All Time Greatest Blunders Made By TV Execs

[BW Manilowe]

I think this is a blunder... It's more general than specific, really. Maybe it's just a pet peeve... I'm not sure. Anyway...

Whenever TPTB at a show decide to write a (mostly major) season-ending cliffhanger (mostly in what proves to be the later seasons of a show, anyway, but still... ) without knowing whether or not they'll actually be back to resolve it the next season.

Networks which cancel a show knowing the last episode was a (mostly major) season-ending cliffhanger that nobody will ever find out the resolution of, because the show involved probably won't even be allowed a "1-off" wrap up episode, & that they pissed off (likely) a lot of people by canceling it.

I don't know who's responsible for the biggest blunder in that case--the network, or TPTB with the show who decided it would be a good idea to write a story which may get the audience really interested, & then it ends up not getting the payoff because of an unexpected cancellation.

My example is the show Las Vegas. In what proved to be the (unexpected) final episode, there were 2 couples left hanging at the altar. 1 of them was expectant parents Delinda & Danny. She begins to experience pregnancy complications &, as I remember, they were still waiting for the ambulance to the hospital as they faded to black; so we never found out if they got married, or if the baby was OK. Then there's the matter of Sam & her ex-brother-in-law, Vic. They were the other couple at the altar who never got married because of the sudden cancellation. As a viewer at the time, I really wanted to know if they--either couple/both couples got married & how the baby was.

[andromeda331]

3 hours ago, BW Manilowe said:

I think this is a blunder... It's more general than specific, really. Maybe it's just a pet peeve... I'm not sure. Anyway...

Whenever TPTB at a show decide to write a (mostly major) season-ending cliffhanger (mostly in what proves to be the later seasons of a show, anyway, but still... ) without knowing whether or not they'll actually be back to resolve it the next season.

Networks which cancel a show knowing the last episode was a (mostly major) season-ending cliffhanger that nobody will ever find out the resolution of, because the show involved probably won't even be allowed a "1-off" wrap up episode, & that they pissed off (likely) a lot of people by canceling it.

I don't know who's responsible for the biggest blunder in that case--the network, or TPTB with the show who decided it would be a good idea to write a story which may get the audience really interested, & then it ends up not getting the payoff because of an unexpected cancellation.

My example is the show Las Vegas. In what proved to be the (unexpected) final episode, there were 2 couples left hanging at the altar. 1 of them was expectant parents Delinda & Danny. She begins to experience pregnancy complications &, as I remember, they were still waiting for the ambulance to the hospital as they faded to black; so we never found out if they got married, or if the baby was OK. Then there's the matter of Sam & her ex-brother-in-law, Vic. They were the other couple at the altar who never got married because of the sudden cancellation. As a viewer at the time, I really wanted to know if they--either couple/both couples got married & how the baby was.

Also the Glades. Who shot Jim? Now we'll never find out. Also and older one SOAP Jessica being shot by a firing squad, Chester was going to kill Danny and Burt was walking into a trap. If your going to cancel a show tell the writers so they can wrap things up or give us a wrap up. 

[MargeGunderson]

Canceling the original Law & Order.

[Blergh]

Here's one of the worst sets of cliffhanger blunders: Moesha- not only was it unclear whether it was the title character or another character who was about to reveal her pregnancy but her younger brother Miles had gotten kidnapped! Not only were both of these very serious developments left hanging on that show but also one of the Moesha's best friends, Kimberly Parker spun off to her own sitcom (The Parkers)- and never once did Miss Parker or her mother Nikki EVER say what had happened with the former's best friend and brother despite having four years on their own show to  at least drop an aside. Yes, I know the latter show was supposed to be a comedy but it was totally OOC for Kim and her gossipy mother to never bring up stuff like that (even if it was just to make the latter seem more important via being linked to a major crime happening to her daughter's friend's family)  -and the former show was a comedy,too yet they had this awful development happen at the very end. I mean, why drop this horrific bombshell at the tail end yet even when giving the opportunity to expand on other characters on a new show, NEVER say if the pregnancy/kidnapping got resolved much less if either character survived?! Why The Face!!?!

