What's The Biggest Bomb/Blunder In TV History?

[Vyse]

In the January 29, 2010 edition of Entertainment Weekly, they made a list of the 50 biggest blunders/bombs in the history of television, with the biggest of them all, and with incredible timing, was the decision to put Jay Leno at 10 PM ET. I mentioned it and put up some highlights (mainly from NBC) on the second Late-Night War thread, but here's the full list in spoiler tags due to length and those who want to read the issue:

Spoiler

1. LENO AT TEN
2. Fox cancels Family Guy
3. giving the Geico Cavemen a sitcom
4. David and Maddie (Bruce Willis and Cybill Shepherd) hooking up on Moonlighting
5. The Secret Diary of Desmond Pfeiffer
6. Premature Exits (like David Caruso leaving NYPD Blue and Shelly Long leaving Cheers)
7. NBC's version of the BBC's Coupling
8. ABC over-saturates Who Wants To Be A Millionaire
9. Felicity (Keri Russel) cuts her hair
10. The XFL
11. The Magic Hour and The Chevy Chase Show
12. Having Jeff Probst, Tom Bergeron, Howie Mandel, Heidi Klum, and Ryan Seacrest host the Primetime Emmys in 2008
13. Jackie Gleason apologizes for You're In The Picture
14. Cousin Oliver joins The Brady Bunch
15. Kid Nation
16. Networks & Stars Pass On Hit Shows (Did you know that HBO passed on Mad Men? Or, that Rob Lowe almost became McDreamy on Grey's Anatomy?)
17. Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip
18. Joanie Loves Chachi
19. NBC cancels both Baywatch and JAG
20. Coy and Vance replace Bo and Luke Duke on The Dukes Of Hazard
21. American Juniors
22. On the Lot
23. Surface, Threshold, and Invasion - aka the Lost rip-offs
24. Pink Lady and Jeff
25. Cop Rock and Viva Laughlin
26. The Writers' Strike in 2007 and 2008
27. Life With Lucy
28. Central Park West
29. Pirate Master
30. Casting Ryan Jenkins on Megan Wants A Millionaire [link is to TMZ's coverage of him]
31. Project Runway moves to Los Angeles for one season
32. Bionic Woman (2007)
33. Three words. My. Network. TV.
34. 60 Minutes II apologizes (aka the incident involving George W. Bush and his military record) [don't make this thread political]
35. Are You Hot?
36. Gilmore Girls without its creator
37. Turning hit movies into sitcoms (outside of M*A*S*H)
38. The Lone Gunmen
39. Joe Millionaire 2
40. Welcome To The Neighborhood
41. The Fugitive re-boot with Tim Daly (Wings, Superman: TAS)
42. Hello, Larry
43. Casting Eric Balfour in anything (Fearless, Hawaii, Conviction, etc)
44. Six Degrees
45. Dennis Miller on Monday Night Football
46. Emily's Reason Why Not
47. My Mother The Car
48. Networks give up on Saturday nights
49. The Beautiful Life
50. Replacing Jane Pauley with Deborah Norville on Today

Agree with the list? Disagree with the list? Needs more "Cartoon Network airing live-action"? (I know a bunch of you will say that) What do you think is one of, if not the, biggest bombs and blunders in television history? Discuss.

 

[Michael24]

23. Surface, Threshold, and Invasion - aka the Lost rip-offs

I don't see how Threshold is a Lost rip-off. In any event, I liked it. Don't remember the others, though.

41. The Fugitive re-boot with Tim Daly (Wings, Superman: TAS)

Also disgree here. I've never seen the original, but I really liked the remake. Tim Daly did a good job, and it was interesting to see Dr. Kimble on the run in a contemporary world where it'd be harder to escape detection.

47. My Mother The Car

Would probably be #1 on my list.

 

[Zorak Masaki]

Where's Turn On? Ive never seen any footage (its not even on youtube!) but from what ive heard it was the raunchiest show on tv at the time and some stations pulled it halfway into its only episode. I'd say that was the biggest bomb ever.

 

[HomeMoviesFan]

Why is Studio 60 so high on that list compared to others? The first half of its only season is television at its best. (it plunges in quality almost immediately after the Christmas episode when Danny and Jordan hook up on the roof) Pink Lady and Jeff and Cop Rock never had good episodes. Ever. Way more notorious bombs...

