Nine has just pulled the plug on one of it’s big new dramas, Fringe.
The big budget “thrilling new drama” the network recently promoted as with a big marketing push has been pulled from it schedule effective immediately.
Nine will instead move The Mentalist into its place from next Wednesday at 8:30pm, followed by CSI: NY.
This week the series rated a disappointing 671,000 viewers -thrashed by Criminal Minds’ 1.47m, beaten by Spicks and Specks 1.23m, and pipped by House’s 885,000 viewers.
The complex, futuristic drama starring Australian actors Anna Torv and John Noble has fared better in the US, holding most of its 9million viewers and winning a full series.
Nine has had trouble with its Wednesday line-ups, already pulling Kitchen Nightmares USA and McLeod’s Daughters from the 8:30pm timeslots, the latter last aired to 931,000.
Nine has also had a run of bad luck with sci-fi shows including Moonlight, Terminator: Sarah Connor Chronicles all under-performing, while Seven’s Bionic Woman and Heroes had uneven results and Torchwood and Battlestar Galactica were moved by TEN onto TEN HD.
When Nine announced with considerable fanfare that it had picked up the rights to Fringe, readers on this site were sceptical, vowing to download it for fear of Nine pulling the plug on the show.
Tim Worner, programmer at rival Seven, recently commented on the difficult game of programming saying, “The aim of our game is to try to please most of the people most of the time and it’s a very tricky equation.”
No doubt Michael Healy concurs today.
Plans for a special by Mythbusters on October 29 are also now shelved. Nine is yet to announce plans for unaired episodes of Fringe and a regular Sunday show where The Mentalist was sitting…
UPDATE: A spokesperson for Nine said Fringe’s fastracking was complicated by the US election but could not confirm a new timeslot for the series yet.
Kindly link to this site when sourcing or posting in messageboards, thanks!
tossers.
sorry was that to blunt for everyone…
nine are tossers…for that matter expand that across the entire network broadcast business.
Rule of thumb to built customer loyalty:
Be Consistent
Be Reliable
Be Good at what you do.
Sorry Network TV but you fail on all accounts in offering good customer service.
Damn it, was really starting to enjoy fringe, but typical from channel nine. Fringe was never going to win the ratings war, its definitely not for everyone given its quirky sci-fi nature.
Oh the “mental” ..ist, what a piece of ..”work”… Not Simon Baker’s or anyones.
It works just like a sleeping tablet.
And the brave TV scheduler at NINE who follows this with CSI NY……
Oh dear, we will be asleep soundly.
To the Idiots @ nine scheduling look for new jobs, replace great new groundbreaking shows with this dribble…….what posessed you, even us women dont want to watch Simon Baker.
“VIVA channel 10″
I can’t believe channel nine has done it again! I loved fringe! sooo over channel nine and they way they keep pulling good programmes off air, maybe i’ll just download everything on my computer, that way I know i’ll get to see it!!!
The Mentalist will be the next show to be axed. It’s completely lacklustre and Simon Baker won’t be able to hold the fort with this one. His co-stars lack on screen presence, and the writing is crap.
I am not a sci-fi fan but loved this series. Didn’t watch it last week oly due to the fact that I was watching the Aussies beat Qatar for the World Cup Qualifiers. How do I download this?
I struggle to understand why the channels chop and change their programming so much. All shows are going to go through there highs and lows, but surley it is better to ride them out and build your audience. Like many others have mentioned, I will also download the Fringe now. This means when Fringe comes back on in Summer or whenever, I won’t be watching because I will have already seen them.
As for the Mentalist – lets see how long it lasts – even if it is a good show. I’m sure a lot of people won’t realise it has changed to Wednesday at first – or already have something else they prefer to watch on Wednesday nights.
Oh well, from memory, Seinfeld got dumped in its first season and ended up one of the biggest shows ever.
