Jericho felled by Occam’s Razor…

Updated on March 24, 2008 By Ken Begg 5 Comments

Nobody likes seeing a favorite show cancelled, but seriously, could fans be a little less retarded in attacking networks that cancel low-rated shows?  I’ve seen plenty of bile spewed in CBS’ direction this morning over their decision to end the sci-fi series Jericho. Fans, naturally, blame the show’s failure entirely on the standard Network Incompetence.  Here’s a typically well argued response:

“CBS is the suckiest bunch of sucks who ever sucked. That’s right, CBS… Don’t listen to your viewers. That’s why your networks sucks so bad and is getting it’s ass kicked daily.”

Dude, here’s the thing: They did listen to their viewers.  That’s why they cancelled the show…twice.  Keeping shows on the air that statistically nobody wants to watch is hardly a recipe for avoiding “getting it’s

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ass kicked daily.”

Oddly, few fans ever seem to offer a more straightforward explanation:  The show wasn’t being watched by enough people, and was never going to be.  Jericho was brought back after being cancelled once, following one of those noisy fan campaigns.  In this, the network was obviously hoping that the resultant news stories would bring curious viewers to give the show a chance, and that they’d then be interested enough to stick around.  In plain language, this didn’t happen.  Ratings plummeted following the show’s return.  It was averaging under a paltry six million viewers a week, and rating were continuing to fall.  That wasn’t feeding the bulldog.

Look, I loved Firefly, but if critic are going to attack Fox’s stupidity in relation to that show, it should be for putting it on in the first place, not for cancelling it.  Firefly, as tremendous as it was, could be aptly summed up as a “space western.”  Boy, there’re two genres with a massive success ratio.  And put them together…wow.  Yes, in that instance Fox could have handled the show a bit better during it’s brief run, but it was never going to attract enough viewers to justify the huge money spent on it.  The show was just too weird, too specific.

The prime fact to remember is that Firefly creator Joss Whedon’s “big show” Buffy the Vampire Slayer was never a success either, except by the extremely puny standards of the UPN network, which drew so little viewership even with ‘hits’ like Buffy that it actually ceased to exist.  Even on Fox, Buffy would have been cancelled in a month or two, much less if the show had been on any of the Big Three networks.  In the end, Buffy was kept around basically because it lost money slower than most of UPN’s shows, not because it was actually generating profits.  The fact that it was watched by the tiny demographic of People Who Write for Entertainment Weekly (see also Sex & the City) doesn’t really make it a hit.

Which isn’t to say these weren’t quality shows.  But seriously, can’t we be adult enough not to pout when the sort of niche programming we enjoy proves too niche, and not react with dark muttering about “It would have been a hit if only those morons had…”  It’s easy to demand that somebody else spend $70 million plus bucks a year to keep shows on the air so that you and a few million other people can enjoy them, but I don’t see these viewers volunteering to pay for the shows out of their own pockets.

The fact is, the network TV model is dying a lingering death even by the standards of its ‘hit’ shows, programs whose rating would have been considered mediocore at best even ten years ago.  CBS should be commended for giving an obviously failed show another shot.  Bitching about the nearly inevitable failure of this noble attempt just means the networks will be twice as reticent to reconsider such decisions in the future.

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  • Danny

    I think a lot of people assume everyone else thinks like them. They think “I like Jericho. My friends like Jericho. Everyone would like Jericho, if it were only advertised better!” And of course, a lot of people DON’T. I’ve been guilty of that a lot myself, I’ll admit.

    I’m not a fan of Executive Meddling in shows, to be honest. I understand that it’s there money on the line, and I can’t really begrudge them, but I think a lot of the Powers That Be are more interested in making a safe show than a good show.

    Again, that’s their prerogative, but I don’t think it’s a great plan in the long term.

    I think traditional television is dying a slow death, because we kids these days are plugged into our computers. But once Bandwidth gets cheap enough (and it nearly is now) and computers replace televisions outright, I think television-style programs online will make a resurgence. Smaller budgets, but more risky, and a lot more people trying their hand. I’ve mentioned Rooster Teeth on this site before, and I think that’s more what the future of TV looks like (in business model, I mean).

    As Scott McCloud put it “The future isn’t people trying to make a killing. It’s people trying to make a living”

    Excepting “Comic Book: The Movie” (Which I actually bought because it was featured on Jabootu way back when), the only movie I’ve seen in the last two months was The Gamers (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fiTEHqAeanw&feature=related)

    Which, incidentally, is a FAR better Dungeons and Dragons movie then the Hollywood one.

    Big Budget films and televisions shows are increasingly doomed. If Hollywood spends 100 million dollars on a movie, and 6 or 7 college students make a better one for fifty bucks, it’s going to be increasingly difficult Network shows to stay afloat.

    Why do I always write long essays?

