American TV, the Audience, Six Degrees, What about Brian and that general lack of respect.

Whilst that is the longest blog entry title I’ve ever used… to start, I’m not from America, I’m British and live in the UK, however, as many people do in the UK, or the world for that matter, I watch a fair bit of American TV.

In the UK, if a show is not doing very well, it will see out its season and then not get renewed. If it’s really performing poorly, it may get relegated to the wee hours but, it won’t get cancelled until it’s completed its run. US TV seems to be quite different though from what I can see. Two shows that we’ve watched in the UK that I have quite enjoyed have been ‘What about Brian’ and ‘Six Degrees.’ In my opinion both shows were very good and quite enjoyable so, it was a shame that they got canned. My understanding is that in both cases, they were pulled by the network, ABC (I think) during their run for not performing well enough… and I know, airtime is money. I think that WAB got a second season and after postponement, Six Degrees came back but.. in either case, loyal fans get badly treated by the network because, in my viewpoint, whether a show is very successful or not, if it’s got an audience who have invested time in the show, they deserve for the show to be ended fittingly or at least have an ending that isn’t a season finale but, a show finale, i.e. for all the loose ends to be wrapped up and not to be left hanging. I wonder if the other networks treat shows and their audience in the same way or, is it just ABC? Am I completely wrong about this?