Saturday, January 13, 2007

Poll Results - Which cancelled new show should still be on the air?

First a little weather update - it's now cold around here, which would have made it difficult for me to finish digging out, but my neighbour (who has a snow blower - I hate the basted things) was kind enough to do the part of my sidewalks that I was too exhausted to finish on Thursday. He didn't even ask if I needed help, he just did it.

As far as the poll goes, there were nine votes cast and they were pretty well spread around. In a tie for last place with no votes were Smith, The Nine, Twenty Good Years, 3 Lbs, Day Break and Kidnapped. In a tie for second place, with 1 vote each (11%) were Vanished, Runaway, Help Me, Help You, Six Degrees, Happy Hour and Show Me The Money. In first place, with three votes (33%) was Justice.

I confess to being more than a little bit surprised by the results. Before I started this poll I had a couple of comments from a couple of Kidnapped fans who were trying to get NBC and Sony pictures for a DVD release of the series - which I agree with entirely - and for the show to be put into contention for the 2007 Emmys, which I don't think it has the votes for. It was a great show and if I had voted in my own poll I would have voted for it. Consequently I was more than a little surprised when the show didn't get a single vote in a poll about which cancelled show should still be on the air. I found it particularly surprising when the other "kidnapping" show, Vanished got a vote. After all, most critics - the real ones, the guys who get paid for this - regarded Kidnapped as being far superior to Vanished. And I thought that shows like Six Degrees, Happy Hour and Show Me The Money getting votes was sort of bizarre. Not that these shows were totally without merit - well I can't speak for Six Degrees; I never saw it - but the two I did see tended to have more wrong than right about them. The poll "winner" was a choice I could live with as well. Justice may not have been the best show on TV or the best new show but along with Kidnapped I do feel that it was a show that deserved better treatment from FOX than it got If either of those shows had been on a cable channel like HBO, Showtime or FX they might have been a lot grittier but they would also still be on the air.

I had planned to do a separate post on comments about the poll but I only got one, from Clint Johnson so I'll respond here and maybe get some thoughts from others as a result: I caught all the pilots but didn't watch more than two episodes of any one of the shows on the list. It is very unusual to get this far into a season without the networks canceling a show that I really like. I'm getting nervous. This probably means that Tim Minear's 'The Drive' is going to be f'king brilliant and canceled within six episodes. It's entirely possible, in fact likely, given Minear's track record with FOX - Wonderfalls, The Inside and of course Firefly. There are lots of reasons why shows get cancelled. If it just came down to eyeballs then NBC's new show line-up would almost entirely be on the dust heap. Only Heroes is anything approaching a hit and while moving 30 Rock to Thursday has helped somewhat, the same can't be said for moving Friday Night Lights to Wednesday ratings aren't great and next week it goes up against American Idol. If it were only rating numbers the story of the Dennison Panthers would have been sent to the locker room and another episode of Deal Or No Deal or something similar put in its place as a sacrificial lamb.

New poll will probably be up in the afternoon. All I can say about this one is turnabout is fair play.

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