What makes even less sense is they seem to expect them to be instant sucesses. X-files didn''t do at all well in its first season, Buffy was ok in ratings (if I remember right)

Those shows took awhile to hook fans. Execs just don''t seem willing to give the time for shows to really get a fan base anymore.

Well with the exception of Enterprise which has had 4 seasons to get something going and is still crappy in both ratings and the show itself.

I remember Fox''s promotion of Firefly. ""From the creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer,"" and then it would segue into River laying naked in the crate and I thought, ''Oh jesus. This show is going to suck.''
Sometimes, the show gets promotion but of the wrong variety. Now if they''d simply shown the dinosaur dialogue, it would have been a different story.

I also find it disturbing that all of these network execs seem to think any quality show will be an instant sucess right out the gate. People need to warm up to certain aspects, especially when you''ve got clashing and anachronistic elements in a ""THE FUTURE!!!"" type show.

Fox isn''t a second teir network, it is up there with NBC, CBS, and ABC. Fox produces a lot of crap reality shows. I blame these shows for ruining TV.

I don''t think we can blame reality programming for ruining television, though it certainly isn''t helping. It''s just that the networks have finally managed to combine two of the worst aspects of successful programming (low cost and bad melodrama) and exploit it for all their worth.

Meanwhile, we also get stuck with shows like Tru Calling and Charmed because of aspect #3, which I like to refer to as ""boobs"" (which, oddly enough, usually applies equally well to who watches it and why ).

The fourth, which Buffy and X-Files had in spades but Angel and Millenium sadly lacked, is merchandising. Yet the only difference between these series is the fact that, for the former, the fan-bases were allowed to grow which created something new and, therefore, exploitable. Combine cult status with disposable income and you have long-range potential.

The sci-fi/fantasy television genre has always been hit-or-miss, with the misses given less and less time to prove themselves. Yet even the misses get a chance to fight back -- the original Star Trek wasn''t a hit until syndication. The problem is they can''t make a big run on them because they''re expensive, so they need the merch to back them up. (Which is probably also why we''re getting more and more ""slighty odd"" shows instead of ghosts and goblins and starfighters).

As long as there are ""boobs,"" licenses to exploit or cheap theatrics to put on tape, we''re stuck with short runs of potentially great shows. Maybe the networks will learn that VCR''s and TiVo''s are a great solution to that late-night time-slot... provided they don''t keep moving the show around or putting it up against the high-ratings competition.