To cancel or not to cancel

[taketimetoshine]

I have to admit one of the things that confuses me about american television is how damn quickly things get cancelled. One or two episodes in, not even giving a show time to get momentum, to get a viewership and bam! it's cancelled.

I think it actually has a negative impact on shows because I, and probably a few other people now, won't start watching something straight away because you never know if it's going to survive. I'll wait until the full season has aired, download/buy the whole thing and then curl up and watch it that way. Because why would I bother getting invested in a show that's going to get axed in a week?

Then on the flipside, you have the shows that have been running FOREVER, yet you dont actually know anyone who watches them.
Superntural, for example. I used to be an avid watcher. I would get up ridiculously early the morning after it aired, download and watch it before work. But the last few seasons have completely lost my interest, I can't remember the last time I watched it and I'm about a season behind... with no urgent need to catch up. If anything, I think I'd rather go back and watch the early seasons when it genuinely felt like it was still about 'saving people, huting things... the family business, about Sam & Dean and salt-n-burning.
I miss the good old days !

Comments

[grackle]

Yeah, Almost Human got canceled and I'm sad about it. I should have known better than to watch a sci-fi series on Fox.

Same here with Supernatural. The fandom was really fun back then, too (the parts I frequented, anyway).

[taketimetoshine]

I was starting to find the more I got into the SPN fandom, the scarier it got, with the lines between fanon and canon blurring for people and... it all just felt very scary and not particular very sane. Which was a shame because, like you said, it started as so much fun!

[grackle]

Yeah it's difficult to avoid the crazy parts of fandom sometimes, and in SPN it was harder than usual.

[nyappynhu]

Yeah, I think that's one of the things that sucks is that the channels only give the show that one pilot episode or one season to prove itself before deciding if it'll stay on any longer. But sometimes a story takes time to build up.

I've only seen a couple of Superntural here and there but from what I heard, that show used to be pretty good but it seems like the producers are milking it for all it's worth?