I've already sent an email regarding this issue and while I don't expect that I will ever hear an answer, I was hoping that your actions would be louder than words. Unfortunately, you have, yet again, chosen to air TV shows that no one has a chance to see because your knee jerk reaction to them is to pull the plug if they don't do well after half a dozen episodes. This action HAS TO STOP! There has to be some regulations that state that you cannot spend all the time and money and effort of all the people involved with the shows (and in this case I'm specifically talking about Alcatraz) without giving the show a FAIR chance to bloom. Six to ten episodes isn't enough to allow things to evolve and hook people. You advertise a show for a longer period of time than the show actually appears on TV. I know you get a lot of complaints about this issue and the fact that you continue to over crowd your TV lineups with an over abundance of "reality" TV and cram it full of great fiction and comedy just to see which ones fly out of the gate, is very disturbing.
In my previous complaint, I compared what you're doing by putting on a show that has no logical end (and you do that way too much and way too often) is like reading the first chapter of a book. You have no clue how it's going to end. You've been given a small piece of the information necessary to create a story without the courtesey of allowing it to unfold properly and have a logical end. If you're going to cancel shows, fine, there is a business to it that I don't understand however, at least allow the creators and actors and the multitude of crew involved in creating these shows (some of which are brilliant and, if they'd been given a FAIR shot, could have been on your network for years) to finish what they started with a proper finale. Tie up some of the stories that you've got us all interested in and make it so that we can watch and say "sucks that it's over but at least it ended properly."
Perhaps if you stopped flooding your network with too many shows, it might serve you well to trim the lineup down to the ones that you actually plan on allowing to flourish and grow, gain momentum and a following and then end properly after all of the story has been told. Like a book one might say. I may not like the ending of it, but at least there is one. To introduce a story to a mass audience that does not logically conclude is irresponsible. That we all continue to hope that the shows we watch will be on the next week and the week following is ludicrous. That there isn't regulation stating that if you start something you should have to finish it is surprising and that you don't have some internal measures in place to make sure that you're actually serving the public interest to the best of your ability is just wrong. Without people watching your network, you're out of the television entertainment business. The reason will be that no one wants a fifth of a show. Just like no one wants a fifth of a novel. I can't continue to invest (and that IS what I'm doing) my time in the programs that you put on your network because I never know if the ones I'm choosing will still be on the following week. "Reality" TV is getting old. Sometime in the near future, people are going to get tired of "reality" TV and maybe then we'll have some series on TV that last as long as Friends or ER did. Nothing has that longevity anymore. I miss shows that lasted from season to season.
I hope that one of two things happens soon; either you pay attention to the fact that you are providing a substandard product that is incomplete most of the time and do something to change it and at least allow shows to die in a logical fashion OR you go belly up and let someone else take a shot. Clearly you're not paying attention to what it is you're supposed to be doing which is providing entertainment. When you cancel a show without allowing us as viewers to get the complete story or at least a quick and abbreviated version of the story all you're doing is making people remove your channel from their DTVR's. If something doesn't change soon, that will be it for me where your network is concerned. I've had it with good shows being cancelled without being allowed to fully develop, without a decent episode base to make that decision on and without being allowed to at least close off the stories and characters we get merely a glimpse of.
I CANNOT and WILL NOT invest my time in shows that are on your network if they aren't allowed to grow. Choose more carefully what you air. And allow what you choose to run its course. Otherwise, don't waste our time.
Jay
Disappointed in FOX... yet again.
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