CW

[oselle]

The CW is a stupid network. I mean it. There's a reason they're known in the industry as a "netlet" instead of a real network. They clearly have no confidence in their own programming if they think they have to re-broadcast two shows (Vampire Diaries and Nikita) that just aired last night because American Idol also aired on Thursday. I don't know about Nikita but VD has a solid following and I'm sure that show's fans tuned in to it regardless of American Idol. Additionally, no one at the CW seems to be aware of the phenomenon of TiVo and DVR and even the hoary old VCR, which (hold onto your hats!) magically allow viewers to record one show and then watch another! What astounding wonders of the modern age!

In addition to proving that they have no faith in their own lineup, they also confuse and frustrate viewers by shuffling shows around, and especially by cancelling the premieres of two of their lone flagship shows in order to air repeats of episodes that, again, just aired last night. Plus, they're giving genre-TV fans (like me) yet another chance to check out Fringe on FOX at 9:00, and quite possibly decide that's more worth watching on Friday nights than SPN.

On top of it, I'm sure that everyone at the CW knows that even their most popular shows ALWAYS land at the bottom of the overnight ratings, not only being trounced by "the big four" (NBC, ABC, CBS and FOX), but often coming in behind even the Spanish telenovelas on Univision. So I fail to see why American Idol on Thursday night suddenly became such a panic-inducing game changer to them. They are going to be dead last no matter what.

If this was Dawn Ostroff's decision then I hope it's her last one before she leaves the network. I am not so much annoyed at SPN not being on tonight, as I am really amazed by such embarrassing decision making. I'm not aware that any other network felt the need to immediately reshuffle its lineup because of FOX's programming. The CW might as well put out a press release that says, "Our shows suck and they can't hold their own."

How do these people get their jobs? I really wonder.

Comments

[iontas.livejournal.com]

I just sat down to watch SN and got this stupid show. This sucks! Thanks for the explanation. I am so disappointed, I was so excited it was finally back.

[oselle.livejournal.com]

Supposedly it'll be back next week. But it would be kind of funny if FOX decided to jerk the CW's chain just to see what they'd do.

[shoofus.livejournal.com]

yeah its pathetic, on the other hand i got to watch damon cry, bela die, that hot new werewolf look betrayed and um...damon freak out...none of which happened for me last night...would i have preferred sam and dean, yeah...and i also almost checked out fringe, yup...but the summary just looked so dull, they lost me at hello...

[oselle.livejournal.com]

Yeah, Fringe has two strikes against it for me: No Jensen Ackles and too much JJ Abrams.

[martin-rose.livejournal.com]

*cough* bait n' switch *cough cough*

[oselle.livejournal.com]

If this was a bait and switch, it was the worst one ever. I highly doubt that they won over any new viewers who looking forward to the return of Smallville and Supernatural tonight.

[mulder200.livejournal.com]

The CW might as well put out a press release that says, "Our shows suck and they can't hold their own."

So much word!

Honestly, I don't really give a shit but at the same time it's kind of stupid to do something like this at the last minute.

If this was supposed to some kind of ratings play, it failed badly.

[oselle.livejournal.com]

Honestly, I don't really give a shit

You know, it speaks volumes about how low SPN has fallen in my opinion that I was bowled over by the klutziness of this move, but not particularly upset that SPN wasn't going to be on tonight. There was a time when I would have gone ballistic over having to wait another whole week for the show to return from a two-month hiatus. These days? Meh.

You know, it's kind of funny. I can't even feel badly for the people who create SPN, because they've demonstrated so much disdain for the audience over the past couple of seasons. They deserve to get dissed and treated like they're irrelevant.

[amber1960.livejournal.com]

Apparently they are now saying the rescheduling was due to the Smallville storyline including the shooting of a congresswoman and this was considered too close to the real life shooting of Gabrielle Giffords to air.
If that is true it doesn't actually make much difference to the opinions you've expressed about their poor management skills, lack of foresight and planning (or klutziness) - they must have know this offending storyline existed for weeks, the shooting of Gifford was on 8th Jan and postponing by one more week doesn't seem to me to be adding much to the situation...

[oselle.livejournal.com]

If that's the case then:

a) Why didn't they just say that in the first place?
b) Why did they wait until the last minute to shuffle the schedule?
c) Why didn't they just air the pre-hiatus finales of Smallville and Supernatural last night instead of airing them this coming Wednesday (as I've heard they're planning to do)?

