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Firefly Cancelled--Officially. (1 Viewer)

Jason Seaver

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I'd guess June or July, if I had to guess. Airing Thursdays at 9 after back-to-back episodes of The Grubbs.
 

Jason Seaver

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Uh, Michael, that link doesn't work.

Odd that they're talking to Fox now. A couple years ago, Fox wanted to get a piece of UPN when they bought Chris-Craft, and Viacom wasn't having any of it.
 

Michael St. Clair

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I fixed the link a minute ago.

Fox has tremendous leverage because its UPN affiliates account for about 20% of the network and include UPN's top three markets, including New York's Channel 9.

...

One option for Fox is to replace UPN with movies and other shows from the vast Fox Entertainment empire, though some said the Fox stations would be sunk without UPN.
 

John Thomas

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Say what you will about it's demise (pre-empted for sports, bad timeslot) but everybody knows if they'd just thrown most of their money into making it look more gadgety-sci-fi-ish, it'd woulda raked in ratings.

...or, some would have us believe that.
 

Jason Seaver

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Bizarre... Those contracts, if I read the article correctly, run through the '03-'04 season, so what would Fox do, stop showing UPN stuff even though they were still affiliated? Not having an affiliate in some of those cities (including NYC) would be pretty fatal.

Not that I'd miss UPN - though, if you'd asked me 8 years ago, I would have given it a better prognosis than WB.
 

Dan Rudolph

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I liked the western approach, and I liked the show okay at first. "War Stories" convinced me I must get as much of this show as possible and "Objects in Space" backed me up on this.

After seeing the pilot, I can see why Fox didn't want to start with it. It just isn't that great an episode, and while it explains who the characters are, it does little to endear them to you. It takes place eight months to a year before the rest of the series, and many of the characters have changed before the actual series rolls around. They've mostly learned how to get along, for instance.
 

Jason Seaver

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I suppose if Firefly had been given a better start like Fastlane, it'd have done numbers like this on average...
But Fastlane got pre-empted by baseball more than Firefly, and we all know that one week with the Division Series killed Firefly!

[/sarcasm]
 

Jason Seaver

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Um, Barry, that's not sarcasm. That's just being rude.

Point is, Fastlane built a larger audience than Firefly despite more pre-emptions and being in a more competitive timeslot. And it was probably on an even shorter leash since Fox didn't have an ownership stake. I don't get why (maybe it got better after the pilot), but trying to come up with excuses for Fastlane now doing better than Firefly did in the same slot is overlooking the most important aspect: People (on average) just seemed to like it more.
 

Robert Ringwald

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I do have to admit though, that I didn't see very much marketing for Firefly. Maybe 2 commercials. Fastlane has been marketed on many billboards I've seen, and all over the internet and on TV.
I think it's just what America wants mostly. Fast stories, no characterization, explosions. If you have the first and last, with interesting characters and an actually good script... it's usually hated for some reason.
I think it's attention spans. Most people have the attention span of a milk-dud... and so watching a show about guns and explosions... would be much better than a show with "talking"
Just to note, UPN has apparently passed on firefly for good...
www.aintitcoolnews.com
I'm guessing there's pretty much nowhere else it can go now. I hope a DVD release is in the works at least. And FOX will hopefully present them in their original production order...
 

RickGr

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Even the weeks Firefly was on week to week it showed no gain in ratings and if fact lost audience. It just did not catch on and even some SF types were turned off by the shows concept.
Fox promoted Firefly during the World Series and those slots are not cheap. The ratings were in the 2.6-2.7 range and was near the bottom of the ratings list. If you were in charge of programming at FOX what would you do?
 

Barry Woodward

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If you were in charge of programming at FOX what would you do?
If I were in charge I would've aired the pilot Serenity first and would have promoted it more. What's done is done and there's no way to know how much it would have helped but I'm convinced it would have made a difference. Either way I know we haven't seen the last of Firefly. It will fly again!
 

Martin Rendall

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If you were in charge of programming at FOX what would you do?
I would never have picked up Firefly to begin with. I love the show to death, but there's no way that FOX could ever have been happy with it's ratings, given it's cost. They obviously hoped it would be the next X-Files, but I contend that they had no hope of that ever happening. If it had survived the year, it would have been marginally, and there would be no way it would survive past a second year. Where's the profitability in that?

I also think JW took a big chance, against the odds, going with FOX, and would have been better spent waiting until after Buffy and Angel were finished (plus a year or two) before introducing Firefly, on some other smaller network, with a smaller budget. Who knows, the cost and quality of CG might change enough in the next few years such that it wouldn't have been as expensive to shoot.

But that's just my opinion. I'm no Jason Seaver!

Martin.
 

Jason Seaver

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I think it's just what America wants mostly. Fast stories, no characterization, explosions. If you have the first and last, with interesting characters and an actually good script... it's usually hated for some reason.

I think it's attention spans.
Actually, I think it might be that Firefly was arguably overcomplicated. I mean, it started out with 9 characters, a nebulous continuing storyline going on in the background, and a lead (presuming Nathan Fillion was supposed to be the lead) who was overshadowed by the other, more colorful/interesting characters, and who sort of faded to the background during the macrostory-intensive episodes.

I mean, compare it to John Doe or Fastlane. Each of those has three or four characters, a fairly straightforward premise, and if you miss an episode or two early on, you're OK. They're not nearly as demanding early on as Firefly was.
 

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