Edited February 18, 2018 by Blergh
A Knack for Knocking Off a Nikki

[juno]

2 blunders I still think about; Everwood ending so soon, such a great show. I also always wondered what would West Wing would have been like with Jimmy Smits and a whole new administration. I really wanted to watch that show.

[merylinkid]

3 hours ago, MargeGunderson said:

Canceling the original Law & Order.

In favor of the terrible, horrible no good Law & Order LA that didn't even last half a season.     

[andromeda331]

1 hour ago, juno said:

2 blunders I still think about; Everwood ending so soon, such a great show. I also always wondered what would West Wing would have been like with Jimmy Smits and a whole new administration. I really wanted to watch that show.

I wish they had too. I was very curious what the new presidency would be like and the new administration. 

[BW Manilowe]

2 hours ago, juno said:

2 blunders I still think about; Everwood ending so soon, such a great show. I also always wondered what would West Wing would have been like with Jimmy Smits and a whole new administration. I really wanted to watch that show.

Technically, I don't think of the Santos Administration as being entirely new--at least not if you're splitting hairs/talking semantics here. After all, Josh was named as his Chief of Staff; Sam (though we hadn't seen him for about 3 years since Rob Lowe left the show) was going to be Deputy Chief of Staff (as Josh put it when he went to recruit Sam, "You're me, to my Leo."); Annabeth (I think) was supposed to have been, like, FLOTUS' Press Secretary; Donna was FLOTUS' Chief of Staff (Josh's counterpart in the East Wing); Senator Arnie Vinick (while he wasn't a Bartlet staffer, he was a sitting US Senator from California during at least 1 of Bartlet's terms, if not both--& that counts for the purposes of my answer &, if John Spencer had lived, Leo was supposed to be Santos' VPOTUS. Though we didn't see if it actually happened, or not, once Leo died I think Santos was preparing to name Senator Baker (I think from Pennsylvania, & a sitting Senator during at least some of the Bartlet; so, again, he counts for my purposes). In my book, the Santos Administration wasn't entirely new because a number of people from the previous, Bartlet, Administration were retained for the same, or a different, position in the Santos Administration (& rightfully so, in my book, for what they knew about working at the White House/running the country vs. what Santos & a good number of his team didn't know before going in).

I would've watched that, too, even if they had to get someone else to play Sam or they had to say there was some reason Sam had to suddenly resign from his position, & a whole new character ended up as Josh's Deputy after all, because Rob Lowe had another commitment or whatever.

Edited February 18, 2018 by BW Manilowe
To add comment.

[BW Manilowe]

The other thing about the Las Vegas last episode cliffhanger blunder was that the hotel's private jet, which was carrying the hotel's owner (Tom Selleck) & a pilot on a trip somewhere crashed in Colorado & 1 person was reported dead. It turned out Selleck's character was alive; the plane's pilot died. Selleck's character showed up, alive & well, back at the show's casino resort before the end of the show. Maybe even before Delinda had her pregnancy complications. That was the only cliffhanger they ended up resolving.

And, basically, the way I heard it was the show apparently still had reasonable ratings (although they only did 16 eps in the last season, instead of 20-something like most shows do), but the show was airing on Friday nights then &, supposedly, the Commissioner of the NFL (or somebody connected to the league) didn't want the NBC Sunday Night Football games, or any NFL-related stuff mentioned during Las Vegas, because of the whole gambling thing, even though the show was a fictionalized account of the people who work at, or are otherwise involved with, a Las Vegas casino resort.

If you ask me, there was an easier way to avoid mentioning the real NFL games during the show than by canceling it--just don't show any commercials for NBC's Sunday Night NFL games during the hour the show was scheduled. It's not necessarily like NBC had to plug the damn games during every commercial break on (especially) Friday & Saturday nights. And, after wanting promotion of the NFL games to be kept off of Las Vegas, because of the whole gambling/sports & other betting thing that happens in the real city, though the show was fictional, the irony is Las Vegas is getting an NFL franchise, next season, I guess(?), when the current Oakland Raiders come to town (& both the NHL & WNBA have seen fit to locate franchises in Vegas since late last year; the NHL team, the Vegas Golden Knights, is breaking all sorts of records for a first-year team).

Edited February 18, 2018 by BW Manilowe
To add comments.

[Raja]

6 hours ago, merylinkid said:

In favor of the terrible, horrible no good Law & Order LA that didn't even last half a season.     

