. Also, the fact that ABC scheduled the show in one- or two- week strips made its arrival a special event. But ABC saw the huge ratings, and without any other decent programming to put on the air, decided that everyone wanted to see Reege four days a week for the entire season. Well, we all know what happened; people tired of the show, the ratings tanked, and ABC started forcing celebrity episodes down our throats, which went against what drew people to the show to begin with: the man off the street winning big. Let's hope that NBC doesn't follow ABC's model as they trot out more episodes of Deal or No Deal. I mean, I like Howie Mandel, but not that much.
4. The Fox timeslot shuffle - You love Arrested Development, right? But can you name every timeslot it's been on during its two-and-a-half year existence? Didn't think so. How 'bout Futurama? Do you remember what day and time it was on most of the time? Having problems? Well, you weren't the only one; FOX has tinkered so much with their schedule over the years that it's moved just about every show it's had around the calendar to try to pick up ratings, whether that show was successful or not. In some cases all the shuffling killed any viewer momentum the show might have picked up and effectively shortened it's life; people were so sick of trying to find the show, they stopped bothering after a while. Futurama was a prime example of this, especially when FOX scheduled in the 7-8 hour, which was perpetually pre-empted or shifted because of football overruns. Heck, they even shifted The Simpsons, but at least that move -- against the last years of The Cosby Show -- worked out well.
5. Hey, MTV, I forgot... what does that "M" stand for again? - Hey, kids, pull up a chair and let me tell you a little story. When I was a kid, we had to roll down our car windows by hand. We also had to speak to our friends on the phone instead of using all that fancy text messaging. Oh, and -- you'll love this -- MTV played music videos. All the time. What? Don't believe me? Think I'm telling a tall tale? Well, just go to that precious Internet of yours and look it up. It happened, I tell ya! You think you have it good with all that ride pimping and people punking and all of that other reality mishegas? Pheh, I say. My MTV was better. Van Halen. Blondie. Run-DMC. A sane-ish Michael Jackson. Boy, those were the days. Where's my teeth?
Honorable mentions:
Networks starting popular shows a minute early or ending them a minute late - it's not nice to fool TiVo users.
Ted Turner's dumb idea to start all TBS shows five minutes after the hour or half-hour - it made TBS look even more like the cheap basic cable net it was.
Airing a Martha Stewart Apprentice at the same time as a Trump Apprentice - killed ratings for both.
All Dateline, all the time - NBC had it on 4 days a week, which stretched the credibility of it's reporting. And this was after they rigged a truck to blow up on impact to illustrate a problem with the gas tank.
Dennis Miller on Monday Night Football - He was funny, but woefully out of place.
ABC picking up Drew Carey for two years even though it was already slipping - a big waste of money that setback the network and probably cost Lloyd Braun -- who green-lighted Lost and Desperate Housewives -- his job.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
1-02-2006 @ 11:16AM
Radical Bender said...
It's not just MTV. Remember when ESPN had sports (not poker and movies), when A&E had arts, when AMC had actual classic movies (not Volcano), when G4 had gaming, when TLC had actual *learning*? The list goes on and on.
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1-02-2006 @ 12:09PM
LC said...
I still think MTV sucks, but from a business perspective they picked up ratings when they dropped the all Videos all the time format that further went through the roof during Beavis and Butthead's heyday.
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1-02-2006 @ 12:23PM
Lyndon said...
The Fox timeslot shuffle should definately be higher. Can't count the number of shows that have been killed or died off because of this stupid Fox pratice.
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1-02-2006 @ 1:06PM
Sam Goldman said...
Do people eat paint chips at the Fox TV studios? The number of great shows they destroyed over the past decade due to the same stupidity that hurt Arrested Development and Futurama could probably be enough to fill its own channel. And yet Stacked has been in the same time slot all season. Whaaa??????
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1-02-2006 @ 1:14PM
doc said...
