Unsolved Mysteries 2008 Coming to Lifetime!

[Pavan]

http://blog.sitcomsonline.com/2010/0...-unsolved.html

[Zlatko]

Argh! I wish this crappy version of UM would just go away. Maybe Lifetime will consider airing the Stack version if enough people email them.

[An 80s Guy]

Why doesn't Lifetime air the Stack version? I can't stand the 2008 version.

[Pavan]

How many 2008 episodes were there? Maybe once they are done they will start with Stack again.

[biscuitgirl]

Yeah, I don't know how I feel about this. I definitely want to see more UM but I'm not sure about the goofy Spike episodes...

[peachysquirt21]

Well this don't excite me at all. They can shove this version.

Sadly I don't foresee them airing the original episodes. They will just keep running these garbage versions over & over.

[Kane]

I wonder what the actual deal is behind the show's upcoming reinstatement on Lifetime. I did some research to see if some company currently owns both Spike and Lifetime (which could explain why networks would share the series), but so far to no avail. Maybe Lifetime still has some degree of ownership to UM even after the expiration of their contract with the series?

Looks like we'll have to wait until more information develops before we learn any more than what we already know.

[sdb4884]

I think they think that it's the only option. People know Stack died in 2003 and if they put him on their channel again people will know that these stories are old. As much as I want the orignal show back in it's original format the only show we will see is the stupid Farina one unless someone takes the series and re formats it again.

[McBevis]

What they SHOULD do is exactly what Lifetime did for so many years. Keep showing the old Stack segments, and if any of them have updates that took place after Stack's death, then I guess we'll just have to hear the update narrated by somebody else. As long as the segments themselves are the same old-school ones that we all know and love, and don't have all of that 2008 advanced techno-crap, then I can deal with an "aftermarket" update.

[WishfulDreamer]

Originally Posted by Zlatko

Argh! I wish this crappy version of UM would just go away. Maybe Lifetime will consider airing the Stack version if enough people email them.

That was my EXACT reaction to hearing this! I cannot stand the new version. It's not even Farina's fault, really. The music, the setup- it's so boring and uninteresting! I remember after RS passed away, they started airing UM less and then a TON of people must have sent emails because suddenly the show was back on twice a day. I sure do miss them showing it, especially at night. I can't believe it's been off the air for four years. They really should put it back on instead of all that crap they have on. It really will get them a wider audience. But I wish they would put the old version, of course.

[mozartpc27]

What they really should do is let it die a dignified death. I'm going to go ahead and guess (and this is just a guess) that what happened here is that SpikeTV lost money on the UM venture (hardly a surprise, considering they haven't even bother to air it much and, when they do, it is often at 3 in the morning). Perhaps SpikeTV then went out and tried to "sublet" the show to other stations in an effort to recoup some of its money, or perhaps Lifetime aproached them, but either way I am sure SpikeTV jumped on it because for them it is a dead property, a straight loss. I am sure they could sell the ads that run during the show at the same price they sell them now by running literally ANYTHING else - for example, if SpikeTV went to advertisers trying to sell commercial time for otherwise dead air, I'll bet the price they could charge per ad for that wouldn't be signficantly different from what they get per ad while these re-configured Unsolved Mysteries are running. The decision to sink any money into Unsolved Mysteries has been, in other words, an unmitigated disaster, and I am sure they would have happily optioned their rights to the show to a network like Lifetime for little more than a few hundred thousand dollars, maybe less than that even.

A broader question might be: why does SpikeTV even still exist at this point? It more or less is the "CSI" channel. Of all the channels on cable at this point, I think it has the biggest questions about its raison d'etre. Wouldn't surprise me at all if it just disappeared before the end of the decade.

[Gelatinous Goo]

Originally Posted by mozartpc27

What they really should do is let it die a dignified death. I'm going to go ahead and guess (and this is just a guess) that what happened here is that SpikeTV lost money on the UM venture (hardly a surprise, considering they haven't even bother to air it much and, when they do, it is often at 3 in the morning). Perhaps SpikeTV then went out and tried to "sublet" the show to other stations in an effort to recoup some of its money, or perhaps Lifetime approached them, but either way I am sure SpikeTV jumped on it because for them it is a dead property, a straight loss. I am sure they could sell the ads that run during the show at the same price they sell them now by running literally ANYTHING else - for example, if SpikeTV went to advertisers trying to sell commercial time for otherwise dead air, I'll bet the price they could charge per ad for that wouldn't be signficantly different from what they get per ad while these re-configured Unsolved Mysteries are running. The decision to sink any money into Unsolved Mysteries has been, in other words, an unmitigated disaster, and I am sure they would have happily optioned their rights to the show to a network like Lifetime for little more than a few hundred thousand dollars, maybe less than that even.

A broader question might be: why does SpikeTV even still exist at this point? It more or less is the "CSI" channel. Of all the channels on cable at this point, I think it has the biggest questions about its raison d'etre. Wouldn't surprise me at all if it just disappeared before the end of the decade.