They burned off the second half of the full L&O LA season after a reboot and making one of the alternating Deputy DA's become a Robbery Homicide detective to replace a killed off character  and having Connie Rubirosa transfer from New York to care for her mother as the junior Deputy DA before she returned to New York as an Assistant US Attorney on SVU.

[Kel Varnsen]

10 hours ago, MargeGunderson said:

Canceling the original Law & Order.

Which is too bad becuse I thought Jeremy Sisto and Anthony Anderson as partners, and Linus Roach as the ADA really refreshed the show in the last couple of seasons.

 

8 hours ago, nosleepforme said:

It was still a dumb decision by the network, the show's ratings had increased, it was like the No. 2 show in the demo or something, they didn't know if the pilots they had would turn out okay and then of course they alienated one of the creators that helped them define the network for a second time (after letting Buffy go to UPN, which one of the WB executives called "the first step towards the end of the network".)

Yea a dumb decision, but I can totally see why they made it, when given an ultimatum by the creator of a show that wasn't a guaranteed renewal.

[AntiBeeSpray]

22 hours ago, BW Manilowe said:

I think this is a blunder... It's more general than specific, really. Maybe it's just a pet peeve... I'm not sure. Anyway...

Whenever TPTB at a show decide to write a (mostly major) season-ending cliffhanger (mostly in what proves to be the later seasons of a show, anyway, but still... ) without knowing whether or not they'll actually be back to resolve it the next season.

Networks which cancel a show knowing the last episode was a (mostly major) season-ending cliffhanger that nobody will ever find out the resolution of, because the show involved probably won't even be allowed a "1-off" wrap up episode, & that they pissed off (likely) a lot of people by canceling it.

I don't know who's responsible for the biggest blunder in that case--the network, or TPTB with the show who decided it would be a good idea to write a story which may get the audience really interested, & then it ends up not getting the payoff because of an unexpected cancellation.

My example is the show Las Vegas. In what proved to be the (unexpected) final episode, there were 2 couples left hanging at the altar. 1 of them was expectant parents Delinda & Danny. She begins to experience pregnancy complications &, as I remember, they were still waiting for the ambulance to the hospital as they faded to black; so we never found out if they got married, or if the baby was OK. Then there's the matter of Sam & her ex-brother-in-law, Vic. They were the other couple at the altar who never got married because of the sudden cancellation. As a viewer at the time, I really wanted to know if they--either couple/both couples got married & how the baby was.

I'd say the same with the Pretender (minus the movies -- those were a mess within themselves O_o), Crossing Jordan and CSI: NY.

The first two didn't really have much in the way of closure and the third, what the heck happened to Mac and his girlfriend. /facepalm

[Blergh]

I'm not sure whether it was the writers or the exec themselves behind it but IMO, Crossing Jordan's blunder was that they lost all interest and faith in the title character to the degree that by the time the show finally faded away entirely, Jordan herself was a barely seen supporting player in what had been her own show!  I think the idea of a forensic pathologist spurred to help others due to being haunted by the unsolved murder of her own mother was quite fascinating but they seemed not to think so- and it would have nice had they kept the focus on her even if she eventually had to resign herself to not being able to solve that mystery within her own lifetime. 

[MisterBluxom]

After reading this thread, I started watching Law & Order again.  I watched the three series, Law & Order, Law & Order Criminal Intent and Law & Order SVU.

I have concluded that the original show (Law & Order) is just superb. The quality of the shows never really changed much. They were excellent in the beginning and they maintained that excellence all the way through.

As far as the other two series go, I really enjoyed Criminal Intent. I don't know how or why the character "Robert Goren" played by Vincent D'Onofrio was just a real genius and solved many crimes using his brain. The way he discovered what was going on was just tremendously entertaining. His partner never seemed to play much of a role. But I really enjoyed the way they complemented each other and I came away from this show thinking the creator (Dick Wolf) gave us all some of the finest TV shows ever made - an real treasure.

IMO, Law & Order True Crime and Law & Order Los Angeles were serious mistakes. They were never even in the same league as the original Law & Order and Law & Order Criminal Intent. Not even close.  But I want to thank everyone who has posted their opinions in this thread. I enjoyed reading your posts very much.

