CBS did the same stupid thing with “Smith,” which I really enjoyed.  And NBC sabotaged and killed Star Trek (the original, classic show). 

If I had a kid that I knew was going to grow up to become a network executive, I’d want to know how I could have gone so wrong.

Face it, Fox set Drive up to fail right from the get go.  They’ve had two other midseason shows startup this year.  Are you smarter than a 5th grader and the Wedding Bells.  Both of those aired immediately after American Idol, and then moved to their own regular timeslot.  What did they do with drive?  Aired it on Sunday night, as a two hour premiere.  They never planned to keep it.

Not to mention Firefly - yes, that show had some problems and way too much tease up front, but Fox made it much worse by running the episodes out of order and creating some WTF moments with the audience. Still, it was better than 90% of the crap on right now.

At least Futurama is allegedly coming back on the Cartoon Network. “Bite my shiny metal ass” never gets old.

I think the biggest problem is that most people like crap, and the networks are happy to shovel it out.

In good company?

Dammit, I was making that while Erik made his comment. DAMN YOU!

Is Nathan Fillion the next Ted Ginley?

Err, make that McGinley.

It’s so ironic that Fox kills new stuff so fast without bothering to give the shows time… considering the network probably wouldn’t even still exist if not for the chances that shows like X-Files, Simpsons, even Married with Children were given before they became popular.  They all started out rather slow.. yet became HUGE hits for them eventually (well, not sure about Married.. I never really did watch it but it ran for so long it had to have done well in ratings).

miguelito I think you’re 100% correct.  Fox was basically born on the back of The Simpsons and Married (great show in it’s day).  In fact way back when I remember when Fox wasn’t a network and was still just a collection of UHF stations struggling to get national cable distribution - it was the “cult” success of the earliest shows that drove people to demand that cable systems carry Fox.

These days?  I think the whole network would just die on the vine, so to speak.

Don’t forget, the one show they canceled that they actually listened to the fans and brought back now sucks so much massive, sloppy cock that you’d think you’d wandered into a Mexican donkey show.

You know the one.

jim: add 90210 to that as well.  fox invented the summer season, too.

but you’re right, john and i have given up on starting a lot of new shows because we just know they’re going to get canceled.  we were SO scared when we started getting into Heroes that we were going to lose it, but fortunately, it appears that’s getting enough hype.

i’m against moving timeslots around.  yes, i’d follow house, unless of course it was up against 2 other shows i already dvr.  that’s happened to me a lot.  i think i missed 2 seasons of That 70s Show because of it (as did the majority of its viewers… i believe they put it up against first season Lost.  DUR)

what i really really miss are fucking tv seasons.  as much as it’s nice to have new eps in december and the summer now, i miss the predictability of knowing when i’ll get a new show and when i’ll get re-runs.  it seriously seems like this started around 9/11/01.  that was the time when a lot of new shows were going to start, but everything got pushed back to an october start, and new seasons haven’t been the same since.

TERRORISTS RUINED MY TV WATCHING EXPERIENCE!

Jim, don’t forget COPS.

re: Orphaned shows - I don’t even watch the first season anymore. If I hear it’s good, I’ll wait and buy the DVD set.

re: Seasons - Seriously, what is this shit? Not only are the seasons getting spread out more than a $5 whore, they seem to be getting shorter as well. South Park gives us what, 15 episodes a year now? Yet another argument for DVDs / bittorent / queuing them on your DVR.

Fox is trying to hard to be legid. They came on the scene with the Simpsons, Married, In Living Color,.. They were the bad boys pushing the envelope. Now they have become ratings whores, got to serve those advertisers. Wonderfalls was a great show killed just as it started getting interesting. Let’s face it folks, we are not teenagers with nothing but disposable income to waist on voting for you fav heartthrob, so we don’t get the attention.

Fox wouldn’t be shit and still an also ran if it were not for X-Files, In Living Color, Simpsons, Married.

It seriously seems like this started around 9/11/01.

Also, reality TV picked up speed across the board around this time.  Fox put a lot of chips in that basket and has treated the other programming as bastard children.

if anything, this tells you how badly dated the TV Nielsen model is dated. It doesnt take TiVo into consideration or people like me who watch it online so tehy don’t he to sit through commercials. Fox puts 24, Drive and all of its shows except House online SANS commercials and then wonders why people dont sit through them?

To be fair, Drive’s first 2 episodes were really good, 3 was decent but the 4th one last week with the rich brother getting shot irritated me, the whole episode seemed clumsy and rudderless.

I think they could’ve spent a bit more time leading up to the reveal on the blonde, the only story I was really digging was Alex’s, but I can think of a bunch of little things about the show that bugged me - like how Amy Acker shouldve had the blonde’s part, because the blonde just irritates me. I really like the Wendy Petrakis character though the dynamic with her Tamryn Manning wouldve likely have gotten better since we just figure dout she cant even drive last week.

Things that irked me were the fact that you know everyone who is expendable since they arent in the opening credits, the black lady last week, never in the credits, neitehr is Dylan Baker even though which makes his dying a foregone conclusion as well. Thats one up I give shows like Lost and 24 that not having opening credits doesnt put you in the position of spotlighting regulars over redshirts.

I did like the hispanic brothers, but the shooting thing just irritated me, it jumped into soap opera land too quick, and I liked the Lindsay Lohan clone girl. Didnt so much care for the “omgyouregonnadieinIRAQ!” hottie and G.I. Joe if only because it seems idiotic he had no clue his unit was going out, even if wifey was ripping up his letters, doesn’t he stay in touch with his boys if hes so close to his unit?

Anyhow, basically I liked teh concept - Amzing Race meets Lost - some of the characters were cool, but I think mybe they had too many and a lot of them were just stupid or miscast. It boggles my mind how Amy Acker hasnt ended up headlining a show yet after Angel and Alias, I’d pay cash money for an Illyria/Spike dvd movie, but ehh.

Poor Tim Minnear, Fix just keeps cancelling his shows. He should just take a hint from Bryan Fuller and jump networks, just think if not Wonderfalls dying Heroes might not be so good since hes on that now.

Another good show to be cancelled this season was Raines, that was a cool little show with Jeff Goldblum as a detective where the victims talk to him ala the Sixth Sense. I only caught one episode with Jeff Goldblum trying to solve Alexa Davalos murder and she was a call girl, Im sure you can find the title on imdb but that was a pretty decent episode so the show mustve been good, kind of a House vibe to it.

Yeah, Ratings systems really need to learn to adapt.

I really wish there was a simple way to opt-in my tivo habits into the ratings info.  Especially since I have 3 of them, I can be sure to load up the things I really like and get them all added up there.

If they used Tivo data more, they should even be able to see shows that get recorded a lot, but never really watched.  Idiots freak too much about the privacy issue, which it doesn’t take a genius to point out it would be very simple to pass on viewing data without any pointers to who it was, which tivo, etc.