I hate network television

Well, maybe hate’s too strong a word, but it’s pretty close to the mark.

So what inspired this confession, you ask?

Simply put, I just finished watching Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles (Seasons 1 and 2) again on Netflix streaming, and really would like to see more but some network morons decided to end the show, leaving viewers hanging.

Seriously, I’d really like to have a talk with whoever was responsible for that decision. This show was way above average for network productions and obviously building to something that would blow our socks off — a division between the terminators themselves and Skynet?! But, alas, it was canceled before we could find out the fate of Sarah and John Connor, and of humanity, in the Terminator universe.

It’s no secret that I enjoy serialized dramas, loving perhaps the greatest ever aired, Battlestar Galactica. I find epic stories with characters that actually develop realistically over the course of a series much more compelling than sitcoms (blech!) or episodic shows, with the notable exceptions of House and ER, which employs/employed story arcs that played out over an episode or two, sometimes the entire season/series. Agreed some other shows do this, too, but not nearly successfully enough for me to watch for long, much less regularly. This is probably why I rarely read single-installment books and prefer series like Frank Herbert’s Dune Chronicles and Jacqueline Carey’s Kushiel’s Legacy.

Suffice it to say, there’s little that annoys me more as a TV viewer than to have such an epic story cut off before it reaches its conclusion, especially when I feel vested in the story and the characters in it. Honestly, I think there should be an FCC regulation that requires networks to complete such series to their natural dramatic end before they can even go into production, regardless of ratings. At the very least, they should be required to replace it with something better and not the same old crap.

In my opinion, ratings are worthless measures for whether or not a show should remain on the air anyway. The Nielsen Ratings article at Wikipedia notes: “Because ratings are based on samples, it is possible for shows to get 0.0 share, despite having an audience….” This essentially means that the “sample” group determines what everyone else gets to watch, and that a large, or larger, number of people may be watching the show without the network even knowing.

I have to pause here and thank SyFy and NBC/Universal for sticking it out with BSG, letting the story play out despite not being a major Nielsen’s performer. That took a lot of guts and I, and others, appreciate that more than you will probably ever know. This is why it irks me so badly that shows like The Sarah Connor Chronicles get canceled just when the story is taking a hugely compelling turn.

I’ve been a fan of the Terminator universe since the very first movie. I have followed the film series through its ups and downs and like them all despite their flaws. I have to say, though, that I think The Sarah Connor Chronicles was better than the last two films — especially the third — which is another reason this well-acted, well-written, critically acclaimed show’s cancellation is an utter travesty.

I’ll be honest, I’ve pretty much given up on television as a whole, so much so that I turned off cable after BSG went off the air, pretty certain there were few shows I’d even bother with now or in the future. I do watch a few things, of course — Caprica, likely another doomed series; House; and Ghost Hunters — but it’s hard to want to invest time in a series if it’s just going to be canceled because the select Nielsen viewers aren’t interested in the same show I am. I figure I’m not the only person who feels this way either.

That said, I’m not sure where the balance lies between determining a show’s actual popularity and its ratings short of equipping every TV in America to register on the Nielsen system. As a Terminator fan, the latter is admittedly unsettling, but there must be some way to keep smart and intelligent shows on the air and allow serialized dramas such as The Sarah Connor Chronicles tell their story to the end.

Maybe they can start with canceling a few of the useless “reality” series that clutter the current airwaves.

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