Re: It was unoriginal and did not have enough to do with the original draw - the back-in-time thing - Edit 1
Before modification by DomA at 08/03/2012 03:11:32 PM
As for Fringe they could very well cancel it, but I guess that giving it a season or half season to wrap up could be more likely, unless they've already asked its creators to wrap it up for the end of season 4... unless it's losing them too much money, or they need its slot for a show they hope will perform really better. There's not nearly as much to gain from pulling the plug on an unfinished series like Fringe after 4 seasons without giving it an ending as there is pulling a new series off the air. Pulling the plug on Fringe now means the DVD sales will become marginal, it will be difficult to sell it to any new buyer as the series is unfinished, and they'd lose the present revenues from foreign sales (typically, series like Fringe abroad are grid fillers, so buyers usually purchase them to the end of the series. It's more demanding for Fox to sell a new show to its foreign buyers than to renew a deal for one more season of Fringe...). That played in the decision to finish a show like Alias (not Fox, I know) despite its decline for instance.
This makes a lot of sense. Fox was lambasted for consigning some of their previous sci-fi cancelations (Firefly, Terminator) to the Friday night "slot of doom" but when they did it with Fringe last year, they were careful to explain that they were counting on the loyalty of the Fringe fans to make that timeslot work better than it would with any other show, while acknowledging that Fringe was no longer drawing new viewers, or retaining audiences from their lead-in shows, so they wanted to give the Mon-Thurs slots to shows that could benefit from those schedules.
Are the ratings still more or less what they were or have they dropped massively through the season? If there wasn't a serious drop, or unless Fox has another (cheap, perhaps not fiction if it's a new one) show it now thinks could perform better than Fringe in the "slot of doom". Typically it's a slot they would much prefer not to have to develop a new show for...developping new shows is expensive, and this slot isn't good at all to launch a new fiction show as its audience development will be typically very slow... but they need something on the air... it sounds like they put Fringe there to last until it's wrapped up. The costs of Fringe are controlled, the team is all set, and it's a show that generates some revenues from DVD sales (and they care enough to have released a economy-pack of seasons 1-2 before releasing the third) and that's already sold worwide, mostly to specialized channels that won't drop it (those channels are a market Fox has always been a good seller to). Unless the ratings have now dropped to the point the show is costing way too much money, and perhaps season 3 had such pathetic DVD sales that make them fear the show is now doomed... it sounds to me that it's a boat afloat, not going fast but better than building a new boat, especially for that slot.
My guess is that the rumours are based off pure speculation. There's always tons surrounding the J.J. shows and the rumour mongers always have a 50% chance of being right!
The odds are greater for Alcatraz, which was expected to be the new Lost, darling of both the audience and reviewers (that and prizes count more than we think. Madmen has a nearly confidential audience in the US. After the acclaim it suddenly got picked up by a massive number of broadcasters worlwide, and around here at least and I suspect in many other markets, it keeps high in the TV DVD sales, enough so they eventually released a new edition that feature the French dub) - and even sparked the idea of a more "US mass audience" friendly "retro" show with Pan Am, which looks like a flop (the Québécois actress on the show did a major blunder by announcing on her twitter long ago that the show got cancelled and the network had added a few episodes so the writers could wrap it up... the network has denied all this, and perhaps it's true the decision isn't made as the actress now has a recurring role in another series (pilot stage, for now) and her contract has the option to make her join the main cast if the series is picked up, but only if Pan Am gets cancelled).