A New Fux Network Complaint by JavidRho

GENERAL DISCUSSIONS

A New Fux Network Complaint

POSTED BY: JAVIDRHO
UPDATED: Wednesday, September 17, 2003 09:24
SHORT URL:
VIEWED: 3228
PAGE 1 of 1

Wednesday, September 3, 2003 7:08 AM

So, what's the deal with this new fux network show, "The OC" ? They started it in the summer and are showing it at least twice a week right now.

Don't get me wrong, it's a great marketing strategy - introduce a new series in the summer (amidst all the reruns) and show it several times a week (just in case it is opposite one of your favorite reruns). This makes sure everyone has a chance to see it, and when the fall season begins, it's got a big head start.

So, my big question is; why didn't they give this same push to Firefly? For that matter, why didn't they give Firefly even HALF of this effort? How about 1/10th?

Saying "fux is stupid" doesn't explain it, because, first and foremost, they are a profit-making business. It is in their best interest to make all of their shows hits. What they did to Firefly simply doesn’t make business sense. It makes more sense to avoid SF making shows altogether (like most of the other networks), but to start a show like Firefly and not give it the same effort as they are doing for The OC, is dumb.

I fully admit that a SF show like Firefly draws a much smaller crowd than a mainstream "cute girls in bikinis" show like The OC, but that doesn't really explain it either. By that logic, The OC should not require all of this effort to be successful, while a less mainstream show like Firefly could have benefited greatly.

I haven't posted in a while, so maybe this is me just letting off some much needed steam.

Okay, I feel better now - well sort of...

----------------
SIMON: What happens if they board us?
ZOE: If they take the ship, they'll rape us to death, eat our flesh, and sew our skins into their clothing
and if we're very very lucky, they'll do it in that order.

NOTIFY: N | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Wednesday, September 3, 2003 9:25 AM

MANIACNUMBERONE

I am right with you Javidrho, it's damn frustrating and makes no good business sense. Of course, there were a few speculations back when it was cancelled as to why... some people thought it had nothing to do with fux being a money-making business, but that it was instead a personal decision meant to enrage or get revenge upon some person(s) who was profiting off Firefly. Since it does make no good business sense, as you say, then it had to make some other kind of sense. It couldn't have been that Firefly wasn't a good enough show... that's not even an option. I know some of you are thinking, it could have been partly due to the fact that it wasn't marketed to the right audience huh? Well, your right, but that was a decision of persons who knew what they were doing. It's sabotage! It just makes me happy that I miss primetime TV altogether now-a-days because I work swing shift.

NOTIFY: N | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Thursday, September 4, 2003 4:33 AM

GOATUS

I kinda like The OC... not as much as firefly of course, but it aint bad.

NOTIFY: N | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Thursday, September 4, 2003 5:35 AM

JAVIDRHO

Quote:
Originally posted by goatus:
I kinda like The OC... not as much as firefly of course, but it aint bad.

My wife is sort of hooked on it as well. Actually, that sort of brings up my main point - a show like The OC doesn't really need all the effort fox is putting into it, while Firefly could have used it.

Maybe it is just timing. Maybe fox, and other networks, are just now beginning to realize how important summers can be for getting new shows seen by the masses. I would love to see pilots for new shows shown during the summer, and like the OC, show them several times a week.

Even if you don't think you like the premise of a new show (space+western?), eventually you will stumble across a showing of it (if it is repeated often enough), and maybe you will like something you see.

I think most people agree that Firefly suffered low ratings simply because not enough people heard about it, or they couldn't find it because of all of the game preempts...

----------------
SIMON: What happens if they board us?
ZOE: If they take the ship, they'll rape us to death, eat our flesh, and sew our skins into their clothing
and if we're very very lucky, they'll do it in that order.

NOTIFY: N | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Wednesday, September 17, 2003 4:10 AM

SPACEANGLER

Read "Swatting The Firefly" on www.thetexasmercury.com, it's all about how there was a conspiracy to kill Firefly from the beginning. A little paranoid, though.

NOTIFY: N | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Wednesday, September 17, 2003 4:17 AM

TRAGICSTORY

I can't find it. Do you know which issue it was in?

-----------
"Societies are supported by human activity, therefore they are constantly threatened by the human facts of self-intrest and stupidity." --Peter Berger

NOTIFY: N | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Wednesday, September 17, 2003 5:05 AM

SERGEANTX

I still gotta go with the "stupid" thing. But there were a couple of other reasons Firefly didn't do quite as well as it should have, having nothing to do with fux. One was a, in my opinion petty, resentment by a large portion of Buffy fans that Joss was somehow abandoning them for his new favorite baby. There should have been a much larger cross over audience than there was. Granted it was a different genre, but hey, its intelligent television, a rarity in its own right. Without the politics and conflicting loyalties, I think Firefly would have attracted a lot more of those viewers than it did.

