At 14:18 18-02-01 +0100, Jeroen wrote:
>At 22:00 17-2-01 -0800, Christopher Gwyn wrote:
>
>>i can find lots of faults with a lot of what is on television, and
>>in particular with a lot of what is marketed as 'science fiction'
>
>Absolutely. I don't even bother to watch most of what is labeled "science
>fiction" anymore. We get "SF" movies almost daily on Dutch commercial
>television, but >99% are just action movies where the story (if any) is
>set a few decades from now. Throw in some vehicles and gadgets that look
>high-tech, and you got another "SF" movie...
>
>Random example: "Rambo" would qualify as "Action". Now set the same story
>not in current time but 20 years from now, put shiny metal plating on the
>cars and weapons (the "high-tech" look), and the networks here will call
>it "Science Fiction".
>
>
>>(this is television after
>>all, and aimed at a mass market. their primary target audience rarely
>>reads a science fiction book. science fiction fans are a secondary
>>audience for them.)
>
>You still are ranked that high with the networks? Around here, SF fans are
>the stepchildren of television audience. Networks don't have a problem
>with cutting entire scenes from an episode to make room for commercials,
>and it's not uncommon for them to air the first few seasons and then NOT
>air the final season. And when they suddenly want to air sports programs,
>guess which shows will be cancelled first? Exactly... :(
>
>A few examples of how SF series are tossed around:
>
>Babylon 5 (aired by RTL5): first season, then a year later a rerun of the
>second half of first season, followed by season 2. A year later, rerun of
>second half of 2nd season, followed by 3rd season. A year later, rerun of
>second half of 3rd season, followed by 4th season. Another year later,
>hey!, another rerun of second half of 3rd season, followed by 4th season.
>That was over a year ago; still waiting for 5th season...
>
>DS9: gets tossed around between RTL5 and Veronica (both stations are owned
>by Luxemburg-based RTL). One year it may be aired by RTL5, an other year
>by Veronica. RTL5 was airing relatively new episodes, but suddenly removed
>DS9 from their programming a few weeks ago. Veronica now airs DS9, but
>started all over with 1st season.
>
>Last year, one of the networks aired the first few seasons of "Earth:
>Final Conflict", then suddenly stopped; no explanation of why, or if/when
>it will be resumed.
>
>Public television does exactly the same: air the first few seasons of a
>series, then stop without explanation, or replace a scheduled episode with
>something completely different (soccer, tennis and the likes).
>
>That is not limited to SF series, BTW. I'm still trying to figure out how
>to explain to my kid a year from now why soccer is so important that
>Sesame Street had to be cancelled for it...
Actually, that's not much different from what happens here in the "good ol'
US of A":
The final season of B5 was aired on cable rather than broadcast here, and
the cable company now owns the rights to rebroadcast the earlier ones, so
the reason you have not seen the last season may be that your network may
not have made a deal with the cable company.
The local UPN station almost always airs a local university's basketball
games on Wednesday nights, which means "7 Days" and "Voyager" are regularly
pre-empted. Last year, they saved up all the "Voyager" episodes and showed
them during the last week of summer. I suppose someone must have
complained, as this year they are putting "7 Days" on after the basketball
game ends on Wednesday night (unless it runs too late, in which case the
show may be "joined in progress" -- i.e., in the middle -- or maybe not at
all) and "Voyager" comes after the _Friday_ night Bball game, again unless
it runs overtime.
Of course it does no good to complain about sports running overtime and
pre-empting other shows after what happened some 30 years ago when the
Super Bowl ran overtime and NBC went, as scheduled, to the movie "Heidi,"
prompting millions of irate football fans to call their stations because
the end of the Super Bowl had been cut off. (Football fans tend to be
somewhat less polite in their complaints than SF fans. Perhaps it has
something to do with the large quantities of beer consumed during the game.)
On top of this -- and clearly the main reason that sports events have
priority -- these days there is so much ad revenue from commercials during
sporting events that the sports event clearly has priority. Several times
it's happened that a sports event ran overtime while I was sitting here
waiting for the scheduled show to begin, and before the show started, they
ran several minutes of commercials that for whatever reason they had not
been able to get in during the sporting event, with the result that they
cut off even more of the other program.
[Ironically, as I am writing this, this evening's episode of "Futurama" has
been interrupted to announce the death of Dale Earnhardt of injuries
sustained in a wreck during today's Daytona 500 race.]
Anyway, you're not alone.
-- Ronn! :)
