Commentary

TV Content: Disposable, Temporary And Eventually Cancelled

TV shows are like subways -- if you miss one, there will always be another one right behind it.

In the wake of the cancellation late last week of three Fox comedies, stories have been circulating about the anger and dismay of the show's fans over their favorite shows getting yanked.

There is nothing particularly wrong with loving TV shows and even going so far as to feel mournful when they end. However, these are feelings and emotions that are alien to me.

The three shows were “Brooklyn Nine-Nine,” “The Mick” and “The Last Man on Earth.” Their cancellations are a by-product of the process now under way at Fox and the other networks as they prepare for this week's upfront presentations in New York when they will unveil their schedules for next fall.

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Evidently, these three comedies will not be on the Fox lineup that will be revealed on Monday.

Cancellations should never surprise anyone. Not to get too maudlin here, but TV show cancellations are like death -- they are inevitable.

To me, cancellation grief reflects a certain level of ignorance about the TV business on the part of ordinary people who do not work in it or write about it.

First of all, very few TV shows are sacrosanct. The only really “tenured” TV shows we have are ones that come out of the network news divisions. These include the morning shows, the evening newscasts and the Sunday morning public affairs shows.

It is true that if their ratings tanked, they would be expendable too. On the other hand, in certain ways, network television would not be recognizable without these staples.

They are certainly in a different class than the three sitcoms that were just cancelled by Fox (which, incidentally, has no national newscast or national morning show).

In the prime-time environment, all three of the cancelled Fox sitcoms had low ratings and no prospects for growth. A look at the audience figures for recent episodes of all three shows revealed total audiences for each of them in the 1.7 million range (live plus same day).

Networks today are certainly willing to accept much lower ratings these days than they did 10-15 years ago, but having said that, the audiences for these shows were still paltry.

Besides, most shows today are available somewhere to watch forever, albeit in reruns. Fans of “Brooklyn Nine-Nine” can take some solace from that. And over the weekend there was some more good news for “Nine-Nine” fans: NBC has agreed to make at least 13 new episodes.

While hundreds of TV characters have been lovable, likable, funny and interesting over the years, I never formed personal attachments with them in the way that some people seem to.

Moreover, I came to the conclusion long ago that TV shows are disposable. They are brief interludes capable of providing entertainment for 30 or 60 minutes. After that, they are gone.

Based on this personal philosophy, I never formed the habit of recording or DVR’ing TV shows either. I have never particularly cared about missing an episode of any TV show. 

In some ways, the love and grief being expressed by some over the loss of these Fox shows (more for “Brooklyn Nine-Nine” than the other ones) feels quaint and anachronistic -- a throwback to a time when it felt easier to love TV shows and then mourn them when they were gone.

Today, TV shows come and go at a very fast clip. Blink and they're gone. Who has time to feel anything for them anymore?

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