The other thing, and this also seems petty, was the tendency for a great many people who think of themselves as educated and intelligent to shun anything that smacks of the 'old south'. It might be a mistake to think of science fiction fans, or even Buffy fans, as particularly open minded people. I've talked to so many of them who heard the country-fied theme song and the pseudo-southeren accents and saw nothing but "Dukes of Hazzard". Never mind that it was largely an invented dialect, written with the subtlety of Shakespeare, to them it was a bunch of bubbas whoopin it up in a spaceship.

SergeantX

"..and here's to all the dreamers, may our open hearts find rest." -- Nanci Griffith

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Wednesday, September 17, 2003 5:14 AM

SERGEANTX

Tragic, that article was posted here as well:

http://fireflyfans.com/feature.asp?f=39

It struck me as a bit paranoid too. Now if that ain't the pot callin' the kettle black...

SergeantX

"..and here's to all the dreamers, may our open hearts find rest." -- Nanci Griffith

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Wednesday, September 17, 2003 5:33 AM

JAVIDRHO

First off, it has been mentioned both here and other official sources, that Firefly actually had more viewers than either Buffy or Angel, so the lack of crossover viewers might be less of an issue. Fox is in many more homes than WB and UPN, so those numbers were considered too few to keep the show on fox.

I am even willing to agree that the show was "not for everyone" (I consider this a good thing), and maybe some really did think of it as a "Dukes of Hazard" in space. It is/was their loss for misunderstanding the quality of the show.

My beef, which is stated in the beginning of this thread, is the lack of effort given to promoting the show, compared to other fox shows (in particular, The O.C.) Even last year, I saw maybe one or two Firefly commercials a week, compared to four or five for Fastlane and John Doe. Both of those shows eventually died as well, but at least they were given an entire year to find an audience, plus all that promotion.

Firefly was simply not given a decent chance to find a larger audience, and other than adopting a "conspiracy theory" attitude, doesn't make sense, business wise or otherwise. If every new show was given equal chance, meaning lots of commercials, multiple showing times in the beginning, a full year guaranteed, and no pre-empts for ball games, then I would not be as bothered if a show I happened to like, was not brought back the next year. That happens all the time on TV. This was different...

Anyway, speaking of conspiracy theories, I just read that another fox-cancelled show that I liked, Space: Above and Beyond, was cancelled because its producers got into a huge fight with a fox exec, so he killed their show. Could it be that something like this happened to Joss?

---
I’ve been out of the world for a spell. I’d like to walk it awhile.

NOTIFY: N | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Wednesday, September 17, 2003 9:02 AM

FFYING2

Quote:
Originally posted by JavidRho:
Maybe it is just timing. Maybe fox, and other networks, are just now beginning to realize how important summers can be for getting new shows seen by the masses. I would love to see pilots for new shows shown during the summer, and like the OC, show them several times a week.

You're exactly right, JavidRho. There was an article a few months back where Fox admitted they had a problem with the baseball preemptions. They decided for THIS year to do the summer premier thing then hiatus during baseball then back for The O.C. (and I guess for Keen Eddie, which they didn't get behind).

Cable shows like The Sopranos and Sex in the City start in the summer--plus their own American Idol, so they realized that people are willing to watch in the summer if you give them something other than reruns.

Firefly was partially an unfortunate statistic among several that showed them that the old way ("hope that viewers don't forget about our missing shows after baseball playoffs/world series") doesn't work.

Ying/
Firefly Funsite
NEW URL - http://fireflyfunsite.home.att.net

NOTIFY: N | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Wednesday, September 17, 2003 9:24 AM

FFYING2

Quote:
Originally posted by JavidRho:
Firefly was simply not given a decent chance to find a larger audience, and other than adopting a "conspiracy theory" attitude, doesn't make sense, business wise or otherwise.

I subscribe to the Weak Conspiracy Theory. There may have been some plot to kill it, who knows. But the facts are:

* This was a relatively expensive show to produce
* Fox wanted a quick hit
* Networks, at least these days, promote what's already doing well, not what isn't doing well but may deserve help

Once Firefly showed it wasn't going to be an instant success, it was allowed to wither in favor of other shows.

But that's where the logic ends because they didn't just let it die. They seemed to want to give it another chance.

Fox said publically that they would give it a chance and promote it in December. They didn't. That's what bothers me, not the simple cancellation.

They admitted that baseball preemptions were a problem, and they could see a burst of creativity (after Ariel, so "creative" probably meaning creative and action-packed). Then they said they'd give it more time by seeing how the December episodes did in the ratings (War Stories, Objects in Space, and Serenity) and trying to find a new time slot in the spring. They then effectively cancelled it (no more episode orders) on December 13, 2002--before Objects in Space even aired.

Many people saw the November sweeps/Thanksgiving preemptions and thought it had already been cancelled, so they didn't even know about War Stories. There was no heavy promotion by Fox.

It's one thing to not get behind a show and let it fail. It's another to seem to see the error of your ways and finally get behind it and make up for preemptions with more time--but not really.

Ying/
Firefly Funsite
NEW URL - http://fireflyfunsite.home.att.net

NOTIFY: N | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

YOUR OPTIONS

SHARE THREAD

NEW POSTS TODAY

USER	POST DATE

USER

POST DATE