My thoughts on the Lone Star Cancellation

Well aren't we just a choosy bunch or not.

As I announced on my Facebook page last night; Fox was the first network to pull the plug on a new show yesterday and they put Lone Star out of it's misery.

I don't get it on a few levels: Why didn't people like this show? Why didn't anyone watch it and why in the hell did Fox put it in that time-slot

Why didn't people like the show:
Well, that I can't answer as the critics raved about it and I quite enjoyed it. I'm no professional and I just use this blog to push information out to people. Once and a while I write an opinion piece like this as I don't pretend to be a critic. I just know what I like and I liked Lone Star. People I talked to that actually watched it; for the most part they liked it. Out of the gates critics and bloggers were raving about this pilot and called it the best new pilot this season on Network television (Boardwalk Empire got the nod on cable if you were wondering), which is a lot of pressure. I enjoyed the pilot, it wasn't super great but it was entertaining and the most important thing I liked about it was that it was different. I spend a lot of time, some say too much time surfing the net, reading blogs, tv websites and cruising through forums. A lot of people were/are mad at the landscape that is network television right now. It's a lot of the same stuff; horrible reality television, good reality television, cop shows, lawyer shows and we're slowly cutting down on the doctor shows as they've run their course for the time being as well. Sitcoms really started to rebound last year, thank god. So along comes something different and what do we do as the viewer? We totally ignore it. In Lone Star's first week, 4.54 million people watched, down almost 6 million from its lead in show House. That's a lot of people that changed the channel. In the second week, it was about the same as 4.53 million watched, the people that watched it the first week really liked what they saw apparently. I'm surprised it stayed the same because predictions of it's cancellation started Wednesday last week and I'm not sure why the viewers didn't switch over to The Event instead of investing another hour in a show that clearly wasn't going to make it. More on The Event later. I think people did enjoy it, it was just placed in the schedule badly.

Why didn't anyone watch:
I can't answer that either, in this day people can record just about anything with ease. I don't expect people to do as much reading into the upcoming fall season as I do, but don't people at least flip through the paper and read the fall preview in the entertainment section the week before it all starts? It would appear not; as 12.54 million of us tuned in for the shit fest that was bleep my dad says on Thursday night. I'm curious what that shows second week ratings are like. I know our viewing time is minimal and we've got to make hard choices and pick a new show here and there. If it all. Networks have done this all to themselves, why wasn't Lone Star moved to a better time-slot after it's first week. People are very hesitant to get into new shows because they'll wait to see if it makes it and watch it on demand or rent the dvd's after the first season finishes. Networks and cable providers are giving us more viewing options then ever before because we demand and expect it in this age of technology. Are time is valuable and we'll watch a show when we want to watch a show, the tv viewer is changing rapidly and networks are really going to have to deal with that, I don't call bringing the axe out in the second week of the season dealing with it. I call that a panic situation. You didn't even wait a month to see if word spread among viewers and people picked it up via on demand. Allow the show to build an audience, wait and see if The Event crashes and burns on itself and see if you get some of those viewers. I don't know the Itunes download numbers, but Itunes is changing tv viewing once again, especially with the upcoming release of Apple TV 2.0. We've got so many ways to catch up with shows these days, some of them legal and some of them not. Either way, it promotes a show that Fox really didn't. The critics and the bloggers tried, but it would appear that wasn't enough.

Why did Fox set it up for failure:
This point really bothers me, like a lot. NBC has promoted the hell out of The Event for months now. Commercials, internet clues and games, billboards everywhere. They had to, 9:00 PM Monday is a very busy time and you've got to get peoples attention in this low attention span era that we're currently living. They had to get their name out there because they wanted to people to pick their show as the new show to watch at 9:00. Also at 9:00 is the ratings hit Dancing With The Stars which gets almost 22 million viewers in it's second hour. 22 Million?!?!? Stars has become one of the most watched television show on television. I just don't get it. Idol has slipped the last couple of years and looking at the judging panel they've put together I would assume that trend is going to continue. In fact, I predict that next season will be the last season of American Idol. The audience will follow Simon over to X Factor. How many singing shows do we need? Plus you've got the second highest rated comedy with Two and a Half Men, which after last season isn't as good as it used to be either. I don't understand why Fox didn't put Lone Star on Fridays at 9:00 and just put The Good Guys out of its misery because it only drew 2.9 million viewers in it's big comeback. What ever Fox puts in the 9:00 PM time-slot is going to get slaughtered so why not put something that's already on deaths door there instead of something that might actually be decent.

So Fox has pulled the plug and they've decided to put their cop show Lie to Me back in it's 9:00 PM Slot. Great, another cop show and that makes it the 4th cop show of the night. 3 of them are on at 10:00?? By my count that's 19 cop shows and about 9 lawyer shows, a few of those to over lap into both. Talk about some variety, maybe we the viewer shouldn't complain about there being nothing on. There is stuff on, it's cop shows and dancing fourth rate stars of which do nothing to get the title as a star and that's apparently what we want. We've been given choices and we keep choosing the same thing over and over again.

Bottom line, I'm upset at both us; the viewer and network television with how this was handled.

Cable, keep up what you're doing as you're making far superior programming and you actually stick with a show until the end of the season to make a decision.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad