A small bit of good news for Jericho fans

[yendi]

CBS promises closure for Jericho fans.

Nice to see at least some networks can acknowledge screwing over quality programing this year (although it'd be even nicer to see less screwing over in the first place).

Comments

[kradical.livejournal.com]

Right, because network executives sit around and say, "Hey, there are some people on the Internet who like this show. We should cancel it so we can make their lives completely miserable."

Back in the real world, CBS cancelled Jericho because they couldn't make money on it, which means not enough people watched it. CBS isn't a public service, they're a business, and if they can't make money on a TV show, they're not going to continue it. That isn't "screwing over quality programming," that's running a business sensibly.

Doing this is a nice goodwill gesture to the fans the show had, but the fact is, they obviously didn't have enough of those in the first place....

[yendi]

Except they really did screw quality programming (and their own business) in the process. They had a surprise hit show (one that was leading most of the pre-season dead pools for first cancelation), one that had as dense and thick a storyline as any of the serial dramas on TV. It was spiking in the ratings, and then they pulled it off the air for over three months, right through Feb sweeps. Hardcore fans will stick around for that, of course, but hardcore fans are tough to come by for any show. Casual fans were lost on Lost, Prison Break, and other serial dramas that had long hiatuses (even Heroes suffered after the Feb-April gap), and they'd had more time to at least build up the casual audience.

No, it wasn't malicious folks trying to piss fans off. But it was stupid, stupid, stupid on the part of the network, essentially ensuring weaker ratings for one of their own shows through scheduling stupidity (and, much as I love to rag on Fox, there's something to be said for having a show like 24 air without a huge gap).