And tv stations wonder why people download tv shows!!! I have pretty much given up on free to air tv, have had pay tv which is also crap. Best thing to do is just download all the shows you want to see and then you get to watch them when you want and with NO adds.
I really enjoyed Fringe and am disappointed at Channel 9 for dumping it.
Im all for downloading the eps of the net but not everyone has access to super fast ADSL with unlimited bandwith. i.e. me! No access to ADSL where i live, still on dial up so it makes it almost impossible to download anything of the net longer than a 3 minute song off bigpond!
Sorry Jesta, not true…. it ran from 8:30 -10pm in schedule. Nine also sent me the full preview.
I like that a lot of you have said “I couldn’t get past the first episode” as a way of explaining that this is not Ch9′s fault – it still is!! – Ch9 Australia cut the run time of that episode from the US 81 mins (8pm – 9:35, with limited ads) to standard 45mins (8:35-9:35, normal 15mins ads) and expected the storyline to still flow – no wonder most of you tuned out after Ep1.
I have to admit, I taped ‘Fringe’ in favour of ‘Spicks’n'Specks’. . . good luck knocking that show over Ch9… No mentalist for me.
one of the networks needs to sack their programming director and get a new one, someone with some spunk and courage, and who will make a decision and stick by it rather than just panicking every morning the ratings come out. i know television is a business, but what other business gets away with treating the consumer like this? imagine if you went into a supermarket, wanted to purchase a product but at the checkout were told that you cannot have it because the quantity that it has sold so far does not satisfy the stores expectations, it is then removed from your hands and put back on the shelf to wait there until a sale. you would be outraged and would never go back after being treated so rudely and that business would get such a reputation that they would go out of business. so why do television stations get to treat people so badly- because it is pretty close to a monopoly, you could just change the channel but you get the same treatment from all the commercial networks (a collusion which i feel is akin to price fixing among competitors), you can go to another supermarket however and that is how you put them out of business. but what other station can you go to, if you don’t want to pay for tv and you don’t like the offerings on abc or sbs- there is no where else to turn, if one of them changed their behaviour and became trustworthy the viewers would flock.
I congratulate Channel 9 for killing another show. By the way I wasn’t watching “Fringe” (except the first episode) because I rarely tape anything and it was against “House”. Now they will kill “The Mentalist” the same way. I’ll admit I watched that because Channel 2 has crap on during Sunday nights at the moment. But as soon as they put something worth watching on it wasn’t going to be a great loss when I missed it. Oh well another show bites the dust. I don’t mind because I’ve disliked that network for years and it’s just confirming its worthlessness again for the seemingly millionth time.
Angeloz
It’s the cereal and whiskey that got to me…
And here I was starting to like the Nine Network for Fringe, The Mentalist and new CSI. Then they do this. They better put it back on, and soon. I’m really loving this show.
No wonder I hate Channel 9. Yet / another / good show sacrificed for corporate greed. Loyalty is earned, not given! Couldn’t 9 at least give the Fringe (and all the other series they’ve abandoned) to the ABC? … they know how to respect their viewers.
Very disappointed. Nine could have put it on HD. By shelving it, they have ensured a lower rating if/when they do decide to show it in the future, because many would now turn to downloading.
To the Spicks & Specks fans, ABC has started showing repeats at 5:30-6:00 am Mon-Fri on ABC1.
I’ve been enjoying Fringe, and have been watching it on 9 because of it being in HD. I had a concern they’d pull it prematurely though, so I have also been acquiring it by other means just in case. Any chance 9 had of me paying attention to their ads has now been lost. Let’s see if the Mentalist shares the same fate.
Very disappointing, but not surprising news. Fringe will live on in downloads.
James, Spicks and Specks is repeated on Thursday nights on ABC2. I love ABC2′s time shifting to avoid “log jams”
Nine are still acting like the pathetic bunch of losers they really are.
When will these people learn that to get the ratings and dollars they need viewers to watch their channel.