...as for biggest bomb? Sorry, Jay, it can't possibly be you. That's as if somebody called 9/11 the greatest tragedy in history on September 12, 2001. The ramifications haven't been settled and we can't correctly call it yet because we can't peer into the future. When it's far behind us, then we can evaluate it as such. I just don't see it being as that huge of a blunder. I can see why they did it, and we don't even know if it will work out for NBC, Leno and Conan happily in the end. In hindsight, Cavemen, over-saturated Millionaire, XFL and Family Guy's double cancellations are way bigger blunders. (especially the latter when you consider how big it exploded in the early-to-mid 2000's)

 

[krazymed]

Yeah, Leno at 10 in hindsight was terrible, but it wasn't the worst idea in the world at the time given network TV's reliance on reality shows and cheap programming. There are events on that list that had a larger impact. I just see this as another Studio 60 case, where a show meant for a target audience at 10 failed to get the audience, show-quality notwithstanding. The public mess after the fact was the big deal, but in the end, status quo restored.

I'd put My Network TV above Leno at 10, since it was the end result of the failure of an entire network (UPN).

And it's certainly not worse than the XFL. Football on TV is hard to mess up. Arena Football was able to last 22 years. The Super Bowl and the conference title games are the top three rated shows every year. And yet the WWF, NBC, and UPN all blew it within 2 months.

The writers' strike, that's a whole different bag. Should be way higher than 26, certainly top ten.

 

[Shawn Hopkins]

"Turn-On" in 1969 was at least informally canceled while it was on the air. It was an experimental sketch comedy show with Tim Conway as its first host from the Laugh-In producers, with so much fast cutting and jumping around to different things it made some people ill, and really daring sexual and political material for its time. Some affiliates actually just chose not to return to it after the commercial break, so on some stations not even a full episode was aired. Some West Coast stations chose not to air it at all. It wasn't officially canned for a couple of days but since most stations decided they would never air it again during the first broadcast its fate was already sealed. I think that takes the cake and probably falls face down in it for good measure.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turn-On

 

[RonDrakenfan17]

Life with Lucy? I disagree with that one, I liked it

 

[mumbo]

Heil Honey, I'm Home! is a British sitcom that didn't go over so well, for obvious reasons.

Was Matlock 2020 a real show? I heard it tossed around but can't find anything solid about it on the Internet. Apparently it was about Matlock suffering a stroke and then being revived in the future.

 

[Shiloh Otter]

Life with Lucy? I disagree with that one, I liked it

Many people didn't; including longtime fans of Lucille Ball.

It wasn't a bad idea, it was poorly executed. Also, I'd be highly surprised if you've seen it, as it hasn't aired once after its cancellation and will never be on DVD.

 

[mr.happy]

I don't see how Threshold is a Lost rip-off. In any event, I liked it. Don't remember the others, though.

None of them are strictly speaking Lost rip-offs. They're the same genre and follow a vaguely similar formula, but it's their existence more than their concept that owes a lot to Lost, as they were greenlit due to the success of Lost, which would have been very unlikely just a few years earlier. Either way, it's hardly the sort of rip-offs you saw in the wake of Friends' success, which seemed to spawn at least half a dozen painfully unfunny clones about similar groups of unlikeable "friends" in their late 20s. In fact, Coupling was a US re-make of a UK Friends clone.

 

[dth1971]

What's not on the list: The 1978 Star Wars Holiday Special aired once on Thanksgiving week on CBS.

 

[Silverstar]

What's not on the list: The 1978 Star Wars Holiday Special aired once on Thanksgiving week on CBS.

They're talking about series, not specials. The Star Wars Holiday Special was one of the biggest bombs/blunders in history of the Star Wars franchise, not TV in general.

"Turn-On" in 1969 was at least informally canceled while it was on the air. It was an experimental sketch comedy show with Tim Conway as its first host from the Laugh-In producers, with so much fast cutting and jumping around to different things it made some people ill, and really daring sexual and political material for its time. Some affiliates actually just chose not to return to it after the commercial break, so on some stations not even a full episode was aired. Some West Coast stations chose not to air it at all. It wasn't officially canned for a couple of days but since most stations decided they would never air it again during the first broadcast its fate was already sealed. I think that takes the cake and probably falls face down in it for good measure.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turn-On

Interestingly, Turn-On's first and only broadcast was on the day I was born: February 5, 1969.

 

[Hanshotfirst1138]

In sheerly financial terms, I thought that they might have included Firefly.

 

[Gatomon41]

I have to say moving Leno back, and driving Conan away. This might be the deathnail for NBC.

 

[ABrown]

I think given that FOX brought back Family Guy, they should get a little bit of credit. I mean it's not as though another network was the one to have brought it back. If that were the case, then I'd say it could rank as high as it did. But since that wasn't the case, at least give FOX a little credit for fixing their mistake.

 

[Classic Speedy]

1. LENO AT TEN

Some have been saying that we need to give this situation more time before we can see the effects of it, but I don't really see why that's necessary. We saw the effects already: Conan being forced to leave The Tonight Show, which he only had for seven months. Even if Leno's Tonight Show brings high ratings back to NBC (or at least, that specific time slot), it will always look bad when it comes to PR.

