History ScrewedByTheNetwork / LiveActionTV

* ''Series/Teletubbies'', once a network favorite, eventually fell prey to this. By 2001, the show had ended in its native United Kingdom; this meant that there was very little new material apart from the Teletubbies Everywhere segments to be used for the show's American run, despite said run not ending until 2005. In 2008, PBS officially lost the rights to the show.

** There is also much squabbling about which channel will broadcast the show. For a while it would look like Sesamstraat would move to a paid channel, rather than one of the easily accessible Dutch Public Broadcasting Service channels. According to long time actor Aart Staartjes (who plays the role of Mr. Aart since 1984), this would be a deathblow for the program, as it was already struggling with the constant schedule changes. He even threatened to quit with his role, as he really did not like all the bureaucratic squabbling happening around it.

* ''Series/BarneyAndFriends'', despite no problems ratings-wise, got cancelled by PBS in 2009. Why? It ended up the commercial hands of Creator/HitEntertainment, which has shown more interest in merchandising every cent out of their properties than the quality of the series that gave them the merchandise in the first place. Sister property ''WesternAnimation/ThomasTheTankEngine'', after being changed from models to CGI animation, was raking in more money than Barney for the first time since the peak of its popularity in the '90s, so they canned Barney to focus more on their really useful engine, and thus marked the end of one of PBS Kids' LongRunners. A handful of PBS stations did keep rerunning the show until PBS let their broadcasting rights lapse in November 2015. In 2018, it was acquired by Universal Kids (formerly PBS Kids Sprout, then simply Sprout).

* [[WordOfGod According]] to Creator/LevarBurton, ''Series/ReadingRainbow'' was forced to cease prodcution in 2006 because No Child Left Behind, which was basically a government policy during the UsefulNotes/GeorgeWBush administration that pretty much mandated that children had to learn how to read. In other words, while children were taught the rudiments, it came without without fostering a love for reading. As an end result, NCLB ate into the funding for ''Reading Rainbow''.

* ''Series/UltramanNexus'' fell victim to this. The series is definitely one of the DarkerAndEdgier installments of the ''Franchise/UltraSeries'' franchise and with its dark themes, including, but not limited to people being eaten alive by monsters, government conspiracies trying to hide said monsters, and MindRape, is actually aimed at teens or young adults like its preceding ''Series/UltraQDarkFantasy''. The network TBS[[note]]This is the The Tokyo Broadcasting System not the American Creator/TBS[[/note]], however, thinking that Ultraman is exclusively aimed at children, placed ''Nexus'' at a time slot meant for children. This resulted in the show gaining very low ratings, as the intended demographic missed the show due to its time slot and children did not watch the show due to how dark it was. Ultimately, the show was abruptly ended, leading to the cancellation of ''Ultra N Project'' where it was supposed to be part of, but was still fortunate to receive a finale, albeit a rushed one.

* Magician and shock comedian Jerry Sadowitz's BBC comedy series ''The Pall Bearer's Revue'' owes its short five episode lifespan to this. According to Sadowitz, then-controller Alan Yentob hated the show and saw it as a threat to his job so did everything he could to conceal it and make sure as few people as possible saw it. As if that wasn't enough, he claimed that Sadowitz was difficult to work with, which led to him getting blackballed from the corporation.

* The various ''Franchise/StarTrek'' variants were also badly served by the BBC on broadcast in Britain. They were always shown in the early-evening slot on [=BBC2=] and seen as nothing more than expendable filler that could be dropped if any afternoon sports events, such as cricket or tennis or golf, over-ran. In the summer months, they could be dropped completely so that sports events taking advantage of the longer daylight hours could run on; Star Trek episodes were reinstated if rain stopped play, making them convenient filler, and often ran out of sequence. The British premiere of ''Series/StarTrekVoyager'' was allowed to run for its first thirteen episodes in an early evening slot -- and was dropped, at a crucial stage in the plot, to allow the World Snooker Championships to have the slot. When it returned eight weeks later, the BBC did not pick up where the series it left off: it went back to Episode One and started all over again. None of these things killed ST in Britain, but they did not help either.

* ''Series/GoonShow'' founder Creator/MichaelBentine went on to make an acclaimed series of surrealistic comedy for the BBC, ''It's A Square World''. Very, very few of Bentine's shows survive today. Michael Bentine alleged that when he refused to incorporate political satire into his shows at the behest of very senior BBC executives, not only did the BBC rip up a contract for more shows, it deliberately wiped all the tapes so that Bentine could not profit from repeat fees or overseas sales. If this is true, then the BBC execs cut off their collective nose to spite their face, in screwing over an artiste who would not play ball at the price of destroying a critically admired comedy show.

