Cursed

Maybe I haven't broken my TV curse after all. :-(

For quite some time, it seemed that every show I was interested in got cancelled either before I even found out about it (reruns), or within a season of me first watching it on TV, or REALLY went down the tubes in the same period.

OK, this is hardly statistically unlikely; most shows don't last past a season, and in any given year there are more shows in reruns or on video/DVD than in production.

Still... Crusade, Firefly, Three... I've got some shows on my all-time favorites list that died horrible deaths.

Then Grey's Anatomy rolled around - I picked it up in its 2nd season, and it still seems to be doing OK in its 5th. Aside from childhood shows like Sesame Street and Square One, that's the longest I've ever watched a show that was in production.

But this TV season, just as I was starting to watch a lot of TV (~one show a night on average) three more graves have been added. The one that is the most disappointing is Life On Mars (US version, not UK). I actually posted about it on this blog last year as a show with promise - I was right, as far as the 17 episodes actually made go. It was a good show... right up until they cancelled it.

The TV networks seem to have unrealistically high expectations for new shows - within a matter of months they are expected to generate a massive following, often despite shifting time slots, gaps in production, and non-existent off-network advertising. News flash to the major networks: I, like many people, only watch your network when I expect there to be something on I want to watch. I don't troll it looking for new shows - most of the shows you broadcast aren't worth my time. Your news coverage is biased and has an even lower percentage of useful content than your website. Reality TV isn't, and I thought Survivor was a boring idea the first time around (let alone the 8th or 50th or whatever you're on now).

Oh well.

Requiescat In Pace, Life On Mars.