Treating shows like this is why people like me are fed up and don’t bother anymore and now get lots of our series fix from the internet.
Now that we can download in good quality why would you want to be held to ransom if you want to follow a series.
Bout time a few of the Nine exec’s got the axe and not the shows.
The commerical stations just aren’t giving shows a chance to form a fan base. As soon as the numbers drop somewhat they yank the program. You have to wonder what on Earth the programmers are thinking. Soon we will be watching 20 to 1 20x a week and Wipeout 10x a week. Prison break pulled over 0.6million people last week at a 10.40pm time slot. A smart programmer should have given it a bit of thought and put it in a 9.30pm time slot – figures would have shot up.
Channel 9 can rot in hell. It was bad enough that they were cutting the show to fit in the ads but this is just typical. What is it about the commercial networks. If they actually started treating their audience with some respect and concentrated more on entertaining the audience rather than their pathetic and childish squabbles with each other, they might start to see some loyalty from the audience.
I was enjoying Fringe, I mean I know you can’t please everyone all of the time but nine hyped it up so much that they should have given it a couple more weeks at least. Oh well, I guess we’ll have to add it to the download list.
Sephiroth_FF putting programs on just the HD channel is better than not screening them at all.
Getting access to the HD signals can be a one time fee of around $90 for a HD set box.. you don’t need any special TV, that is just if you want a HD quality picture.
At least it reduces the log-jam on a Wednesday night at 8.30pm. I already had my iQ recording Spicks and House, one DVD recorder recording Criminal Minds and the fourth doing Fringe. If it weren’t for Arena+2 (and now daylight savings, which chaqnges the Foxtel program times in Qld) Fringe would have been bumped behind “Project Runway”. I had to dump something to watch the Socceroos game this week, and the one that had to go was Fringe. So I guess I just “rescheduled” it a week earlier than 9.
Everytime at the end of each episode when they said “a new case each week”, I got a chill. It really is unfair to do this. It’s not like they’ll replace it with anything good. I mean The Mentalist is just being moved from a different timeslot.
And I don’t see the point of shafting shows to the HD channel. They’ll get MORE viewers on the SD channel since a lot of people still don’t have access to the HD channel.
Obvious to those that take time to post here (most with valid comments) that Nine just does not get what the viewing public wants.
Maybe they should just ask us.
Come to think about it, the regular posters on this stie could easily programme their lineup for them with MUCH more success.
Heck, we would even get theme for each night viewing working in sync
P.S. I would also change Voiceover that tries to promote/highlight shows…
Ch 9 hasn’t changed the listings on it’s own web site yet, for Fringe, Mentalist or the new Friday night line up.
I think the last ep they aired was less than a day after the US, but that makes little difference for years of mistreatment, late starts, and everything else wrong with channel 9.
Should we all cut our hair and send it in to 9 to save fringe ?
Bah, too much effort, 9 lost me again now, ill just download it, they have to learn once they delay something even for a week, they will lose a large percenatage of their audience. I think in future i will just download any Sci-Fi program that i want to watch cause no channel treats them well.
I look forward to the day when they revamp the ratings system to actually mean something.
I agree Bindi, Channel Nine has lost the trust of the Australian viewing public. I don’t even watch Nine anymore, but it seems every other week I’m reading about a show that has been axed or moved to a different timeslot by Nine. 671,000 viewers might be ‘disappointing’, but that’s 671,000 viewers who’ll think twice before watching another Nine program. Do that to enough programs, and you’ll seriously erode your viewing base.
Anyway, I think the solution is clear to the ‘downloading issue’: More Australian Content. Is it any surprise that the two smash hits of the year (Underbelly and Packed to the Rafters) have been Australian dramas?
will the mentalist suffer the same fate as Fringe, terminator,etc?
