About two weeks ago, with much fanfare, ABC issued a press release about a big promotion for the new sci-fi remake of V. The idea was skywriting giant red "V's" over national monuments around the country. When I read about it, I thought it was pretty clever.
Like ABC media, I didn't contemplate the environment hazard posed by spraying the skies with red skywriting materials. The skywriting stunt has been canceled because one clever reporter did. She snagged ABC in its own press net.
Lisa de Moraes of the Washington Post figured it out and said that the amount of pollution the stunt would create was in direct conflict with Disney's promise to cut its fuel emissions by 50% by 2012.
Ouch! I don't think the air is going to be that much cleaner because ABC won't use skywriting for V. Seriously, there's a lot of other skywriting that is not being grounded and they are just as polluting, but nobody's shining a light on that.
But for ABC this is very embarrassing. What are they doing to V? They've already decided to cut V in half, splitting it into two 'pods' of four episodes each, one starting in November and four in March. That is unusual to say the least, although Steve McPherson, ABC Entertainment President, said that was always the plan.
He might be telling the truth. But I doubt a skywriting screwup was also in that plan. It just really looks bad for ABC and V.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
10-28-2009 @ 11:57AM
Ryan said...
I wonder if they could just do a sort of laser show instead. Have a red V up in the sky ala Batman signal.
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10-28-2009 @ 1:04PM
mdk said...
What does it matter? ABC has already s**tcanned this series anyway. (Since when is 8 episodes considered a series in the US in the first place?)
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10-28-2009 @ 1:46PM
Michael said...
im glad you said "in the us" cause in other places its common to have only a few episodes
10-28-2009 @ 3:05PM
TV on the Brain said...
Honestly, this doesn't surprise me in the least here. As others have said, ABC has already pretty much killed this series with the split (before/after Olympics).
As far as the length of the series? This isn't that much of a factor. The original wasn't that long, though it spawned a good number of spinoffs.
Honestly, I HOPE they don't kill the series, but ABC is really looking like they don't care about V as much as the fans do.
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10-28-2009 @ 4:24PM
CMG said...
Can someone point to a link that says the order has been cut to 8 episodes? Every news story I've read indicates that it's 4 episodes in November, then 9 episodes when the series returns in March, completing the 13 episode order.
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10-28-2009 @ 9:28PM
Michael said...
Well this news can't be THAT unexpected... ABC cut its last Sci Fi show "Defying Gravity" to just eight episodes when there were thirteen scheduled and those were already even filmed. Why should our expectations from them for "V" be any different? The only difference is that from the sound of it, they're trimming the season before they even run episode one... what is the world coming to???
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10-29-2009 @ 1:30AM
tingrin87 said...
as a fan of Warehouse 13, i must say "McPherson has killed again!"
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