I call bullshit. It was all about American Idol and kicking two veteran series to the curb in order to throw some weight behind newer shows.

[amber1960.livejournal.com]

Well whatever the truth might be, I bet that the execs are regretting making that decision...what a cock up.

[golden-berry.livejournal.com]

The SyFy channel still gets my vote for the WORST. NETWORK. EVER. They have a nasty habit of cancelling their best shows in favor of their horrible 'original movies' all of which suck. I swore never to watch anything on their crummy channel again, and then they went and adapted the BBC's Being Human and the U.S. version is actually kind of good, so here I am, sucked in again.

Fox moved Fringe to Friday hoping to kill it off, I think. But if the CW continues to pull stunts like the one it did last night, it may well drive more viewers to watch Fringe (which I love, BTW).

Interesting how both the CW and SyFy appear to be headed by women. Who are these people and why can't real TV lovers be in charge instead?

[oselle.livejournal.com]

I was appalled when my sister's boyfriend told me that SyFy had aired the last episodes of Caprica all at once and with no fanfare whatsoever. I didn't think that was supposed to be a limited-run series...but even if it was always planned that way, why bury it? I watch SyFy -- I didn't see a single promo for the series finale. They didn't even bother to air the last eps week by week, they just lumped them together and showed them on the same night. There's just no need to act that way on cable. And I agree with you about their awful original movies. I can't believe that anyone even puts up the money for that stuff. It's got to be some kind of tax writeoff.

I don't know who runs SyFy but CW was headed up by the woman who ran the defunct UPN "network" before it merged with the WB to create CW. Considering how dreadful UPN's erstwhile lineup was, I don't know how she ever got the job running CW...and held onto it for nearly five years. She must be racquetball buddies with Les Moonves or something.

The showrunner of the U.S. Being Human is Jeremy Carver, a former writer and producer of Supernatural -- and one of the few writers that I really liked. In fact, he wrote most of my favorite episodes. I think his departure has contributed to this season's weakness and lack of direction. I watched the premiere of BH for his sake, but it just didn't grab my attention.

[oxer12.livejournal.com]

Oh God, please don't get me started on Caprica! SyFy completely fucked that show in the ass. It was fantastic, and they gave it no chance.

I couldn't bring myself to watch the final episodes, knowing I would never see the story move forward. I'm still pissed about Firefly all these years later, and Caprica got the same treatment.

[oselle.livejournal.com]

I just don't know if Caprica was always intended to be a short-run series. It may have been, since really, the only place it had to go was BSG, whose tale was already told. But even if it was short-run, they treated it like shit. It came back from hiatus with three episodes that they didn't promote at all (I stumbled on them by accident), and then it disappeared for weeks before they finally buried it with a series-finale marathon that also received no promotion and that has not been repeated (unless they re-aired it at two in the morning or some shit). That show was gorgeous and inventive and fascinating and they just flushed it.

[ann-tara.livejournal.com]

It seems likely that one of the reasons was the SV story line - either they're waiting to get a little more time past the Tucson incident, or what should be happening is the SV producers are having to re-edit the episode, and they're still working on it. And I think if they'd just come out and said that, fans wouldn't have freaked so much. It's happened before many times, and it will happen again - that fine line of fiction suddenly and accidentally mirroring reality in this crazy fucked up world we live in.

However, if the SV story line is the problem, shouldn't they have known this weeks ago, right after the incident happened? The ep has been in the can since before the holidays, so they knew immediately there would be a problem. Waiting until barely 24 hours before airing to make radical scheduling changes is retarded.

And, yes, IA that it also shows a lack of confidence in their Friday shows, and piss poor management all the way around. However, whatever the reasons, I found myself not giving a shit one way or the other, such is my disenchantment with the show this year. Or, as I saw one fan aptly put it, Season Sux. At this point I'm down to tuning in mostly to see Jensen, and unfortunately the next step after that is throwing my hands up and saying, 'even for the actor, I can't do it anymore.'

[oselle.livejournal.com]

However, if the SV story line is the problem, shouldn't they have known this weeks ago, right after the incident happened?