  • Chris M

    I might be wrong about this, but I’m pretty sure that networks, unlike movie studios, rarely retain the DVD rights to shows they air. In essence, they are leasing the show from the production companies in exchange for what ad revenue they feel they can make during its airtime. The actual cost of the show is dictated by the production company, which naturally only greenlights a budget commensurate with the guaranteed income promised by the networks. In the case of CBS Paramount Network Television (the producers of Jericho) this is all inside-the-park accounting, but it’s valid accounting nonetheless (the network has its budget based on sweeps, the production arm has its budget based on executives taking swipes at likely hit shows, and the two attempt to mesh numbers as best as possible).

    So, wouldn’t it be more productive for fans to clamor for a Futurama-esque resurrection of the show on DVD, a more profitable medium? And shouldn’t networks start to give their production arms a bit more leeway when developing shows, and consider that revenue source as one better-tailored to niche programs? Shouldn’t airing niche programs for a season or two (in order to build a small but rabid fan base) be a loss leader akin to studios releasing doomed horror quickies to theaters purely to guarantee better name recognition on the rental/sales market?

    The fans might not be eloquent about the whole situation, but I think the ire is still well-placed if there’s enough of a customer base to warrant direct sales. TV needs to rethink itself, and this sort of clamoring is one exhibit of how.

    (For the record, I’ve never watched Jericho, and don’t even know what the hell it’s about, or if it’s any good. My point is more academic.)

  • “Why do I always write long essays?”

    I don’t know. It’s antithetical to the generally pithy nature of the site.

    Chris, I hear you, but I think Danny’s closer to the mark. Mass programming that costs 3 million dollars an episode probably is just going to go to the wayside in a very large, if not total way.

    Fans can probably support a traditional show or two or five (and I’ve been advocating some form of subscription TV for a long time), but the problem is that the same people who like Jericho are probably the same people who like Battlestar Galatica who may in large part be the same people who like Deadwood…if you could actually get a million people to offset a show’s budget by sending in ten bucks a shot (which would cover maybe 20-30% of a f/x oriented show’s production costs for a year), that might work. However, who many shows are people going to support?

    I think we’re moving towards an age of micro-programming, with the occasional breakout hit that will then be glommed onto by the networks. I agree that DVD seems a natural mechanism for subscription TV, and we may have to go to a cable / Brit TV model, where a ‘season’ is a story arc consisting of six or eight episodes. Futurama is basically charging (and I’m happy to pay it) fans $80-100 for 16 episodes of the show, or two thirds of a regular season, in the form of four ‘movies’ running us $20 to $25 a shot, depending on where you buy them. Actually, MSRP is $30 per, but only a moron would pay that.

    In the end, fan bitching may be sometime justified, but they are bitching about the wrong things. I just don’t think CBS, no matter what they did, could ever have drawn Jericho enough of an audience to justify what it cost to produce it. No network ever worked harder to keep a show on the air and find it an audience than Fox did with Arrested Development, and it just didn’t work. You can’t make people watch a show they aren’t interested in, just because it’s good.

  • Mr. Rational

    Some thoughts:

    Actually, as a response to Ken and in the vein of Chris M, I like the idea of subscription DVD series. Or subscription webseries like Rooster Teeth puts out, for that matter. I would pay $20 (or $50) to Joss Whedon in a heartbeat to see a second season of Firefly (with Wash, thank you!), or a sixth season of Angel, or a first season of Whatever Was Bouncing Around In His Brain. And if the DVD sales for his shows are any indication, there might be enough people who would join me to make such a proposition viable.

    Then again, after the just-concluded writer’s strike, I’m not exactly in a Tinseltown sort of mood. I’ve come to believe that the whole system needs to be torn down. Studios need to stop buying up rental places and theatre chains, and then using their leverage to glut the market with their product and crowd out some good films (and a ton of bad ones, but hey, it’s not like the stink from the studios is so great these days either). And frankly, they need to stop deliberately stiffing their workers. Unions need to stop insisting on arcane rules that supposedly protect their members’ interests, when in reality they’re hurting many of the littler fish in their particular pond. “The Office” writers think they’re not being fairly compensated, so they’re going on strike? Good for them…Season 4 wasn’t funny anyway. Say, what about the guy who’s never made a sale, and who was just about to put the finishing touches on a script he thought might make it? Okay, fine, “pencils down means pencils down,” but “pencils down” means more to some than others.

    Sure, both sides blamed each other, because “the other side could have avoided it all.” But as far as I’m concerned, that just means they’re both to blame. And moreover, no matter what happened, in the long term, prices will go up because of it, because the unions insist on a bigger cut and the studios insist on maintaining or increasing their profits. Sigh. If only the Alien vs. Predator people could have latched onto this premise. Studios vs. Writers: No matter who wins, the customers will pay more money.

    What I’d like to see is a business model where the creator of a property can remain in charge of it from start to finish. Where shows are distributed via the Web, and the best of them are then aired on TV. Where some guys working in their backyard (who aren’t named Trey and Matt) can make a funny movie, and then parlay that into a small fortune, all without studio involvement. Where big-budget pros might deign to make a couple smaller films just ’cause they thought the projects were good.

    :::crickets chirping:::

    Okay…any century now…

  • Mr. Rational

    I just re-read this comment from years ago.

    I still believe all of this.

    Except now I wouldn’t pay for anything Joss Whedon did.  Buffy Season 8, y’know.