I think the MTV thing, and the examples Bender gives fall into the blame the average viewer category, and are probably more of a Things I Hate About TV than they are programming mistakes. The reason that ESPN plays so much poker is that they get more viewers for that than most of the sports programming they run. Cute little Paige and her band of homewreckers on TLC outdraw pretty much every educational piece they ever thought of. While people lament the loss of videos on MTV, the fact remains that more people watch the other junk they toss out there.
To some degree I think the FOX timeslot shuffle could fall on the viewer as well. In a day where every newspaper, countless websites, an entrie cable channel, and on-screen guides are all available to tell you what is on at what time, is there really an excuse for not knowing when something airs? TVSquad even does the searching for you and makes it a daily post. Take the 30 seconds out of your day and look it up. It reminds me of something I read on TV Guide's site a while back. Someone had written in to Matt Roush's Ask Matt column to complain that they really liked Threshold and were mad about it being cancelled. They also complained about not knowing when it was on. Think about that for a second. Someone went to TVGuide.com to take the time to write in about not knowing when things were on. TVGuide.com. Jeez.
Having said that, the other things on your list are really good. I would probably move the Drew Carey decision into the Top5 in place of MTV. While I agree about the double decker shit sandwich, I think by not acknowledging The Office as the latest incarnation, you are showing a bias. Watch for it to hemorrage Earl viewers on Thursdays as viewers rush to catch the last half of CSI.
Finally, this is probably a good place to point out that Beggars and Choosers Season One is supposed to be coming out on DVD this month. It's a humourous look behind the scenes of a network.
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1-02-2006 @ 1:35PM
Greg said...
G4 buying and subsequently killing off Tech TV and itsself in one fell swoop.
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1-02-2006 @ 1:56PM
Brent McKee said...
Hey, I liked "Caroline in the City" and so did most Canadians. Throughout its run it was in the top five of the ratings week after week (and Leah Thompson is a cutie).
Greg is right about the TechTV buyout. Now G4 is attempting to totally get away from their old reason for geing, by replacing videogame shows with "The Man Show" and "Star Trek" reruns.
Oh yeah one more: Fox being quick to cancel anything that doesn't immediately pull spectacular ratings: see "Firefly" and "Reunion" among others.
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1-02-2006 @ 3:21PM
doc said...
To be fair, TechTV was doing the exact same thing that G4 did before the sale. They were cutting original shows and buying up cheaper syndicated content. Robot Wars, The Tech Of, various Anime, etc. all had nothing to do with TechTV. Aside from that, people always say G4 buying TechTV and destroying it, as opposed to TechTV being sold to G4, as if the owners of TechTV had no say in it. I don't think they sold off TechTV because it was such a programming triumph. Likewise, I don't think G4tv.com, Filter, and Cheat are being cancelled to make room for StarTrek and the man show because they are so popular and bringing in so much ad money that Comcast just doesn't know what to do with it all. G4, just as TechTV, and the FX network before them, can't manage to bring in enough of an audience to make it a successful venture. Maybe they should have ridden hotrod motorcycles to carry their laptops to the big poker game at the home improvement site where they could have dined on boiled pig rectum.
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1-02-2006 @ 10:46PM
Jaymez said...
You could do what I do and refuse to watch anything on a regular basis that airs on Fox. Wait a season or two and anything on Fox can be found elsewhere, except for The Simpsons..
Now that USA has picked up House, I'll watch the syndicated shows over there rather than deal with Fox's creative programming schedual and sporting events. I'll be a season behind, however, I won't be aggervated when I go to watch the show and find something else on in it's place.
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1-06-2006 @ 2:52PM
jen Segrest said...
Fox programming.
Do I even need to mention Keen Eddie? One of the best shows on ANY networks anywhere and fox gave it SIX episodes and killed it. Thank god bravo picked it up and aired the whole season, but fox kills stuff without even giving it a chance to pull an audience. SIX EPS? thats not even fair for word of mouth to get around that fast. It's like punching a blind guy.
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1-08-2006 @ 10:37PM
BC19 said...
Don't forget FOX and Wonderfalls too... when it comes to scheduling.
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