Edited February 25, 2018 by MissBluxom

[Ceindreadh]

This is an attempted blunder that didn’t work. 

When the original pilot was being filmed for The Man from UNCLE, the man in charge was being played by Will Kuluva. 

TPTP looked at the pilot and said to get rid of the guy whose name started with K and so Kuluva was replaced by Leo G. Carroll. 

It turned out much later that the exec had meant the character whose name began with K...as in Illya Kuryakin. 

Things could have been a lot different!

[bmasters9]

On 2/25/2018 at 4:54 AM, Ceindreadh said:

This is an attempted blunder that didn’t work. 

When the original pilot was being filmed for The Man from UNCLE, the man in charge was being played by Will Kuluva. 

TPTP looked at the pilot and said to get rid of the guy whose name started with K and so Kuluva was replaced by Leo G. Carroll. 

It turned out much later that the exec had meant the character whose name began with K...as in Illya Kuryakin. 

Things could have been a lot different!

So it was the character who was supposed to go, not the actor? Intriguing!

[Sandman87]

Here's a lovely blunder: The executives at Adult Swim told Dino Stamatopoulos that they loved the darker tone that Moral Orel had taken in season 2, and instructed him to make the next season "as dark as possible." The fourth episode of season 3 freaked them out so badly that they cancelled the show for being too dark.

And yes, it's probably the darkest animated series ever shown on TV. Good stuff.

[BW Manilowe]

Here's another blunder: In the 2-part Starsky & Hutch episode "The Plague", the name of the hospital where the victims, including Hutch, are being treated has a different name in each episode. It's called "Lincoln Hospital" in 1 episode & plain old "City Hospital" in the other (I think it's "City" in Part 1, then "Lincoln" in Part 2); and the building shown as the hospital, whatever name it's going by, is the building they call "Memorial Hospital" in most other episodes of Starsky & Hutch (& most other Spelling-Goldberg TV shows) where they need a hospital.

I can forgive, pretty much, using the same generic, stock-type footage of the same hospital in all of the Spelling-Goldberg produced shows; even though I don't think any of them took place in the same city, & sometimes that hospital wasn't even supposed to be in the city in which that series was set. I mean, it's cheaper for the production company to use the same generic hospital exterior in all their series, & I even know that.

What I have a harder time forgiving is when the same person writes all the parts of a multi-part episode of a series & they give some pivotal location, or character, in the episode a different name in each part, without explanation (as happened here). I mean, didn't the guy even proofread the script(s), & catch the mistake before turning it/them into the producers, or ABC, or whomever/wherever it/they went in the next step in the production process?

Also, most TV series & movies have someone in charge of continuity--making sure that the actors are wearing the same costumes/jewelry, their hair is the same length &/or color, if their sleeves are up or down, a piece of clothing, or pair of glasses, is on or off, etc., in a TV production or movie as long as they're still filming the same scene or at least filming the same episode/the same part of the episode. What I'm getting at is, if they have someone to make sure nothing changes in each scene that  isn't supposed to, & they have a copy of the script to consult for that, how did the Continuity person also miss the changing names, for what's supposed to be the same hospital, from the first part of the episode to the second?

Heck, how did Paul Michael Glaser &/or David Soul miss the difference in a script read-through or during actual filming, & have somebody fix it (though I know there were times when they really didn't care about what was in the scripts, & stuff like that)? You'd think, as long as they'd have to be working with that script/that episode, 1 of them would've noticed & had it fixed.

Sigh...

[Sandman87]

Another one related to Adult Swim, which may be the most epic executive blunder of all time:

In 2007 Cartoon Network, which owns AS, hired a company to promote their Aqua Teen Hunger Force movie. The campaign resulted in a bomb scare in Boston, which made law enforcement there look like a bunch of idiots and ended up costing the network General Manager/Executive Vice President his job.

You know you've really screwed up when there's a Wikipedia page devoted to it.

[Annber03]

Oh, man. I never heard that story. 

That's...amazingly stupid. Wow. 

[merylinkid]

Yeah when Law Enforcement gets involved  -- you screwed up big time.

 

WHY anyone in the Post 9-11 era thought this was a good idea.   And no one pointed out it was a bad idea from concept through planning, through execution I have no clue.

