View Full Version : The Biggest Mess-Ups/Mistakes in The WB History


irehtman
10-16-2013, 07:01 PM
...before it shutdown.

1.) Popular, Maybe It's Me, Do Over, Greetings From Tucson and Run Of The House were not only discontinued in the wrong time, they were badly messed up in the middle of the series by those stupid despicable TV critics for no reason at all.

2.) Popular was discontinued when Brooke was hit by a car and the condition was never revealed at all.

3.) Maybe It's me was badly messed up and discontinued after Jerry appraised the good news in too in a hurry and erratically before Molly and Ben kissing situation and Becky stole Ben back away from Molly for a no reason at all. They were blaming for Rick messing up, but Jerry was the officially guilty person messing up Molly's prom night.

4.) Do Over had a story to improve the past corrections, but it should not have been discontinued in the wrong time.

5.) The 15-year-old David Tiant character in Greetings From Tucson was poorly made. Actor Pablo Santos, who played David, is a kid with strong 11-year-old personality and he wasn't ready to play that type of David character at all because that character too strong maturely made to match Pablo's immature personality. That is a big bad reason why Pablo had a very hard time to perfect his acting.

6.) Run Of The House has a strong title and it was of course violent. But it should not have been discontinued in the wrong time.

7.) After season 6 ended, both aunts characters were written out, but actress Beth Broderick, who played the eldest aunt Zelda, was badly turned down due to poor talent and was forced to never return to Sabrina Teenage Witch show in the wrong time. Caroline Rhea had strong talent and was never turned down, but she should have return to the series finale of Sabrina together with Beth Broderick at the same time. The Cole character in Sabrina season 7 should have been played by Bryan Kirkwood instead.

8.) Nikki and Off Centre should have transfer to FOX to be safe on their second season renewals.

9.) Simon Rex, who plays Jeff in What I Like About You, should not have left after season one because he and Wesley Johnathan, who plays Gary Thorpe, make a better perfect pair of comedy than the girl characters and actresses.

I'm glad the WB is officially shutdown after there too many bloody brawl fights on all WB comedies.

But in the future, they might reboot these shows in a private network:

Popular, Maybe It's Me, Do Over, Greetings From Tucson and Run Of The House.

TMC
10-17-2013, 01:19 AM
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/ScrewedByTheNetwork/LiveActionTV

Angel was suddenly canned to the confusion of those making the show, as it was consistently high-quality with high ratings. The reason the network gave was even more confusing: the show was so popular and good that they wanted the series to end on a high note instead of letting it die in obscurity. Possibly the only example of a show being canceled (ostensibly) because everyone liked it too much.

Word of God says that the network wanted to wait until the end of the season to consider renewal. Joss demanded an answer at mid-season and Jamie Kellner canned it, seemingly out of spite.

Worse, Word of God was that this had happened for the last several seasons of the show. Joss finally snapped since the show was, as established, quite popular. For some reason, the network dropped the ball on what probably would've been the best season yet for fear of Joss actually gaining enough leverage to know if those scripts he'd been writing for next season were a waste of time or not.

The WB screwed over Birds of Prey by trying to turn it into Smallville:
WAY too much Helena/Reese, too little Barbara/Dinah.

The network ordered the pilot to be completely reshot just weeks before airtime (The original pilot, available as an extra on the DVD release, was deemed by the network to be "too dark".)

The show was moved from Toronto to Los Angeles, thereby putting a serious crimp in its budget.

MASSIVE Executive Meddling.

Perhaps most lethally, the show kept teasing every week that Batman would be returning to Gotham imminently (as in "in next week's episode")...and then he didn't, in arguably the most shameless example of Trailers Always Lie in the network's history. By midseason, virtually all the casual fans and even a majority of the more ardent fans were sick of being lied to every week, and quit watching.

End Result: Dead Show, Dead Network.

Jack And Bobby wasn't treated very favorably by the The WB — it was hardly advertised at all compared to most of the network's other shows, and after Winter break there was no advance warning of any new episodes airing, so unless you used an episode guide you'd never know the show was even still on. To be fair, it did get a much more significant amount of advertising towards the end of the season, but the damage was already done as the ratings were far too low for it to have a chance of renewal.

Further, Jack and Bobby wasn't exactly an easy show to sell based on marketing — the ads made it look like a typical WB teen drama, not even hinting at the story of Bobby being President in the future (being told through flashforwards). Those looking for a teen drama were caught off guard by the political storyline, while those who didn't mind the politics didn't watch because it didn't look too different from every other teen drama on the network. In the end, the show's unique premise was its undoing.

The WB was so quick to cancel Run of the House that it didn't even to get to finish its first and only season (the last few episodes were only ever aired overseas). It wasn't like the show's ratings were that bad, either, as it had What I Like About You as a lead-in.

Twins and Related were also victims of this. Really, The WB was almost as infamous as FOX for cancelling shows left and right...and now The CW seems to be following in they're footsteps, given how badly they screwed over Reba, the highest-rated show on The WB.

