So it’s raining out in Michigan and NASCAR is delayed – great. Fall is coming up, and I’m sitting here at the computer wondering when my favorite television shows will start up. The first one I check? Jericho.
Now Jericho was a great show – based in a world where the US has suffered a massive nuclear attack, and ordinary people are forced to survive by any means necessary – as well as co-exist. Picture Lost, but in Kansas. The plot and acting was outstanding, every week I looked forward to seeing the latest episode. I made a point to blog here about it, as well as tell my friends, and get more viewers.
In November of ’06, CBS had the bright idea to take Jericho off the air until February – apparently due to low ratings. Who knew that reruns of worlds wackiest low-resolution videos from the Internet could garner greater ratings than both Jericho AND the CBS Evening News with Katie Couric! So it’s off the air for 3 months, they bring it back into the same time-slot as American Idol – AND THEN THEY FREAKING CANCEL IT DUE TO LOW RATINGS.
Now American Idol is the subject of an entirely different rant – the fact that people still actively watch it being the greatest detriment to the future of humanity since the invention of the atomic bomb.
Jericho was canceled in May of ’06, only to be brought back in June of ’06 due to the outcry of fans. As a pittance CBS ordered 7 more episodes of the show for 2007, to be used as a ‘mid-season replacement.’
Now I can’t speak for everyone, but I have a life. While I was curious about when my favorite television shows would return to air – I’m surely not going to plan my life around it. CBS is like any other old-industry broadcast network at this point – they’re equivalent to a blind homosexual male trying to find something they like at the nudie bar simply by feeling around in the darkness.
This isn’t the first time the overall skittish nature of old-industry networks like CBS, NBC, and FOX have killed quality television only to replace it with things that not even a Chimpanzee in a lab experiment would watch. When Jericho returns, I’ll definitely make a point to catch the 7 episodes and pray that CBS’s tinkering hasn’t completely sunk it… but I won’t hold my breath.
Who knows, maybe a real network (FX, Spike, TNT) will pick it up, lord knows they’ve been kicking the snot out of CBSNBCABC for years.