Damn it i hate that nine has done it yet again I’d download it if I had a clue where to go so i guess i’ll just wait and pray that it comes back soon or that it comes out on DVD soon after the first season is over *fingers crossed* great first Moonlight didn’t evern get to finish it’s run granted it is axed i still wanted to see it through hope the Mentalist will last.
Hmm isn’t that other vamp show True Blood supose to be showing on 9 some time next year? i wonder how long thats gonna last.
I’m really disappointed. I love Fringe. I can totally understand moving it from Wed 8.30, which is a tough timeslot, but it doesn’t need to totally vanish from the screens.
Obviously TV execs don’t watch shows otherwise they would understand you actually need to follow a series. Episodes may have individual storylines but there are other storylines and character development that you follow from watching the episodes in a continuous flow – not with huge gaps in time, or out of order as channels have done in the past.
Not happy Nine!
well i guess this is another item to add to my list of:
Nine = cutter – how many shows can they cut, never to be seen again
Ten = shifter – two weeks in a row with the same timetable and that will be a great week
seven = bumper – the channel with all of the best 10:30 shows (this is probably the best of the three atleast there on and it easy to remember where they are- this hasn’t really happened since the olympics, alan sugar, thats it)
Yep after only a few weeks moving The Mentalist in to Wednesday is a bad move and next week the ratings are gonna crash!
as for Sarah Connor I like it and ch9 never canceled it, they just rested it over the xMas break and never bought it back, aka Jericho on ch10 SD.
I think Australia needs it own Sci-Fi channel for free air, the people who like sci-fi will watch and they won’t have to worry about ratings, even if it was on HD I think it go well. I like sci-fi stop canceling it!!!…although the Sarah Connor chronicles was just horrible..
geez, the number of us who must have thought “i told you so” upon reading this headline. exactly what others have said, 9 had no business buying this show in the first place, how about from now on they just keep their grubby hands off these shows as it is obvious they don’t know how to reel us viewers back in, it takes years to rebuild any trust. and i didn’t download but even if i did i could not have affected the ratings as i don’t have a measuring box, and i’m sure most others don’t either, you can’t blame them for downloading if they are part of the invisible australians without ratings boxes who are worth nothing and might as well not be alive as far as the networks are concerned.
Not surprised about Fringe, unfortunately.
But I don’t know whether Mentalist is a good move. I thought it was doing well on Sunday, so why not keep it there. Criminal Minds is going well and House still hangs in there.
Same old, same old. Still the One at Nine to stuff up viewers. Little wonder, I like many was cynical at the start and thought Nine would do thr dirty and pull the plug early. Little wonder when there are 2 shows I could watch (both of similar appeal) I go for the one NOT on Nine.
Kerry Packer must be rolling in his grave at the way his once glorious network has descended into a shambles. Shame on you Nine. Shame. P.S. I guess all your advertisers leaving you in droves too. Loyalty is one word, Nine has forgot.
“Johnson on October 17th, 2008 5:31 pm
So the curse for Anna Torv continues… the dramas she has a role in (Secret Life of Us, Mistresses, Young Lions and now Fringe) rated poorly and in most cases were pulled from the schedule. I feel sorry for her.”
I wouldn’t feel sorry for her, her show is doing amazingly in the US, it’s been picked up for the full series. She’s doing just fine.
Im *shocked*
Why oh why did Nine buy this. Once i went to tape it and i set the programmwer for Seven by mistake. What does that tell you. It never belonged there.
The ONLY thing Nine has got going for it is Survivor:Fans vs Favorites, and thats at 10:30!
Nine – Sell Fringe and Terminator to Seven or SciFi Channel
the networks once again proove why a huge percentage of its old audience now use bittorrent & never even bother tuning in when they have new shows ,
i download everything now apart from the aussie shows , theres not one show i watch on tv now that i dont download .
chan 7 , 9 & 10 you have all blown it & the sooner you sort it out the sooner your ratings might go back up , but you have lost me & all my mates to the internet & we wont be returning ever , so take your advertising & bite me
Utterly disgraceful move by 9 again. Always too quick to pull the plug, and wonder why their shows have no fan base / viewer loyalty??? We all know its only a matter of time before our faves are rescheduled or cancelled.
