{"id":443,"date":"2000-03-14T14:37:41","date_gmt":"2000-03-14T19:37:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/crashdown.com\/news\/?p=443"},"modified":"2008-07-02T14:38:43","modified_gmt":"2008-07-02T19:38:43","slug":"if-its-not-broke-the-networks-will-fix-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/crashdown.com\/news\/2000\/03\/if-its-not-broke-the-networks-will-fix-it\/","title":{"rendered":"If it&#8217;s not broke&#8230; The Networks will Fix it"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Thanks to Min for sending this in!<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong>If it&#8217;s not broke &#8230; the networks will fix it<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Jason Sykes<br \/>\nThe U. of Washington Daily<\/p>\n<p>I like helium. A lot.<\/p>\n<p>When I was younger &#8211; like at my cousin&#8217;s fifth birthday party last<br \/>\nsummer &#8211; I occupied myself for hours sucking the sweet nectar out of a<br \/>\npurple Barney&#8217;s Party helium balloon. But I didn&#8217;t just want its<br \/>\nvoice-altering properties. No, I was fascinated by this mystical element&#8217;s<br \/>\nability to enable a simple earth-bound balloon to flaunt the laws of<br \/>\ngravity.<\/p>\n<p>Like most children, I imagined I could harness this magnificent power if<br \/>\nI could just get my hands on enough of these polyurethane anti-gravity<br \/>\nmachines. My experiments, however, had the same melancholy pattern of dismal<br \/>\nfailure: Gather an impressive stockpile of balloons, then lose them all<br \/>\nreaching for just one more and cry incessantly until a nearby adult bought<br \/>\nme another one to restart the cycle.<\/p>\n<p>Unlike most of the narcissistic exercises in nostalgia I subject you to,<br \/>\nthis one has a point: All children are greedy little bastards incapable of<br \/>\nlearning even by elementary trial and error.<\/p>\n<p>Which leads me to the conclusion that all network executives are<br \/>\nchildren.<\/p>\n<p>How else could anyone explain the phenomenon known as &#8220;midseason<br \/>\nrescheduling&#8221;?<\/p>\n<p>Each year at about this time, networks look at the season-to-date rating<br \/>\nsheets and see a slew of mixed results &#8211; some shows are pulling in solid<br \/>\nratings, while others are being outpointed by UWTV&#8217;s rebroadcast of last<br \/>\nFriday&#8217;s Math 308 lecture. This sets off a frenetic rejiggering of the<br \/>\nweekly lineup, and the scrambled schedule that emerges leaves hordes of<br \/>\nloyal viewers baffled, and renders hours of meticulous VCR programming<br \/>\nworthless.<\/p>\n<p>Anything new that doesn&#8217;t suck is at serious risk of being uprooted from<br \/>\nits posh midweek primetime slot and thrown to the TV wastelands. They call<br \/>\nit growing the network. I call it idiotic.<\/p>\n<p>In theory, the audience will follow the show to its new night and give<br \/>\nthe network another strong time slot.<\/p>\n<p>But television junkies are creatures of habit. If a new show is doing<br \/>\nsurprisingly well, it probably has less to do with quality programming than<br \/>\nwith the simple fact that it fits nicely into our pre-established viewing<br \/>\npattern. And moving it is like trying to reel in a fish before the hook&#8217;s<br \/>\nbeen properly set &#8211; we&#8217;re going to break free and wriggle off to a calmer<br \/>\npart of the pond.<\/p>\n<p>This sort of mindless corporate behavior either permanently stunts or<br \/>\nsimply kills several shows each year. Can anyone tell me when The Family Guy<br \/>\nis on? What about Third Rock From the Sun? Offered up to the bottomless<br \/>\nbelly of the ratings-hungry beast known as the bottom line.<\/p>\n<p>This year&#8217;s sacrificial lamb is the WB&#8217;s Roswell. The critically<br \/>\nacclaimed diaper dandy enjoyed passable ratings as the follow up to Dawson&#8217;s<br \/>\nCreek on Wednesday nights. But it recently lost its slot to last year&#8217;s Frog<br \/>\nphenom, Felicity, whose Monday timeslot pulled in an average rating that<br \/>\nmade my GPA look good in comparison.<\/p>\n<p>Roswell&#8217;s fans are a peculiar lot. They&#8217;re &#8217;70&#8217;s Trekkies time-warped<br \/>\nahead a couple decades. There are dozens of chat rooms and newsgroups<br \/>\ndevoted to the show (which at its peak drew only about a 4.0 rating), and<br \/>\nthe consensus emerging from the Net is that the WB needs to be taught a<br \/>\nlesson. The learning instrument involved? A proposed boycott of all WB shows<br \/>\nother than Roswell. When Felicity fans (a Net-savvy group themselves) got<br \/>\nwind of this plan they vowed a retaliatory strike.<\/p>\n<p>The battle began last week, and although I like Roswell better, I&#8217;m<br \/>\nrooting for mutually assured destruction here. Maybe that will finally open<br \/>\nthe network war mongers&#8217; eyes.<\/p>\n<p>Until then I&#8217;ll be in the back with the helium.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Thanks to Min for sending this in! If it&#8217;s not broke &#8230; the networks will fix it Jason Sykes The<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"colormag_page_container_layout":"default_layout","colormag_page_sidebar_layout":"default_layout","footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[40],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-443","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-roswell","tag-article"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/crashdown.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/443","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/crashdown.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/crashdown.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crashdown.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crashdown.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=443"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/crashdown.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/443\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/crashdown.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=443"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crashdown.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=443"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crashdown.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=443"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crashdown.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=443"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}