Though I should be noveling and kick-starting my NaNoWriMo project, I took a second to queue up The Ex List as a reward for getting my words done today since, of course, I didn't catch it last night. And I discover that it's been canceled. Four episodes in. CBS, for shame!
There's several points I want to make here:
-CBS, nobody watches t.v. regularly on Friday nights except for older folks and young marrieds. Singletons like me will watch irregularly, but not enough to give you the numbers you want. So therefore, do you really think that The Ex List's demographic was the same as THE GHOST WHISPERER? Really? You put it on the wrong night. Face it, you're idiots. It would've been okay if you'd just let us watch it online when we wanted and been happy with that.
-EVERY studio is guilty of making this massive investment of money and NOT INVESTING TIME! Four episodes?! Did it ever occur to any of these pinhead executives that modern t.v. audiences a) don't like to sit down at the same time every week to watch t.v., even their favorite shows and b) don't trust that a show's going to last and often wait to see if the show makes it before they'll commit their time and affection to it. So we're developing a vicious cycle here. The studios put the shows out, but we've been burned before, so we go into wait-and-see-cautious mode. Therefore, after a very small amount of time (4 episodes!), the show gets pulled cause not enough people are watching. Because you've TRAINED us to realize that shows are likely to get pulled, no matter how much we love them, early on unless enough people get on board quickly.
-WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE between me watching the show on my t.v. (paying for cable, watching commercials) and watching it later, at my own convienence on my computer (paying for Internet, watching commercials). AND, All-Wise-and-Knowing-T.V.-Idiots, you can actually keep better track of how many unique hits there are on the Internet than you can of who's watching on t.v. the night it airs. Think about this - people get up and walk away from commercials to make popcorn, etc. You can't control whether they see it or not. When we watch it on the Internet, we can still get up and walk away, but there's only one ad, so we're less likely to. We can browse away from the ad, but we can still hear it. AND, because there's only one ad, rather than a handful, we're more likely to remember the product and message. We're more likely to be exposed and affected to the spots that are attached to the shows online than we are on t.v.. It's to your freaking advantage for us to watch the shows for free when we want to.
-Just because younger generations of t.v. watchers are known to have shorter attention-spans doesn't mean you shouldn't commit to a full season of a show and give everybody a chance to get into it. They already freaking shot 11 episodes! Why not air 11 episodes, rather than a RERUN OF NCIS (which is a show I like, but don't watch - I wait for the DVDs). Face it, pinheads, t.v. watching is forever changed by the Internet and by DVD episode sales. Get with it and invest your time in a show, not just a shitload of money. You owe it to us, the people you're trying to make money off of, to let us have a chance to reject or accept a show. A real chance. Our hearts are not yo-yos. We can't take the uncertainty of not knowing if a show's going to last or not, or all of the re-scheduling and rumors. Make a show. Air a show. Give us a season to like it. That's fair, all around.
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