At least 7 and 10 use their HD channels…
Why does 9 insist on buying the rights to shows, only to pull them after a few episodes???
I’ve never gotten into downloading shows. Although I think I’m going to have to start. I had been setting my VCR for programs shunted to the middle of the night, but I think it’s time to upgrade my broadband, and download, and ditch the commercial station imports all together.
Surprise, surprise!! Channel 9/WIN is at it again. Shelving everything it airs. How Underbelly managed to stay I don’t know!! Obviously the ratings had something to do with it, but anyone that has tuned into anything new since then on a Wednesday night has had their show pulled from underneath them. I watched Canal Road and ended up having to buy it on DVD so I could find out the conclusion…it was like reading a book and having the pages ripped out at the half way mark. I was going to watch The Fringe, but decided against it because i predicted what happened given the fact McLeod’s Daughters was also pulled…There is nothing worse than having something pulled just as you get into it. At least put your shows on at a later timeslot so your viewers can tape it – then the viewers who do love the shows you put off air will still get to see them!
Consider this: maybe if you had all not illegally downloaded the show and watched it when it was on, it would have pulled better figures.
Because that’s the reason Nine pulled it. 600 odd thousand viewers is woeful. (See Russell’s insightful comment above).
P.S. This irrational Nine-bashing is beginning to get tiresome. Seven is just as bad with axing shows such as sci-fi-themed ones and is worse when it comes to running shows late.
Sci-fi is a dead genre here, it will never get the numbers needed to keep it at a decent time. Fringe should have been put in a more easier timeslot to build its numbers, then maybe next year move it to compete against other shows.
Nine just do any sci-fi, just like at Invasion. It was advertised to death, but as soon it was axed in America after its 21 ep, Invasion wasn’t shown here. If only there was fast tracking in 2006.
any bets on how long the mentalist will last now,
very risky move by 9, changing timeslots of a very new show that is only just starting establishing a fan base
Not. Happy. Jan.
We need more scifi fans with ratings boxes. :-/
personally I think it failed because it was poorly written. The characters were unlikeable, and the “science” was indecipherable. It had a miserable air about it, and just didn’t entertain.
One less reason to watch Nine… which in my case, brings it back down to exactly zero. But I’m not surprised. Knew it the moment it was announced that Fringe went to Nine.
Guess no point in tuning for Eleventh Hour, if Nine even airs it.
I’m at a point where I’m treating commercial FTA as TV show sampler. I catch as many eps of a show as I can on TV and decide whether I like it enough to own it on DVD. If I’m not prepared to pay for the DVD, it’s not worth my time anyway.
Science Fiction is my favourite television genre. Doctor Who, Star Trek, Babylon 5, you name it. Sadly, it is a genre that never seems to get really good ratings in this country. There is evidently a very large chunk of the potential television audience who are resistent to programming with even a hint of of fantasy or sci-fi. It is sad as such programs are often the most innovative, dynamic and interesting.
Personally, whilst I do not mind a good crime drama, there is only so many episodes of such dramas that I can tolerate in a given week. An ideal television environment is one where the viewer is constantly stunned by the originality and breadth of vision of those who bring programmes to the screen. Yet we find our selves mired in repitition, stale and uninteresting formats and cheaper and cheaper budgets. It is a tragedy. It really is.