Exactly. Did they suddenly wake up on Thursday morning and think "Oh shit!" Frankly I think they could have aired it with a warning...I'm pretty sure that's happened before, too.

it also shows a lack of confidence in their Friday shows

I actually think it shows more of a lack of confidence in their Thursday shows. Smallville is in its last season and I think they know that SPN is just always going to be a "cult favorite," not a ratings smash. I don't think they pay much attention to either of these shows anymore. But I do think they panicked that no one would watch the return of Vampire Diaries and Nikita (which looked like it got a big mid-season revamp) because of American Idol.

At this point I'm down to tuning in mostly to see Jensen

So am I. But even that face might not be enough to make me sit through the kind of dreck the second-half spoilers seem to be promising.

[ghyste.livejournal.com]

I'd actually forgotten SPN was supposed to be back this week until I saw that it'd been postphoned. Nevertheless, this seems like massively unprofessional behaviour on the part of CW.

[oselle.livejournal.com]

I picked this up from static_pixie. You always know this stuff before I do, but I got such a kick out of it and thought you might too if you hadn't seen it already:

"When asked if he's concerned about Fringe being up against Supernatural in its new Friday home, FOX boss Kevin Reilly answered: "No. It's already been against much stiffer competition than it's gonna face on Friday. Even in [its] genre, that show is not a ratings powerhouse. By the way, is Supernatural on Friday? I'm not sure. [Laughs.] Good to know. So, there's your answer."

I've strangely paired up the CW's stunt yesterday with SPN's treatment of the viewers. I'm amazed by how much I didn't care that SPN wouldn't be on last night. I'm also amazed by how much Mr. Reilly's snotty remarks make me cackle instead of pissing me off. This season so far, the awful-sounding spoilers for the rest of the season and all the stupid things I've heard over the years from the writers and producers and actors have given me a feeling about this show that's begun to approach genuine dislike. So much that I'm glad the CW decided to bump them last night, regardless of what their motivation was. I still think it was a stupid programming move, but I feel like SPN really got treated like a redheaded stepchild and deserves it. Bwhahahaha! Suck on that, Show!

This? Is not healthy.

[ghyste.livejournal.com]

I think it's perfectly healthy: I often liken fandom to falling in love. When you get dumped (as I feel we were at the end of S5) you're perfectly entitled to a bit of malicious pleasure if you see your previous object of affection being shat on by someone else.

[oselle.livejournal.com]

They DO say that what goes around comes around :D

[aquila0212.livejournal.com]

Agreed. We had this with Reaper -- the CW gave up on it long before anyone else did.

[oselle.livejournal.com]

Yes, and made no attempt to wrap it up. I liked the show but wasn't a huge fan, thankfully, because that would have really pissed me off.

[aquila0212.livejournal.com]

I wasn't a huge fan either -- it was just an enjoyable show. The first season had a lot of promise but the second season's plots were a mess once The Powers That Be interfered. It could never recover after that.

[dodger-sister.livejournal.com]

The latest word is that a large number of the CW's major stations were going to have to pull the episodes anyway, due to local conflicts (sports and some mayoral debate), but you think they would have known that more than 24 hours in advance, right?

In other news that is incredibly OT - I am four episodes in to season two of One Tree Hill. But I know, you don't watch that show. ;)

[oselle.livejournal.com]

Yes, I heard about the debates and the sporting events that would have postponed CW programming in L.A. and Baltimore. L.A. and Baltimore are, respectively, the second and twenty-sixth largest TV markets in the country. A couple of years ago, first-run episodes of Smallville and SPN were pre-empted in New York and Boston because of a Giants/Patriots game. New York is the number one television market in the country. Boston is the seventh largest (TBH, I'm not sure if the game was carried on the CW affiliate in Boston, but I KNOW it was carried on the CW affiliate here). Nevertheless, the CW felt no need to cancel both shows in the whole rest of the country. They were simply broadcast (in NYC anyway) on the following Saturday night -- they didn't even bother to air them on a weeknight. If the CW didn't shuffle their schedule for the whole country to accommodate the first and seventh largest markets, why would they do it to accommodate the second and twenty-sixth largest markets? I also know that SPN has been postponed multiple times in the Chicago area due to some sporting event -- and yet the CW never changed programming in the whole rest of the country to accommodate the nation's third largest market. This whole thing was about making sure people got to watch Vampire Diaries and Nikita -- the older shows were simply dispensable, even in a "dead zone" like Friday night.

One Tree Hill is an awful show. Due to its ubiquitous weekend presence on SoapNet, I've somehow wound up seeing far more of it than I ever wanted to.