Open Letters: Fox executives, this one’s for you

FOX

To the programming executives at FOX (if there are any; for all I know the programming is done by a monkey pressing a button on a TRS-80 once an hour):

We need to have a serious talk, because I believe you may have some problems. Mainly, you like to call ‘Wolf!’ a lot. Or, in modern times, you like to call ‘Fire!’ in a crowded theatre or ‘Liberal!’ in a room full of Republicans. Any way you do this results in panic, anger, and confusion by the surrounding crowd. Then, without hesitation, you turn around and say that the wolf or the fire or the liberal didn’t really exist and all is well and good in the world.

You’re befuddled, aren’t you? What I’m talking about here in the metaphoric sense is the way you program your primetime schedule. One minute you’re shouting about a cancellation or a schedule change and the next you’re doing a flip-flop that would make any politician proud and keeping everything status quo. Because you do this so often it’s hard for us, the viewers that keep your ad revenues up, to believe you.  Look, I see you shrugging in complete ignorance. So, I’ll give you two perfect examples of what I mean: King of the Hill and Bones.

Let’s start with your recent cancellation of King of the Hill, which you are taking off the schedule after thirteen seasons (to be technical, it looks like the show will go on through 2010, thanks to its long production schedule). You’ve done this before, haven’t you? If I’m not mistaken, you were going to cancel the show somewhere around season nine. Then, in a sudden change of heart, perhaps connected with various threats from viewers and Hill creators, you decided to give the show a second chance. Since you did this once before, how can we be sure that this time you really, really mean the show will be canceled?

And, what about Bones? For the last three seasons you have claimed that, come time for American Idol, the criminal procedural would move to Friday nights. Yet, for the last two seasons, no new episodes graced the dead zone of the primetime schedule. Does the reluctance of moving the show stem from fear that Bones’ fans would hunt you down and mutilate you to the point that even Temperance Brennan herself wouldn’t be able to determine the murderer and cause of death? It certainly seems likely since there is a very good chance that, after coming back from Christmas break, Bones will be airing somewhere else on the schedule other than Friday nights.

You’ve been a major player in the television world for over 20 years now. You would think that the concept of scheduling would become easier to you as time went on. Apparently, it still hasn’t because you continue to tell us one thing while doing something else. I think it has something to do with American Idol and 24. Being your two biggest shows, you tend to focus on them and then schedule your other piddly little programs around their time frame. That, frankly, is when things fall apart for you.

I don’t know if you realized it yet, but you have at least five months of other programming on the air before the first crappy singer appears on AI and the first person is tortured on 24. Some of it is loved and adored by millions of viewers. You folks (and I’m pointing at all of you) need to take a second look at how you work your scheduling magic and understand that AI and 24 will someday disappear from the airwaves, to be a memory in syndication and Wheel of Fortune puzzles. Then what will you do? Shockingly, you may actually have to schedule a full season’s worth of programming. If that happens, who will come running when you cry ‘Wolf’? Certainly not us viewers.

Clacked by Richard Keller
on Nov 03, 2008 @ 15:00 EST5EDT