Whether it comes back to a later slot, HD or summer is still in doubt. Networks no longer use terms like axed and they could still re-schedule it today, tomorrow, next week, summer or never. McLeod’s wasn’t axed either but it didn’t return after the Olympics, and Kitchen Nightmares is nowhere to be seen either. But that isn’t “axed” either. Nine says the fastracked eps are interrupted by the US election, but also hasn’t said where next week’s Ep 6 is moved to…
Russel, i think we all agree with you that it had to leave the 8:30 timeslot and that ch gave it every effort that they could. people are only upset that it was not pushed to 10:30 or HD first, and that now they have to download it.
this was always going to happen to a sci-fi there is just not enough of a market for sci-fi on tv anymore
look at LOST literally the very episode that it became a sci-fi (where Mr. Eko saw the smoke monster for the first time) the show went from a high 1mil show and slowly declined to a 10:30 timeslot.
keep sci-fis to a miniseries (ie. the 4400)
So the curse for Anna Torv continues… the dramas she has a role in (Secret Life of Us, Mistresses, Young Lions and now Fringe) rated poorly and in most cases were pulled from the schedule. I feel sorry for her.
Not surprised. This show is horrible – I knew it wouldn’t last. Abrams is capable of a lot better than this, LOST and Alias are two of my favourite series, but I couldn’t get past the pilot episode of Fringe. It was horrible in pretty much every way. I also predict a similar outcome when Nine airs Eleventh Hour next year, as its pretty much the exact same show as Fringe
So again we trust ch9 and again they let us down with poor programing choices, not happy and now no Mythbusters on the 29th, wonder if they’ll bring that forward?
Guess I’ll check it out online from now on, just like what happened with Moonlight and many many shows before!
…..and this is why we download. Looks like i’ll be upgrading my broadband plan lol.
I bet inside a month – they’ll kick the mentallist to the kerb too – only to be replaced by CSI (whatever version) or 2.5 men.
C9 is now, a 2 trick poney – CSI (im putting all versions under the one umbarella) and 2.5 men….
I agree with other posts – on other channels, this wud have been bumped to a later time / a HD channel.
finally – why would anyone want to watch c10 / c9 / c7 ona wednesday nite, when there’s ABC – especially spicks and specs – every show is guaranteed supply a few belly laughs -and it’s good to finish off the day with a good old episode of the x-files on 10hd !
hehehe… how unexpected!
And the networks wonder why we resort to swashbuckling ways.
I will continue to watch.
whats happening to there sunday line up????
This show is obviously destined for 10:30 or 9HD (preferably 10:30) so why not put it there now and stay on the fastrack. atleast then more people wouldn’t be pushed to the internet – no way to treat viewers
i guess there will be a lot of red faces after the “epic new drama” “tv’s best new show” and “blockbuster new” were used. people fall for these lines that are not in touch with ratings.
i guess when a “epic new drama” really does comes along what credibility will 9 have?
Look I get that the networks do drop shows way to often and sometimes are too quick to pull out the axe. I really do think the nets treat the viewers with contempt. But with this example (Fringe) it really was showing no signs of growth or improvement. In fact it was dropping every week.
Nine gave it a huge promo push, aired a 2 minute “sneak peak” right after 60 Minutes in Sunday primetime, encored it…AND most importantly of all – Nine gace it the biggest lead in it has – new ep of 2.4 Men (getting about 1.4 million) at 8pm! If that is not throwing everything behind it I don’t know what is. Last night Fringe dipped to 671,000 viewers, and did not make the top 10 in 18-49 or 16-39. Sorry, that is just a huge failure. Those kind of figures really hurt Nine’s Wednesday, and begin to have a huge effect on weekly reach and advertising rates.
People keep saying “what about the fans” well sorry. There wasn’t enough of you. 671,000 at 8.30 Wednesday is just too low a number for a network to make a profit from that hour.
I agree in the past Nine has been qay to quick to pull the plug: Canal Road perfect example. But for Fringe, I think it was time to go.
Hopefully next year when Seven Nine and Ten have their SD 2nd 24 hour channels, these kind of shows will move to the sister channel – and to prime slots. So you will see Sarah Connor, Fringe, Canal Road etc on 8.30 on Nine’s 2nd channel.