Buffyboy323
10-17-2013, 06:23 PM
Making Popular more like Dawson's Creek, as well as moving the show to Friday nights for the second season. The one night their audience is most likely out and not watching TV. The show became too dramatic, ratings declined, canceled with a "to be continued..." 2001

The head of the network defended canceling Everwood by showing 7th Heaven had better ratings. I don't blame 7th Heaven, like many Everwood fans do. There were other shows on that network at the time that could have gone before both Everwood and 7th Heaven. Everwood was canceled by The WB after four outstanding seasons. The show had tons of life left in it. 2006

Losing Buffy the Vampire Slayer (and Roswell) to UPN in 2001.

Canceling Roswell, Popular, Birds of Prey, Angel, Jack & Bobby, Reba.

The horrible influx of reality shows. Popstars, Jaimie Kennedy Experiment, High School Reunion, Beauty and the Geek, The Starlet, Survival of the Richest, The Surreal Life, etc.

icecream
10-17-2013, 06:31 PM
I'm a 7th Heaven fan, at one point it was my 2nd favorite show. But I actually agree with the Everwood fans that it should have been renewed instead (I've never seen it). At the time 7th Heaven was uncancelled I was looking forward to another season. But season 11 was horrible, the writing went downhill with the loss of Aaron Spelling. It should have ended after season 10, the 1st series finale would have wrapped it up nice.

TMC
10-19-2013, 03:58 AM
Making Popular more like Dawson's Creek, as well as moving the show to Friday nights for the second season. The one night their audience is most likely out and not watching TV. The show became too dramatic, ratings declined, canceled with a "to be continued..." 2001

The head of the network defended canceling Everwood by showing 7th Heaven had better ratings. I don't blame 7th Heaven, like many Everwood fans do. There were other shows on that network at the time that could have gone before both Everwood and 7th Heaven. Everwood was canceled by The WB after four outstanding seasons. The show had tons of life left in it. 2006

Losing Buffy the Vampire Slayer (and Roswell) to UPN in 2001.

Canceling Roswell, Popular, Birds of Prey, Angel, Jack & Bobby, Reba.

The horrible influx of reality shows. Popstars, Jaimie Kennedy Experiment, High School Reunion, Beauty and the Geek, The Starlet, Survival of the Richest, The Surreal Life, etc.

I hope you don't mind about me sharing this particular discussion elsewhere:
https://groups.google.com/d/msg/rec.arts.tv/T6M3XtJnA7k/y4BILn0PRtoJ

tlc38tlc38
10-19-2013, 10:50 AM
Losing Buffy was a big mistake for WB but it was a huge gain for UPN and it gave Joss and company more freedom to do riskier storylines.

mr awesome
10-19-2013, 04:42 PM
Passing on Full House, after ABC cancelled it. WB was going to pick it up for their Friday Night counter to TGIF, but John Stamos didn't want to continue.

Personally I wasn't a fan, but the show still had its followers.

TMC
07-11-2014, 08:40 PM
From the According to Jim forums from the Television Without Pity archives:
https://web.archive.org/web/20140407134120/http://forums.televisionwithoutpity.com/topic/3118506-according-to-jim/page-3#entry9875535

It hasn't been bad but really. This has been a phoned in season and yes if they were hiding Courtney's pregnancy to begin with. All of a sudden: "I'm pregnant with twins!" Then what was the point, especially when the season was filmed completely through before they even aired an episode. This also shows that ABC really is pathetic. They have this crop of new dramas that are going well and they can't work any sitcoms anymore. So, instead of letting ATJ end naturally they keep it going until they get a new comedy that does well. Then again, that was the WB logic with keeping 7th Heaven on the air even with the show costing them 15 million dollars over the course of the last four seasons it was on the WB. They had Everwood and other stuff but they wanted a "younger demographic" and were obsessed with kissing Aaron Spelling's ass. Look how that ended for them.

MrCleveland
07-12-2014, 08:03 AM
Losing Kids WB classics like "Animaniacs" and "Pinky and the Brain" in favor for Anime Shows like "Pokemon".

That...and pushing the series "Kirk". It would've been a good show if it went a little slower, the 1st Season rocked, the 2nd Season was okay, but if the show didn't rush itself...it would've been on for 3 more seasons. That and having "Full House" be on next, it would've kept "Kirk" out of extinction.

I still hope Shout! Factory would put the entire series on DVD, or have Netflix or Hulu get rights for the Bickley-Warren/Miller-Boyett/Jeff Franklin Productions real soon!

Nyan
07-20-2014, 12:30 PM
The archive was a pretty poor idea and I'm noticing the labels on the early DVDs from them are starting to bubble. They should have focused more on Netflix and Amazon Prime early on instead.

irehtman
08-07-2014, 07:46 PM
It has been revealed from actress Beth Broderick that she said that her role was turned down too soon because it was considered the officially head owner of the witchcraft, besides being the eldest.

Caroline Rhea's role is considered, not only the youngest, but also as an assistant of the witchcraft.

TMC
10-29-2014, 03:22 AM
Losing Buffy was a big mistake for WB but it was a huge gain for UPN and it gave Joss and company more freedom to do riskier storylines.

Speaking of which...
THE CRUCUAL MISTAKE THAT FELLED THE WB. (http://www.slayerlit.us/features/feature3.htm)

irehtman
10-29-2014, 01:15 PM
Creative differences is a problem.