[quote name=\'clemon79\' date=\'Sep 22 2003, 06:46 PM\'] [quote name=\'bttritle\' date=\'Sep 22 2003, 03:51 PM\'] What's stupid is pointing and laughing...what's smart is making an attempt at explaining why.
I just don't agree that the death of the show had anything to do with the show. [/quote]
So instead you're going to claim that it's some kind of conspiracy theory? Because when you say:
It was cancelled because NBC didn't want to recognize that a large portion of the population wanted to watch it.
...that's exactly what you are doing.
So if you don't mind, until you can succesfully explain why NBC would \"not want\" to recognize a show's success, which is pretty much diametrically opposed to how ANY television network does business, I'm gonna get back to pointing and laughing. [/quote]
Conspiracy theory? No...I'm saying it was dead in the water.
Grant Tinker was on record saying he wished the whole game show craze would go away quickly. As others have pointed out here, NBC's reason for putting the show on were not so much to jump on the bandwagon, but to dillute the field enough to give cause for its removal from the schedule.
When Tinker left/was relieved of his duties, take your pick, it was believed that that attitude had lightened a little bit, especially when NBC had created a specific division related to reality programming at roughly the same time.
The only reason why NBC went as long with it as it did is because a large audience found it. It was only supposed to last four episodes, two in each of two weeks on Wednesdays and Sundays. However, despite the press release stating as such, NBC knew they would have to fit the show around the Golden Globes. After the initial shows did well by NBC, but not Millionaire numbers, they ordered two more. When those two shows did well, they ordered thirteen more, figuring it to be a sweeps tentpole. Yet, when sweeps ended, they still preempted the next two weeks worth of shows for a low rated miniseries that did half the ratings. The results? Rather than put it back where it was to bolster the night, they put it on what was commonly seen as a graveyard shift...only to be a tentpole again.
However, it appeared that NBC chose to kill Twenty One in spite of the ratings when they pulled the very final episode of the show, which would have aired early in the Spring sweeps period, for alternate programming that never acheived the ratings that Freaks and Geeks/TwentyOne/Third Watch did in the previous months.
NBC's actions were no better than FOX's at the time, when they chose to cancel Greed on the heels of the cancellation of Chance of a Lifetime.
A show's success is based on its ratings...a network's success is based on its profit.
So to answer your question...any network would not want to recognize a show's success when it isn't successful with who the network wants it to be successful.
