Sonic v. Free Willy: Why?

From: Dan Drazen <drazen_at_andrews.edu>
Date: Wed, 12 Jul 1995 15:48:18 -0400 (EDT)

>
> Man this sucks that ABC won't show the thid season. I was waiting for
> a good time to see that 3rd season... I have almost every episode
> ever shown, except one: The one in the 2nd season when they started
> with the derobotisization process.

"Sonic Conversion"

> But one thing I wanna know is WHY
> would a tv network like ABc kill an ongoing thing like the Sonic
> series which had some decent popularity, but NOT kill somehting as
> stupid as Free Willy that nobody watches? Can someone figure that out?
>

I may not have the definitive answer, but that never stopped me from
posting before ;-) :

TV execs measure "decent popularity" in terms of Nielsen ratings, and as
long as Sonic was up against MMPR on Fox, the blue guy didn't stand a
chance.

Then, too, we're entering another "cleaning up our act" kidvid phase.
Every so often, the guardians of the airways and the just-plain
busybodies prevail on the TV execs to at least put on a pretense of
serving the public interest. Because of this, execs will look to their
more innnocuous fare, thinking that if nobody complains about it then it
must be OK (while conveniently forgetting the corollary to the theory:
if nobody says anything about a series it may be because it's such a dog
that nobody watches it). Still, ABC had committed Free Willy for a
second season so rather than continue screening a show that had fallen
by the Nielsen wayside they simply started doubling-up on the show which
had already had its option picked up. If they think they're going to
earn any new viewers as a result of this, though, they might be in for a
disappointing surprise. This all makes sense if you're a TV programming
executive...admittedly a lower form of life than your average hedgehog.

Forget about Willy; Free Mobius!
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Received on Wed Jul 12 1995 - 17:15:15 PDT