2. Fox cancels Family Guy

As others have said, Fox gets some points back for reviving it.

3. giving the Geico Cavemen a sitcom

Fully agreed with this one, though. I watched the premiere and didn't laugh once. The commercials were cute but turning it into a SHOW was a bad idea. Some things just work better in smaller formats.

5. The Secret Diary of Desmond Pfeiffer

"Classic Pfeiffer!" Never actually seen this.

8. ABC over-saturates Who Wants To Be A Millionaire

Definitely agreed. At the start of 2000, ABC was on top of the world, but in only two years they got viewers sick of the show by playing it nearly every night of the week. It's amazing they managed to recover from that once they cancelled Regis's Millionaire, as they had a LOT of empty slots to fill as a result.

9. Felicity (Keri Russel) cuts her hair

Haha. Having not watched Felicity, how does cutting one's hair equate to quality or lack thereof?

13. Jackie Gleason apologizes for You're In The Picture

Eh, I'd place the first broadcast on the list over the apology, because at least Gleason admitted it was a bad idea and got some laughs out of his monologue, like saying "This is a new coffee called "Chock Full of Booze".

22. On the Lot

I don't see how that qualifies as a Top 50 flop. I thought the premise was kinda cool, and some of the short films were enjoyable, quirky, and well-made. Yes, the show had some kinks in it that should've been worked out, but it had promise.

"Turn-On" in 1969 was at least informally canceled while it was on the air. It was an experimental sketch comedy show with Tim Conway as its first host from the Laugh-In producers, with so much fast cutting and jumping around to different things it made some people ill, and really daring sexual and political material for its time. Some affiliates actually just chose not to return to it after the commercial break, so on some stations not even a full episode was aired. Some West Coast stations chose not to air it at all. It wasn't officially canned for a couple of days but since most stations decided they would never air it again during the first broadcast its fate was already sealed. I think that takes the cake and probably falls face down in it for good measure.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turn-On

I haven't seen it, but judging from the list of skits in the article, the short-lived show sounds like nothing but a bunch of corny sex and political puns, one after another, with no context. No wonder it got canned so quickly.

 

[DisneyBoy]

Mumbo - thank you for that link. What an education! Never heard of that show and now I'll never forget it.

Haha. Having not watched Felicity, how does cutting one's hair equate to quality or lack thereof?

It's really a joke the way the media always cites that the reason. They always say "Felicity cut her hair!", but the real reason was that the show moved timeslots, I believe, and the viewers tuned in a little less. Narratively, the series was still going strong. Felicity realized the relationship with chose with Ben (the idol she followed to New York) was flimsy at best, and broke up with him. She then cut her hair - a classic University "I need to change myself" move - and spent the next half the season trying to fix the friendships she'd damaged by getting together with Ben in the first place (namely, her friendship with Julie, Ben's ex, and Nole, Felicity's ex). It wouldn't have felt real if the series had them break up, and then everything was happy-go-lucky for the rest of the season.

So, consequently season two was a little more depressing, Felicity had a new look some viewers didn't like, and the timeslot changes really cost the series some ratings. But the media chooses to focus on the hair, as if to warn girls short hair is unnattractive or something. Yeesh. Felicity looked fine.

Also disgree here. I've never seen the original, but I really liked the remake. Tim Daly did a good job, and it was interesting to see Dr. Kimble on the run in a contemporary world where it'd be harder to escape detection.

Yeah, I heard good stuff about that show. Honestly, I think EW was reaching a bit to complete a list with a round number. This hardly qualifies as one of TV's worst offenses. Is Joey even on the list? That show was a pretty big insult to the success of FRIENDS. The actors spent years saying they would stick together, and then LeBlanc tries to squeeze more success out of his already stretched characterization...ugh. Tacky.

What about the Rosie Live show? They claimed they were trying to give Rosie this new program and then put her up against Thanksgiving weekend football or something. I mean, honestly...who stands a chance there?

 

[Hobbes829]

Didn't NBC go from 1 to 3rd or 4th of the broadcast networks after Friends and Frasier ended?

I'd say The CW as a network, Fox's mistreatment of Firefly, the cancellation of Angel, Arrested Development and Veronica Mars

 

[langden alger]

i would throw in that Osboune family variety show on Fox, and The recent NBC Knightrider remake....if they put in Bionic Woman, might as well add that one too.

 

[mumbo]

I'd rank The CW cancelling Smackdown! pretty high.

And apparently Ostroff is on the fence about Smallville despite great numbers for a Friday. If Smallville gets cancelled this season then that belongs on the list as well.