Don’t care about Fringe, but now I’m torn between watching The Mentalist and Spicks and Specks. Aaagh!
Oh well…….
I guess that means back to watching HOUSE for me.
Channel 9 if you are listening
Put Fringe, Moonlight, Terminator on 9HD only timeslot if its not rating well!!
Removing it completely is crazy, and no wonder people are downloading shows its impossible to keep up!!
Yet another brilliant move by 9. Watch them kill The Mentalist in that timeslot too.
No surpises here, watched 1 and a 1/2 episodes(episode 1/Pilot etc and half of episode 2/ 2nd episode Nine screened), but gave up as I thought it was crap.
There was no way this show was going to last in this timeslot, it is more suited to a 10:30pm timselot – Fringe will either end up on 9HD or a latenight timeslot.
I was getting to enjoy the show
The only show i record from nine is Survivor: Fan vs Favorites
Nine new motto……….Home of CSI
I am genuinely surprised they didn’t replace it with Two and a Half Men. Nine should move the new episodes to Wednesdays so it is out of the way of Packed to the Rafters, and so I can watch PTTR, NCIS and Two and a Half Men. Currently I can only watch one (PTTR) and tape another (which is NCIS) on Tuesdays nights.
“The aim of our game is to try to please most of the people most of the time and it’s a very tricky equation.”
What a load of bulls**t! They’re not out to please us! They’re out to win the ratings war and they’re not going to if they keep pulling s**t like this one us!
I had a feeling this would happen. I mean 9 keep buying Sci-Fi shows and they don’t even belong on there in the first place, They advertise the hell out of them and then they’re pulled after a short amount of time.
I’ve been really enjoying Fringe but I knew it wouldn’t last.
Dangit.. I thought it was only a matter of time. Nine did it to Smallville and they did it to Sarah Connor Chronicles as well (and basically any other show that isn’t based around police or hospitals or a court room).
I wish Seven or 10 had this show. On 10 I’d at least probably be able to see it on their HD channel and seven, they’d just put it to 10.30.
So what is Nine doing for the fans?
Colour me unsurprised. Has anyone else reached the point (where I am currently) of just shrugging their shoulders and putting sidereel into my Google search?
I’m just completely apathetic about it. And not just Nine, because Seven and TEN are just as culpable. Time to move to the US. At least they play out their series…
I feel sorry for Nine. Apart from CSI, it just can’t seem to get a single one of its US dramas onto the Top 20.
Again, like anything on Nine (or on any network these days actually) that isnt crime related its given the boot. I get that stuff like this is not popular, but Nine have the downright disgusting habit of removing a show from the schedule completly and shelving it indefinatly. Seven are the best, just moving the series that dont work later into the night; im sure we could be spared Balls of Steel for heavens sakes. Ten seem to have their HD channel good for cult shows as well eg BSG. Nine use their HD channel for 2+ year old cancelled series that they never got around to airing the first time. Some things never change with Nine – and its examples like this why i view via other means.
danness: Agree with you completely. The only thing that seems to last a whole season is The AFL/NRL Footy Shows and Friday Night Football (but even then only in Brisbane, GC and Sydney)
Oh well, time to fire up my Bit Torrent client again.
Five episodes, exactly as I predicted. I understand that its ratings were bad, but I think these are the main reasons why it failed:
- it’s on channel 9
- channel 9 mistreat nearly all shows, especially sci-fi
- it never started at 8.30 and finished at 9.30 like they advertised, but sometimes went until 9.40
it kinda sux channel 9 are treating their viewers this way… i refuse to watch channel 9 at all and have done so for about a year now…any show i watch that channel 9 airs i download…..my friends do the same
Really unhappy with this. They could have moved it to a later timeslot rather than getting rid of it completely.
There really needs to be something done with all these frantic changes made by the networks, it’s starting to get really pathetic and rude. I can’t even remember the last time I got to watch a good show all the way through on Australian television without interruptions.