Bah
Pushing Daisies has been canceled. The ratings basically continued to tank, unfortunately. There might be a comic that will wrap things up, and creator Bryan Fuller has a movie pitch in mind, but for now, it's thirteen and out for season 2.
There's been talk of Fuller returning to an executive producer spot on Heroes, which could certainly use some serious help...although with the way the ratings are going there, Heroes could be gone by the end of this season. I suspect that the only reason it hasn't been canceled by now is that all of the networks are struggling with horrendous ratings, and with NBC being in as bad a position as it is, they're desperately trying to keep something alive (which is entirely the explanation for the full-season pickup on Knight Rider, which is being retooled once again in mid-run, and if it goes to a second season will get retooled yet again.)
There's a lot of reasons why this situation has come about, with the networks in such a bad position...in part it's down to a shifting business model, and the networks being stuck in mid-shift, with a lot of business moving online, and a lot of viewing being done via DVRs, continuing the move to time-shifted viewing that began with the advent of the VCR. Networks are still depending on the Nielsen audience measurement systems, and this may be a bigger problem than ever -- there's always been reason to be dubious about Nielsen's methods (audience sample size being one, and lack of effective monitoring being another) and things haven't improved in the years since audiences began to splinter across broadcast, cable, pay cable, video, DVD, time-shift and online.
For all that, though, a mystery does remain -- how the hell is CSI: Miami such a success around the world?
There's been talk of Fuller returning to an executive producer spot on Heroes, which could certainly use some serious help...although with the way the ratings are going there, Heroes could be gone by the end of this season. I suspect that the only reason it hasn't been canceled by now is that all of the networks are struggling with horrendous ratings, and with NBC being in as bad a position as it is, they're desperately trying to keep something alive (which is entirely the explanation for the full-season pickup on Knight Rider, which is being retooled once again in mid-run, and if it goes to a second season will get retooled yet again.)
There's a lot of reasons why this situation has come about, with the networks in such a bad position...in part it's down to a shifting business model, and the networks being stuck in mid-shift, with a lot of business moving online, and a lot of viewing being done via DVRs, continuing the move to time-shifted viewing that began with the advent of the VCR. Networks are still depending on the Nielsen audience measurement systems, and this may be a bigger problem than ever -- there's always been reason to be dubious about Nielsen's methods (audience sample size being one, and lack of effective monitoring being another) and things haven't improved in the years since audiences began to splinter across broadcast, cable, pay cable, video, DVD, time-shift and online.
For all that, though, a mystery does remain -- how the hell is CSI: Miami such a success around the world?