With what seems like increasing regularity, shows that we love are getting axed. There are many reasons for this, which all essentially boil down to "poor ratings" rather than "poor quality". There will be an initial outcry, but the fact remains that the show probably wasn't making the network the money that they wanted. They've got to make money, and poor ratings usually means they've got to try something else. It's a stupid system because by reshuffling the timeslot and then eventually axing the program you risk alienating your key demographics and just losing viewers permanently, whatever show you're airing. But I digress.
Occasionally, a bunch of people will band together and sign something saying they want the network to bring a show back. A recent example is the online movement to bring back Hey Hey, It's Saturday, and a while back there was a resurgence in all things Firefly that led to the film Serenity (and eventually a demand for even more space western goodness). The thing is, though, that if these voices succeed in bringing their chosen show back, the result is still going to be a failure in one way or another.
More often than not, we have the hideous monstrosities that Hey Hey was a prime example of. The show comes back, then we all suddenly realise why it died in the first place and wish we'd never gone grave robbing to practice the televisual dark arts. Hey Hey haemorrhaged viewers over its run in the Wednesday night timeslot. It was supposed to come back at some point and run on Saturdays, but I never paid enough attention to learn whether it did.
Bringing a show back when it's been gone for so long only serves to make the show look dated and bland. Jokes or storylines that were acceptable back then no longer are, yet the show refuses to change with the times, continues to rely on these things because it was "part of the charm" or some such nonsense, and then wonders why it's copping so much criticism.
Imagine if the BBC had brought back Doctor Who, refused to modernise the opening title music and sequence, and filled the show with over the top plots and home-made special effects that gave the original series half it's charm. They didn't, but rather gave us cliched fun with some occasionally dodgy CGI. They captured the spirit of the original without relying on the rest as well.
When a show is demanded by the masses to return and does, such as with Hey Hey the creators make the mistake of thinking that the masses are calling for the original as if times hadn't changed. "They want this show to come back," they say. "We'd better give it to them as we left it, otherwise we risk disappointing and upsetting them." Sure, you might risk losing a fraction of your original audience, but by updating the show, you can lure in a new audience as well. Instead, they give us the corpse of the original, rather than the spirit, and end up losing everyone.
On the other end of the spectrum, we have examples like Firefly. These are shows that are somewhat universal, and don't need as much updating as most other shows that are brought back. Yes, there were voices online, but there was also a noticeable resurgence in DVD sales. There was an indication that people wanted more.
We ended up with Serenity, which was not so much more of the same as a logical continuation. Unfortunately, the sad fact is that despite it's high quality the film was a financial failure. It didn't make a profit until DVD sales kicked in. Like Hey Hey, what was brought back by popular demand turned out to not be as popular as people would have liked.
So what's happening? My theory is this: the people who get so worked up and call for the show to come back are the only people who stick with it to the bitter end. Loyalty is probably what kept more than zero people watching Hey Hey, and Serenity was made pretty much based on some internet buzz. In the end, the small number of vocal people who got the show back will be the only ones who watch it. Everyone else will either watch out of curiosity and then abandon the show due to poor quality, or not risk it and jump on the bandwagon later.
It's the way TV and film works. If it doesn't make money, it's a failure to the network or studio, despite how good it is. It shouldn't work that why, but it does. It's that part of TV in general that we need to get all worked up about.
What it boils down to is that even though I love Firefly, Serenity, and Summer Glau, I can understand why the show will probably never come back.
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