Showing once more the business acumen that killed Firefly, Arrested Development, Futurama, and Family Guy — but keeps The Simpsons going ten seasons after it stopped being funny — Fox decided this week to put Glee on hiatus, effective 12/9/09 through 4/13/10, to make room for American Idol. Apparently, neither profitability nor objective quality will stop Fox from gambling a show’s future on a whim.
This amidst news that Fox executives have kept a close watch on Chris Colfer (“Kurt,” the flamboyantly gay singer/football star). Chris himself is gay, which the network has tried to keep under wraps, to the point of censoring quotes in interviews that appeared supportive of gay rights, and raised the issue of the very real dangers faced by “out” gay teenagers. The given reason for canceling the quotes (“protecting” Chris) don’t match the edit point. To hell with Carrie Prejean: here’s a real case of a star being muzzled by a politically-sensitive network.
The decision to risk Glee proves that Fox will stop at nothing to mess up every popular but off-the-beaten-path show that come before it. Because of its astronomical ratings, though, and iTunes-driven hyper-profitability, there’s a good chance Glee will survive, despite Fox’s best efforts. Keep the show strong — buy the songs, buy the episodes on iTunes if you can, and — of course — don’t stop believin’.
This is the sort of thing that’s why I don’t watch new shows anymore.
Posted by Steve | November 28, 2009, 1:59 pmAdd Sarah Connor Chronicles, Space: Above and Beyond and Adventures of Sam & Max to that list.
Makes you wonder why anyone with a good show would even want to pitch it to FOX anymore.
Posted by lanfranc | November 28, 2009, 4:48 pmSarah Connor Chronicles was a frustrating show… to the point that based on the Season 2 writing (“Let’s dump by the wayside things we seemed to be building to in Season 1 and keep adding more hanging plot strings”) I’m not sure it would qualify as “objectively good”.
But I’ll watch Summer Glau as long as she’ll let me and damned if Bear McCreary didn’t write a masterful soundtrack…
Posted by Steve | November 28, 2009, 11:09 pmI should stress that I expect Glee to survive. But gambling with the future of an immensely profitable and well-loved series is just stupid!!
Posted by ACG | November 28, 2009, 4:50 pmYeah, it’s the same thing they did to Firefly, isn’t it?
“No, this pilot is too complex, make one with more action in it.”
“Hey, let’s air the episodes in a totally random order, uh, because we can!”
“Yeah, constantly moving the show around to new timeslots to make room for football matches or whatever is a great idea!”
“Joss, your main character is too dark. Make him more jolly. ^_^”
Sheesh.
Posted by lanfranc | November 28, 2009, 5:20 pmI thought everything was fine with glee? They picked up the rest of the season a long time ago. And they’ve hit goldmine with selling the songs on itunes alone.
Posted by Oneiroi | November 29, 2009, 3:03 amGiven Fox’s “news” coverage slant – does this really surprise you?
Posted by Philip H | December 1, 2009, 8:34 amUsually the gap between Fox News and Fox TV is rather large. I mean, they have family guy. While not liberal, offensive in a million ways.
Posted by Oneiroi | December 1, 2009, 3:40 pmFox: the Fascist Network. It’s not just the distorted news on the other Murdoch outlet — it’s fascism, racism, sexism, and homophobia, on every Fox outlet.
Posted by Bill | December 11, 2009, 9:06 pmWell, he couldn’t be more out now, so I guess they weren’t very good at it or decided it wasn’t a good idea.
Posted by Glee Fox | November 19, 2010, 11:43 pm