I couldn't agree more with this post. Unfortunately, with the reconfigured UM train wreck, the show will never be able to die a dignified death. UM had its own brand of magic that was only destined to last a few short years. There is no way to recapture something so special. Any attempts to do so will only result in a further-embarrassing disaster. It was ridiculous to "update" the show with nonthreatening narration and Google Earth-type maps, only to cut to someone with a permed mullet and oversized Sally Jesse Raphael glasses.

CM should release everything on DVD and get it over with. Extra DVD features could be produced with taste or without. It's entirely up to CM to get it right. Bring back as much of the old staff as possible to ensure that the series gets a proper 21st century repackaging with full respect given to the original airings. Also, you'd have to wonder if there are a handful of segments which never escaped the cutting room floor. The inclusion of that material would be nice, too.

[Zlatko]

What I don't understand is why the likes of Spike or Lifetime don't just re-air the old UM with Stack. UM had many viewers back in the 80's and 90's; surely many of those viewers would enjoy watching the show again. I guess new is better in their minds even if it's rehashed...

[mozartpc27]

Originally Posted by Zlatko

What I don't understand is why the likes of Spike or Lifetime don't just re-air the old UM with Stack. UM had many viewers back in the 80's and 90's; surely many of those viewers would enjoy watching the show again. I guess new is better in their minds even if it's rehashed...

I love UM, but I think we need to face the fact that it is a time-sensitive show. I don't post on here as much as I used to, precisely because, with no influx of new cases, there is precious little I can add at this point. The ones that were interesting to me I've discussed, some at length, and at least one at embarrassingly long length (Tommy Zeigler). The cases I haven't commented on either simply don't have enough information to allow me to add anything of value to the conversation, or aren't that interesting (I'm looking at you, Kurt Cobain not-a-suicide).

In theory, there is a never-ending source for content for the show - i.e., the real world, where people disappear or wind up strangely dead or claim not to have committed murders for which they have been convicted every day. But there is a shelf-life to some stories. When Lifetime was airing the original show, they excluded some segments from re-airing for whatever reason, and then beat the rest into the ground. How many more times can we see/go over Angela Hammond? Some stranger grabbed her from a phone booth over 20 yers ago. She is dead, she'll likely never be found, and we can only hope her killer is either dead himself or in jail for something else. Of course, the case is still of interest to her family, to the investigators who worked on it, and to the community from where she disappeared, but outside that narrow circle - and the fervent group of 200 or so people who post on here - who else is going to be interested in hearing about her case? That's why the SpikeTV version eliminated all references to dates - because they knew the narrow audience they target would lose whatever little interest they had if they knew how old some of these cases were.

I can see new - truly new - episodes being produced under the "Unsolved Mysteries" banner, but these pointless re-edits of stories that aired for over a decade in reruns on Lifetime are just not good television, plain and simple. We all know here, as diehard fans of the show, and thanks to the numerous family members of victims (or people claimining to be family members of victims), how important these cases are to the real people who were affected by them. But to most of the vieweing audience, these cases are at best a surreality; this is all a show, a production, an entertainment. It's entertaining as long as it is fresh and new. If it's just reruns or rehashes, it's old and stale, and then it isn't an entertainment anymore, it's just dull.

Indeed, this gets to one of the moral questions I've always sort of asked myself about Unsolved Mysteries but really all shows of this kind: even I must admit I watch these things because I derive a certain enjoyment out of them as presentations: we've talked on here numerous times about the preference most of us have for early-year UMs, and when we talk about that we're not discussing the cases and how they were solved more frequently or how they were less brutal or something, but instead about how they were produced and presented. In other words, we ALL of us derive aesthetic enjoyment from a show which for its content depends on human misery... I don't think this makes us bad people. After all, I'm sure we'd all agree that what would really be best is if we lived in a world where there was simply no NEED for Unsolved Mysteries, but, that being only an idealists' fondest daydream, it's better that cases get exposure if it helps to bring bad people to justice. Nonetheless, I do sometimes wonder about the ethics of deriving enjoyment from a show that needs a constant stream of depravity to feed its existence...

At any rate, let me return to my main point: for a show that isn't a sitcom or a scripted drama, but essentially a reality show, UM had a remarkably good run. It was on the air, in its original form, as late as 2007, even though, at that time, not a single new segment had been produced since, what, 2001? THat's awfully good.

But it's time to either create new content, or let it pass. I don't blame Cosgrove; they have a property, and as long as someone wants to pay them to use it, why should they refuse? I'm just surprised that a network like Lifetime is so desperate for programming that they would return to wildly inferior re-edits of a show they understandably dropped 3 years ago for being too old; I think, most of all, this is as clear an indication as can be that there are too many cable channels, and not enough content.

[Jason K]

I've always felt the only chance we have of seeing the Stack version on TV ever again is gonna be Nick at Nite or, more likely, TV Land. I'm pretty confident the show would do well in the nostalgia market. It would be nice if they could and would acquire it.