Boycott ABC!

I'm fed up with ABC and their continual cancellation and lies.  ABC has been at the hand of some great shows getting canceled.  Let's begin about 2 years ago with Eli Stone...a great show about a lawyer who gets "visions" that help him take cases...he goes from being an overpaid hot shot helping big companies who don't care about anyone but themselves to helping the little guy fight the big companies.  Anyway it was a great show that did however make it to a second season.  But, in season 2 ABC pulled it off the air only to air it's remaining episodes during the summer.  The exact same thing happened to another great show, this time a half-hour sitcom called Samantha Who staring Christina Applegate, about a girl who is recovering from a coma and has Amnesia and is re-learning about her life and realizes she used to be a horrible person and wants to change.  This show was also pulled off the air in season 2 to have it's remaining episodes aired during the summer.  The only problem with ABC airing these 2 shows final episodes during the summer is that they don't advertise it well and if you don't watch their channel regularly or have your DVR set to record the show and it picks it up, you would miss it!

Now on to another ABC show called Life on Mars.  This show was a remake of a show that had 2 seasons in London (here's the deal though, in other countries shows are picked up and given a certain number of seasons - ala LOST when they negotiated an end date).  Anyway the show was very good about a cop who gets in an accident and wakes up in the 70's where he must learn to be a cop in a different era, leading the audience through the wonder of is he dreaming or dead or what?  Well luckily enough for those of us who watched it ABC allowed them to "end" the series after 1 season which means they canceled the show but they gave the show enough notice that they could give the show an end that tied things up.  It did not end the same way the British version did and the ending was a little odd although cool. 

Now this year ABC went through a big killing.  This past fall ABC aired some new shows like Eastwick and FlashForward.  They kept pulling Eastwick and bringing it back...they vowed to air it's final filmed episodes and then when it came back they skipped an episode and then just didn't air the episodes they said they would.  Now they say they are going to burn off the final two episodes of Eastwick in the summer (july 10 to be exact) however my DVR now shows that they have replaced those episodes with their new summer series "The Gates" and "Scoundrels".  Why do they continue to lie to us!  The also say that another of their fall shows The Forgotten will air it's final episodes on Sat July 3...we shall see if that actually happens!

Flash Forward was a show that ABC really promoted.  And it felt like this show could take over for LOST when it went of the air in May.  However, ABC then pulled the show in November and gave it a 3+ month hiatus before bringing it back to air the rest of the season (which I'm sure helped them gain ratings).  Then the canceled the show leaving us with a season ending cliff hanger!  This is one of my biggest pet peeves about shows, and why I think the U.S. needs to start pitching shows for a certain number of seasons and signing shows to air for a set number of episodes this way the story can be told to those devout fans who watch every week.  Now there is a big campaign out there to save Flash Forward and we shall see what comes of this.

ABC started a sitcom last fall called Better Off Ted and it was hilarious, but they were so wishy washy with a day of the week that the show kept moving days and times, it was so hard to track down, the first season aired episodes in the summer and then this fall they brought it back for a season 2 and the same thing happened, kept pulling it and moving it and they said they would air it's last two episodes if there was no game 7 of the NBA finals...that's stupid so the fate of a show is decided by a basketball game! NO...this is not how you run a network.  So we shall see if Better Off Ted gets it's final 2 episodes aired at all...the show has also been canceled.

This brings me to the latest installment of ABC and their lies and horrible scheduling.  During the final season of LOST ABC began promoting a new show called Happy Town.  The promos made the show feel very much like another early cancellation show that the network forced to reveal mysteries before the creators had planned called Twin Peaks.  (A great show despite the fact that they were not supposed to reveal Laura Palmer's killer at the finale of season 1 but ABC insisted they would lose viewers if they didn't).  Happy Town was another mystery show about a town called Haplin in Minnesota where 7 people had disappeared several year's ago and the mystery was never solved.  The town calls the person who took them "the magic man" because the people all disappeared in a crowd of people never to be seen again.  The show starts with a murder and leads everyone to think the magic man is back and then a bunch of strange things start happening...anyway the show was very much like Twin Peaks in the fact that it was a mystery with magical type strange things happening.  Well ABC promoted it a lot and then it aired and then after 3 weeks it got pulled for some reason for about 2 weeks, then it came back and aired 3 more episodes and it was supposed to take a week off and air the last 2 episodes of it's 8 episode first season.  ABC then cancels the show and decides not to air it on Wednesdays at 10 anymore, they replaced it with repeats of Castle.  So leaving 2 episodes left to air (see a pattern with this) they cancel it and then decide they will release the final 2 episodes of the season online only!  So I watch the final 2 episodes and it leaves you with so many mysteries left to be solved!  It would be like if LOST had gotten pulled at the end of Season 3.

So I officially am boycotting ABC.  I will not watch any new shows on this network this fall.  I currently only watch 2 shows on the network and they are Modern Family and Cougar Town which I may now settle for watching online so they don't get my viewership at all!  I encourage everyone to boycott this network so that they see that they are pissing off their viewers with every cancellation and pulled episode!