[AntiBeeSpray]

The way that Night Court was cancelled. Just heard about how they were kicked off. Shameful.

[proserpina65]

On ‎03‎/‎23‎/‎2018 at 7:11 AM, merylinkid said:

Yeah when Law Enforcement gets involved  -- you screwed up big time.

 

WHY anyone in the Post 9-11 era thought this was a good idea.   And no one pointed out it was a bad idea from concept through planning, through execution I have no clue.

I thought it was pretty damned funny myself.

[2727]

I'm just putting this here in advance: ABC deciding to air a cobbled-together season 2 of the revived Roseanne. Big mistake. Big. Huge.

[Spartan Girl]

Fox cancelling Brooklyn 99.

[Twilight Man]

So, where do I even begin????     Well, this would more or less explain it............

The Silverman era of NBC ---  from 1978 to 1981,  NBC would give us such "classics" as:

The Waverly Wonders (a vehicle for Joe Namath that ran three weeks)

David Cassidy:  Man Undercover

Mrs. Columbo (starring ST:Voy's Kate Mulgrew)

SuperTrain (Good Lord, don't ask!!!)

Pink Lady & Jeff

The 1980 summer Olympic fiasco

and The Brady Brides!!!   (I just had to put that last.  LOL!!)

Amazingly, one of the few bright spots was greenlighting a show called Hill Street Blues,

a show that become the cornerstone of an ultimate resurrection that would bring NBC

to a greatness that we all remember (or heard about) called "Must See TV".

(Of course, that was all done without Silverman).

[Blergh]

15 hours ago, Twilight Man said:

So, where do I even begin????     Well, this would more or less explain it............

The Silverman era of NBC ---  from 1978 to 1981,  NBC would give us such "classics" as:

The Waverly Wonders (a vehicle for Joe Namath that ran three weeks)

David Cassidy:  Man Undercover

Mrs. Columbo (starring ST:Voy's Kate Mulgrew)

SuperTrain (Good Lord, don't ask!!!)

Pink Lady & Jeff

The 1980 summer Olympic fiasco

and The Brady Brides!!!   (I just had to put that last.  LOL!!)

Amazingly, one of the few bright spots was greenlighting a show called Hill Street Blues,

a show that become the cornerstone of an ultimate resurrection that would bring NBC

to a greatness that we all remember (or heard about) called "Must See TV".

(Of course, that was all done without Silverman).

For everyone too young or not alive- allow me to fill in some gaps

 

1. Waverly Wonders- Had Namath playing a   coach of a  high school basketball team that always lost but somehow everyone in the school was charmed by him enough to keep him employed there. . Amazingly, Larry Hagman had vied for the role!

 

2. David Cassidy: Man Undercover- Not only did this showcase all the dramatic,serious talents one could expect from the recently deceased Mr. Cassidy but, perhaps the most ludicrous thing about it was that it used the performer's name rather than the undercover cop character's name.

3. Mrs. Columbo- Yep, it sure did star the future Star Trek Captain Miss Mulgrew but that wasn't the only issue of this show.  First of all, for everyone too young to recall, the recently departed rotating Columbo detective series had starred Peter Falk as a bumbling detective who sometimes would trap the bad guys to incriminate themselves by telling stories about his never-depicted  wife whom he seemed to have been wed to most of his adult life. It should be noted that the late Mr. Falk had been born in 1927 while Miss Mulgrew was born in 1955 (24 years old at the time of this series). Anyway, she started out as this homemaker mother of a young girl who did some work for a local paper but kept getting drawn into detective work with it vaguely inferred that she was following in her unseen husband's footsteps. Then, since there was zero chance of Mr. Falk ever appearing on this series, they chickened out of this concept and, for some bogus reason, had her (and her daughter's) name changed to Callahan with her marital status somehow in limbo and the series retitled Kate Loves a Mystery. Obviously, it didn't save it.

4. SuperTrain- Believe it or not, the network seemed to think that this series would sink The Love Boat and it seemed to have everything a cruise ship would have on rails- including a cutting-edge disco! Oh, and it was supposed to travel at 190 miles per hour yet someone fell asleep in the math department since it would take three days for it to travel from New York to LA. 

