Wednesday, June 18, 2008

Charlie Jade has, alas, moved to 3 am on Mondays on Sci Fi Channel. (Thanks for the tip, RA.) I'm trying to think of worse imaginable time to screen a show... nope, if you were trying to bury a show, that would be it. I guess the numbers weren't as good as hoped.

Fortunately, all of you have TiVo, right?

Labels: Charlie Jade

2:40 PM

12 Comments:

Yup. Mondays at 3am is pretty much the "I really like you but just as a friend" of the scheduling world.

By  DMc, at 4:03 PM  

Crap! That's cold. . .but it also reflects my suspicion that Sci Fi wasn't supporting the show (not showing commercials for it until the week of the show, not having links to the CJ page on the front page, replacing Sarah Jane Adventures with CJ but still advertising for SJA, advertising their monster of the week movies and that's all that I can think of at the moment).

The conclusion I came to right before the week they started showing CJ was that they bought CJ because of the Writer's Strike. Sci-Fi didn't have any original programming or any new Sarah Jane Adventures to put on Fridays before Doctor Who. . .so why not try a show that's done well elsewhere in the world?

Unfortunately, they didn't support CJ other than to just plop it in a spot and expect the American fans that probably became fans through the Internet. And sadly, I don't even know how much the actual first two eps really had to actually have their merit shown and seen.

It's sad and unfortunate. My friends and I REALLY wanted to see a second season. Now it seems like a miracle would need to happen for that second season. . .damn!

By  The_Lex, at 4:46 PM  

And unfortunately, I don't see any action by fans doing much of anything, either. =(

By  The_Lex, at 4:52 PM  

Although that is a crappy timeslot, In the case of people who watch Scifi timeslot is mostly irrelevant. Most Sci-fi watchers download or DVR these days.

By  Emily Blake, at 5:37 PM  

Alex, here's a link to the piece I wrote on the burial. I discuss the obvious things SciFi did wrong with the show, but try to use the example to limn some of the bigger issues with channel niche-drift and science fiction television in general.

@emily, you're right w/r/t people who already watch the show. But there's no way it's going to draw even one new, accidental fan at 3am.

By  R.A. Porter, at 9:56 AM  

R.A., the link to your piece is broken. Also. . .with your name, I can't help but think of Porter from CJ (who I like to call security dweeb).

Also, on the sci-fi forum, there's a post that states that Robert Wertheimer did a podcast where he acknowledged people bit torrenting CJ. No comment in regards to Wertheimer or even to torrentors, but I know that in the publishing world, making a story or novel free on the Internet pretty much shoots down chances for a publisher to pick up a story and distribute it. Not saying CJ was intentionally torrented in the US, but the fact that CJ was easy enough to find on the Internet (even though I had one friend who could only find French and Italian dubs or something, and he hates dubs) may have had at least some influence on Sci-Fi's decision, too.

And R.A.'s right, a 3 AM slot is not going to get new viewers of CJ. That's just way too inconvenient, even possibly for a TiVo user that isn't an Internet fan and won't get involved in talk about the show. From my experience, a lot of people simply tune into a show because other people talk about it (Take LOST for instance. . .everybody loves to talk about the mysteries of LOST. Battlestar Galactica can probably get thrown in conversation fodder, too), and they want to get involved in the water cooler talk.

By  The_Lex, at 10:27 AM  

Huh. The link's working for me. Did you get a server error, or something else?

By  R.A. Porter, at 10:43 AM  

I got a "page cannot be displayed."

Now that I think of it, might be that I'm checking from work because the domain itself doesn't work, either.

I'll check at home to see if I get any other response.

There's probably plenty of stuff I can do regarding security, cookies, online files, etc. etc., but I've had a problem like this with work-related stuff that required a work around. . .so it's not worth trying anything with my work computer. =(

Sorry about that!

By  The_Lex, at 11:26 AM  

3am is great if you live and die by a DVR. I have to juggle things during all of baseball season and things usually end up getting dumped in favor of a game only to get recorded at between 12am-3am as a repeat -- especially stuff on the History/Discovery channels.

I make my living in the early hours so maybe now I'll actually get to see it.

By  Paul William Tenny, at 1:51 PM  

If it makes you feel any better, after Battlestar Galactica's third season and the year-long hiatus began, Sci-Fi only aired BSG reruns at 3 am. So, maybe that's indicative of CJ's quality. I mean, they give Enterprise four prime time slots. (I'd just as soon watch my cat in her litter box.)

By  David, at 5:27 PM  

What's really amazing is that even though the Website for the show says Monday at 3 AM/2 AM CST, it's really on Tuesday at 3 AM/2 AM CST! Sci-Fi really doesn't want the show to survive, do they?

By  The_Lex, at 8:09 AM  

First of all, I loved the first tow eps of CJ. I was totally caught by surprise when I tuned in the third week and it wasn't on. I went online and discovered the scheduling change. I DON"T have DVR. I'm seriously considering ditching cable, tho my DH is strongly lobbying to keep it for baseball and basketball, which we cannot get on local TV in this area.

As for easily finding this show on torrents - uh, no, it isn't easy to find - I tried all weekend to find it, and when I did, the quality was crap. So, I suspect I'll be using old school video tapes - as I can still program my VCR but even my whiz bang teenager geeks haven't figured out how to schedule the DVD player to record at a specified time. And no, I cannot stay up until 3 am on Tues. morning even for this show. And if it had been available at the iTunes store, I'd have bought every episode. But alas, it wasn't.

OK, back to CJ - I love the premise, the plot, I absolutely LOVE the complexity of the story, the fact that you have to look at the screen to follow the story line (no flipping through mail or checking email or surfing the net while this show is on), and the in-show consistency is amazing. Most everything works for me without going over the top.

I didn't mind the look of the show. I actually thought it worked for the show - gritty, harsh, tough - like Charlie.

I am really looking forward to seeing the entire series. This is the most interesting show I've seen in a very long time.

And that my friends is likely the kiss of death for this show.

By  Purplemage, at 10:42 PM  

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