An open letter to TV network executives: Dear Fuckwits...

[thatcrazycajun]

Yes, I mean you, CW president Dawn Ostroff. You, too, Bob Iger at ABC/Disney, Les Moonves of CBS/Viacom, Kevin Reilly at Fox, and especially you, Jeff Zucker at NBC/Universal. There's been something I've wanted to get off my chest for a long, long while now, and I just can't hold back any longer.

Can I just tell you how much I hate, loathe, despise and generally am incredibly annoyed by the increasingly ubiquitous, unavoidable television-series practice known as the "season-ending cliffhanger"? Put aside the fact that it leaves us viewers, well, hanging all summer long waiting for the resolution. That's not half of what bugs me.

It's the blatant manipulation on the part of the series' writers and producers, in many cases under pressure from you, the suits who cut their checks. It screams insecurity on their and your parts—craven, gibbering fear that your loyal, faithful viewers won't come back in the fall for the season premiere without a nail-biting two-parter to keep them talking and fretting about their favorite characters for three months. It's a cheap stunt, it's overused, it's predictable and it's unoriginal.

I've hated it at least since the notorious "Who Shot J.R.?" season-ender on Dallas, way back in the day. I hated it when almost all the Star Trek shows did it, which was every single damn season. (Star Trek: Voyager at least had the guts to do without it for one or two seasons.) Used to be, just about every show on TV ended its season with a nice, satisfying, self-contained episode that didn't leave any major characters in danger of their lives or the status quo disrupted. But very few do now. And I place a good chunk of the blame where it rightfully belongs: squarely on your Armani- and Prada-suited shoulders.

And you're still at it today, as this season ends with finales this week and next. Law & Order: Special Victims Unit Tuesday night? Partial cliffhanger at least. Smallville tonight? Cliffhanger. Supernatural? Them, too. ER? You guessed it. Especially with May being not only finale month but sweeps month as well, every last blasted one of you seems to feel pressured to bring on the stunt casting, the big stories, the shock endings. (And what's with ending the writers'-strike-shortened season now, anyhow? You really ought to give us an extension on this season, considering the strike—which you, by the by, caused by your intransigent unwillingness to treat your shows' writers fairly—cost us three months' worth of a whole season's order of episodes you've already paid for.)

It's ridiculous, it's dishonest, it's exploitative and you don't need to do it, and never have. The ratings have obviously shown you how loyal we are, since you've picked up the shows for next year. A good show doesn't need a cliffhanger and a bad show can't be saved by one. So cut it the fuck out. NOW. Give us some closure in our TV seasons again.

No love,
TCC

Comments

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

Dude. Your icon says all that needs to be said. KILL your gorram TV and be done with it. Screw not just the fatcat execs that can't hire decent writing *and* don't know a good show when they see it, *and* the cable companies and most of all the ever-lovin' Georgia Tech shaft with the counter-rotating purple and yellow barbs to the AD EXECS who have now stolen a full THIRTY-SEVEN PERCENT of our watching hour for their poisonous pitches. Anything decent is worth waiting a year for the DVD's... at least, until they start just putting it out for download (see also, the Dr. Who Christmas Special last year, which yea verily doth sit on my hard drive as we type)...

The day cannot come too soon when the lively arts short form are sold *primarily* the same way books are today: online and with user reviews available on the ordering screen..... and we can take'em with us and watch them when we darn well please, like, on the bus or the plane. And you could subscribe and have them autodownload, just like we subscribe to a show on TiVo today, only, NO GORRAM COMMERCIALS! Oh, the ad men will be *devastated*... or try and figure out how to make the commercials mandatory viewing.... but we can play DVD's on Linux without paying the hardware piper, we can get around that too.

No love, indeed. No love atall, if they can't make a product that's what we want, if they can't be bothered to pay the people that make that product possible, then like Klingons we should discommodate them, do the ultimate back-turn, cast them out to be trodden under the foot of men.

Ne-c'est-pas, mon ami?

[redaxe.livejournal.com]

Eh. Authors do it too: see almost any series. It's a tactic that you either get used to or give up on the perpetrators. (I still read series books, but watch almost exclusively nonfiction TV. Except Heroes which had better godsdammit get back to form when it returns.)