5. Pink Lady and Jeff-  This was one of the very last variety shows to air and it's easy to see why this helped sink the format. Pink Lady was a Japanese teen girl duo singing group who had a flash-in-the-pan single that somehow charted in the US . Hence; someone got the brilliant idea of teaming them with the virtual unknown US comedian Jeff Altman. Problem was that while the duo looked cute and could sing that one song, they could speak virtually no English and were able to do nothing more than politely giggle at Mr. Altman's puns. Oddly enough, it had the onetime legendary comedian Sid Caesar guest three times in its six episode run- playing their samurai father who was strongly objecting to their choice of dates!

6. 1980 Olympic Disaster- Long short is that NBC had pinned a great deal of time and energies into broadcasting those Olympics set in Moscow. Problem was the US pulled out of the Olympics to protest the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan so that made this hugely anticipated block of time suddenly needing to be filled. Yet, believe it or not, it was CBS who courted even more ridicule via this historic event re greenlighting a comedy about a Soviet athlete eloping to the US with an US American wife called Phyl and Mikhy whose premise seemed even more preposterous via the US pullout.

7- Brady Brides- Not even close to its original show in quality or humor but, at least it was better than either the Brady Bunch Variety Hour or the cartoon Brady Kids.  Though some may think it's somewhat like saying Red Roof Inn is better than Motel 6 while trying to ignore the existence of Crowne Plaza hotels.

And here's a bonus I don't think future generations should forget: Manimal- a detective has the ability to change himself into any animal he wants to fight crime but only seemed to be able to think of four animals to change into (primarily so the special effects folks wouldn't totally blow the show's budget).

 

And yet, in spite of how all those bogus choices failed in the early 1980's, somehow we're now in a place where   there's 600 channels and nothing worth seeing on more often than not.

Edited August 19, 2018 by Blergh
expansion

[Annber03]

Thanks for the info on those shows, @Blergh. Your commentary about them had me laughing about as much as the descriptions of the shows themselves did :D! The only one from that list I've seen any of was that "Brady Brides" show, and that's only because I remember some channel showing reruns of it for a brief time when I was a kid. 

13 minutes ago, Blergh said:

2. David Cassidy: Man Undercover- Not only did this showcase all the dramatic,serious talents one could expect from the recently deceased Mr. Cassidy but, perhaps the most ludicrous thing about it was that it used the performer's name rather than the undercover cop character's name.

Reading the description for this show made me think of this bit from an episode of "Boy Meets World":

[Blergh]

12 hours ago, Annber03 said:

Thanks for the info on those shows, @Blergh. Your commentary about them had me laughing about as much as the descriptions of the shows themselves did :D! The only one from that list I've seen any of was that "Brady Brides" show, and that's only because I remember some channel showing reruns of it for a brief time when I was a kid. 

Reading the description for this show made me think of this bit from an episode of "Boy Meets World":

 

Thanks for the shout out! A fairly good analogy except that it made more sense for a   high school grad to set himself up for egomaniac ridicule (especially a fictional one) than an actual adult to do so. However; at the time, there was no such thing as 'reality' shows.

[Raja]

23 hours ago, Twilight Man said:

 

David Cassidy:  Man Undercover

 

The 1980 summer Olympic fiasco

 

I remember that one. The pilot was an episode of the anthology series Police Story. A pre 21 Jump Street with an actor/cop aged out of high school undercover work. I liked the first episode was him undercover in  the hill racer community. Something CHiPs  reprised a few years later. Not to mention The Fast and the Furious following a different type of street racer criminals and couple of generations later.

 

I didn't check the link are they blaming a network executive and not the nation's Chief Executive actions or the network for not going ahead with a sports programming that were only watched in combination with nationalistic Olympic medal counts by Americans?  If the sports themselves were a draw they would have been broadcast every year instead of every four years in those days before 24/7 sports networks needing constant content.

[Twilight Man]

18 hours ago, Raja said:

I didn't check the link are they blaming a network executive and not the nation's Chief Executive actions or the network for not going ahead with a sports programming that were only watched in combination with nationalistic Olympic medal counts by Americans?

Let's just say that after his disastrous choices of new programming, Silverman was telling "everybody" (owners of affiliates, ad companies, etc.) not to worry because the Summer Olympics would have been a "big draw" to NBC while the other two channels (as I pointed out, this was around 1978-1981; There was no Fox (let alone CW), and cable TV was in its infancy) would be showing reruns of their shows (summer programming, as well, was really "not a thing" during this time).  When the US gov announced that they were "pulling out" of the Olympics, you can bet that the moment he heard that, Silverman looked up to the sky and said "Why do you hate me???"  NBC lost about 80 million in ad revenues by not showing the games, so it was hardly "the straw that broke the camel's back", but by that point, everyone clearly believed that everything that Silverman touched turned to crap.

 

As you can read from this article, Silverman was also responsible for the "rural purge" (mentioned earlier in this thread), but he replaced those shows on CBS with some good entertainment like All In The Family, and Mary Tyler Moore, then he went to ABC and greenlit such shows as Happy Days, Laverne & Shirley, and Love Boat (another reason why people keep referring to SuperTrain as "Love Boat" on a train).  NBC thought he could make their network #1, but it obviously was not to be.

Edited August 20, 2018 by Twilight Man

[fishcakes]

On 8/18/2018 at 11:24 PM, Blergh said:

And here's a bonus I don't think future generations should forget: Manimal- a detective has the ability to change himself into any animal he wants to fight crime but only seemed to be able to think of four animals to change into (primarily so the special effects folks wouldn't totally blow the show's budget).

About 25 years ago, I enrolled in an extension course on film and TV production being taught by a guy who claimed to be a Hollywood director and producer. I went to the first class and the guy was super manic and possibly a little bit drunk (he said that he was so excited about the class that he'd arrived several hours early and had "popped a few beers" while waiting). He talked non-stop for 90 minutes and clearly did know a lot about production, but in reeling off his many credits, at one point he claimed that he had written the script for Rain Man and said, "I wrote it under the name Barry Morrow for some reason." Since I knew who Barry Morrow was and had seen him interviewed a couple of times, I knew this wasn't him and figured most of the rest of what he said was probably also a lie, except I did believe him when he said he was the creator and executive producer of Manimal because, I figured, who would lie about that? "I wrote the Academy Award winning Rain Man, played Gandhi in the movie Gandhi but did it under the name Ben Kingsley for some reason, I am in fact, Cecil B. DeMille, oh, and also I created a little gem called Manimal, y'all!"

I never went back to the class not so much because the guy was a big liar but mostly because he was so sad and desperate that listening to him lie made me want to cry. I just now looked at his IMDb page to see if he really created Manimal (I vaguely remember doing this at the time, but IMDb was pretty spare back then) and he did not, although he was a crew member on it. He also worked on other TV classics like Lucan (boy raised by wolves returns to the forest to find his wolf family), Voyagers (Jon-Eric Hexum and Meeno Peluci time travel to the past to make actual history match history books), and ... Supertrain! Whee! He has no credits after 1988, so he'd not been working on anything in the TV/film industry for three or four years by the time he landed in Seattle teaching a night class to 12 disappointed people, probably half of whom didn't show up again after the first class.

[proserpina65]

On ‎08‎/‎19‎/‎2018 at 2:24 AM, Blergh said:

And here's a bonus I don't think future generations should forget: Manimal- a detective has the ability to change himself into any animal he wants to fight crime but only seemed to be able to think of four animals to change into (primarily so the special effects folks wouldn't totally blow the show's budget).

Manimal's one saving grace was that Simon MacCorkindale is hot.

[merylinkid]

6 hours ago, fishcakes said:

Voyagers (Jon-Eric Hexum and Meeno Peluci time travel to the past to make actual history match history books),

Now that was a good show.   Too bad it got axed.   Blunders.   Then there was the tragedy of Jon-Eric Hexum's death.

[Danielg342]

When CBS fired Paget Brewster and AJ Cook from Criminal Minds. The show had the perfect cast with the perfect chemistry and seemed to have oodles and oodles of upward potential- but then CBS had to ruin it by axing two leads, even if the latter (Cook) had some difficulty getting written into the episodes. CM never recovered from the cast shakeup, and it's been downhill from there- with the show never hitting its true potential.

[crowsworks]

On 2/18/2018 at 5:11 AM, andromeda331 said:

Also the Glades. Who shot Jim? Now we'll never find out. Also and older one SOAP Jessica being shot by a firing squad, Chester was going to kill Danny and Burt was walking into a trap. If your going to cancel a show tell the writers so they can wrap things up or give us a wrap up. 

Any show that has a continueing over arching storyline or ends on a cliff hanger should have to film a wrap-up ep. This would (if the show is canceled) finish it. The best shows do this as it increases the sales when they go to Netflix or syndication because I won't watch a series if I know it ends hanging. If I were a network exec or producer I would insist on it.

best example Serenity after Firefly.

Elementary

anyone have a best/worst examples

[ParadoxLost]

The strangest thing about shows that end on a cliffhanger is that my memory being annoyed that it ended on a cliffhanger lasts longer for me than the memory of what the actual cliffhanger was.

[KWalkerInc]

On 2/18/2018 at 7:33 AM, Blergh said:

Here's one of the worst sets of cliffhanger blunders: Moesha- not only was it unclear whether it was the title character or another character who was about to reveal her pregnancy but her younger brother Miles had gotten kidnapped! Not only were both of these very serious developments left hanging on that show but also one of the Moesha's best friends, Kimberly Parker spun off to her own sitcom (The Parkers)- and never once did Miss Parker or her mother Nikki EVER say what had happened with the former's best friend and brother despite having four years on their own show to  at least drop an aside. Yes, I know the latter show was supposed to be a comedy but it was totally OOC for Kim and her gossipy mother to never bring up stuff like that (even if it was just to make the latter seem more important via being linked to a major crime happening to her daughter's friend's family)  -and the former show was a comedy,too yet they had this awful development happen at the very end. I mean, why drop this horrific bombshell at the tail end yet even when giving the opportunity to expand on other characters on a new show, NEVER say if the pregnancy/kidnapping got resolved much less if either character survived?! Why The Face!!?!

What's even worse is that several characters from Moesha appeared on an episode of The Parkers sometime after the cliffhanger(s) and there was still no resolution!  They just had some wacky road trip adventure instead, and I think Hakeem (who was dating Moesha at the time of the pregnancy cliffhanger) was actively flirting with other girls.  I don't know what the point was of having other characters appear if they weren't going to say something about the way the other show ended.

[callie lee 29]

Bringing this thread back from the dead (maybe) I'm going to have to go with a deeply personal offense: NBC corporate finally getting their chance to fuck around with Homicide: Life on the Streets and ruining my favorite and the best (in my humble opinion) show ever. 

[Cinnabon]

15 hours ago, callie lee 29 said:

Bringing this thread back from the dead (maybe) I'm going to have to go with a deeply personal offense: NBC corporate finally getting their chance to fuck around with Homicide: Life on the Streets and ruining my favorite and the best (in my humble opinion) show ever. 

And I still can’t find it streaming!

[janie jones]

I've got the DVDs. They come in a little file cabinet!

[Irlandesa]

8 hours ago, Cinnabon said:

And I still can’t find it streaming!

I think I read somewhere that one of the issues with Homicide is that there's some question as to who owns it.

[anna0852]

This might qualify:

https://tvline.com/2022/08/26/nbc-10-pm-programming-block-cancelled-chicago-pd/

[Affogato]

On 2/25/2018 at 4:54 AM, Ceindreadh said:

This is an attempted blunder that didn’t work. 

When the original pilot was being filmed for The Man from UNCLE, the man in charge was being played by Will Kuluva. 

TPTP looked at the pilot and said to get rid of the guy whose name started with K and so Kuluva was replaced by Leo G. Carroll. 

It turned out much later that the exec had meant the character whose name began with K...as in Illya Kuryakin. 

Things could have been a lot different!

Whew!

On 9/19/2020 at 12:57 AM, crowsworks said:

Any show that has a continueing over arching storyline or ends on a cliff hanger should have to film a wrap-up ep. This would (if the show is canceled) finish it. The best shows do this as it increases the sales when they go to Netflix or syndication because I won't watch a series if I know it ends hanging. If I were a network exec or producer I would insist on it.

best example Serenity after Firefly.

Elementary

anyone have a best/worst examples

farscape had a fantastic movie. Still bitter. 

[Raja]

NBC giving up on JAG, from which CBS has gotten over 50 seasons of steady performance from JAG and her children the NCIS franchise