* ''Headbanger's Ball'' was a popular show that aired Saturday nights on Creator/{{MTV}} beginning in 1987. The Ball (as it was nicknamed by its fans) aired for two hours and played hard rock, HeavyMetal, and HairMetal music videos. The show also featured interviews with musicians as well as "road trip" specials where the cast of the show would accompany bands to various locations around the world. It was one of the most popular shows on MTV and for a while was one of the network's flagship shows. The show even remained popular during the 1990s, when alternative rock and hip-hop became the most popular genres of music. But in January of 1995, ''Headbanger's Ball'' was abruptly canceled without warning. The host of the show, Riki Rachtman, was called by the network and informed that he would not need to come into work the following week. Rachtman pleaded with the network to allow him and the rest of the crew to make a "farewell episode" for the show, but the request was denied. ''Headbanger's Ball'' was {{Uncanceled}} in 2003, but many believe the new version of the show to be inferior to its predecessor.
* As of late with MTV shows, if the network feels that the show is not good, they will promote it minimally, and air it in the 11PM time slot, and the show will often not be renewed or they won't even finish the season. Also, if a show gets poor ratings on just its first episode, they suddenly completely stop showing reruns and stop promoting altogether.

** KSL-TV, Utah's NBC affiliate[[note]]which is owned by a for-profit subsidiary of [[UsefulNotes/{{Mormons}} The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints]][[/note]], pulled the show after four episodes, "due to the extensive graphic nature of this show." Executive producer Scott D. Pierce didn't like this.

** KSL-TV, Utah's NBC affiliate, pulled the show after four episodes, "due to the extensive graphic nature of this show." Executive producer Scott D. Pierce didn't like this.

* Like the CBS example above - Series/StarTrekTheOrigionalSeries and it's two later shows had a bit of LaserGuidedKarma on NBC. Syndication caused ''TOS'' to get new fans every year and stoke nostaliga among Trekkies and those who grew up with it while ''The Next Generation'' and ''Deep Space Nine'' ran in syndication beating network programming, '''including NBC's'''.

* ''Series/BarneyAndFriends'', despite no problems ratings-wise, got cancelled by PBS in 2009. Why? It ended up the commercial hands of Creator/HitEntertainment, which has shown more interest in merchandising every cent out of their properties than the quality of the series that gave them the merchandise in the first place. Sister property ''WesternAnimation/ThomasTheTankEngine'', after being changed from models to CGI animation, was raking in more money than Barney for the first time since the peak of its popularity in the '90s, so they canned Barney to focus more on their really useful engine, and thus marked the end of one of PBS Kids' LongRunners. A handful of PBS stations did keep rerunning the show until PBS let their broadcasting rights to ''Barney'' lapse in August 2016. In 2018, it was acquired by Universal Kids (formerly PBS Kids Sprout, then simply Sprout).
** During those last few years, New York City-based WNET (the show's new originating station!) aired the show at 6:30AM starting in 2006 in order to make room for the ''Mrs. Laurie and Hooper'' block, staying there until it was pulled from the schedule. In the last few months, they had the rights, the show aired on Kids Thirteen, their digital subchannel, once a day at 3:30AM.

* For some reason, E! decided to convert its main news show, ''E! News'' from a traditional entertainment newscast to a morning show at the start of 2020. It moved to New York with completely new hosts, and was now inexplicably forced to compete with the 20+ other New York morning and talk shows for celebrity appearances, and what celebrities they could get were rejects from in-house competitor (literally several floors down) ''Today''. The experiment would have just been futile in the end, but COVID-19 shut down the show in March 2020 permanently after only two months in New York, along with E!'s entire 2020 live programming strategy (which also did in a reboot of ''The Soup''), likely putting the entire network in danger of shutting down after the Kardashians move to Hulu. The only hosted programming left on the network (''Daily Pop'' & ''Nightly Pop'') is likely only on the air due to long-term deals and those hosts' willingness to do the shows from home.

** The show was continually pre-empted, aired on different days (which led to its being trounced by ''Series/PartyOfFive'') and then taken off the network while the show was {{Retool}}ed. When it came back, half the cast was gone and the show's theme was changed to a ''Series/{{Dynasty}}''-esque clone. However, it didn't last even a handful of episodes before CBS pulled the plug for good.

* ''Series/TheNewNormal'': This show was cancelled after only one season, despite its strong cult following and general well reception. The only consolation fans got was that the season had wrapped up neatly with [[spoiler:Bryan and David getting married and Goldie giving birth.]]

Because each local PBS station does its own scheduling, PBS itself should shoulder no blame for any kind of screwing outside of the odd occasions where Congress gets in the way. Are you mad that your favorite cooking show gets short shrift because of your station enjoying ''[[Music/LawrenceWelk The Lawrence Welk Show]]'' and Gaither concert reruns too much? That's between them and you, not PBS, or the show's distributor, as seen below.

* The WB screwed ''Series/BirdsOfPrey'' [[ExecutiveMeddling by trying to turn it into]] ''Series/{{Smallville}}'' (which, coincidentally, was by the same producers).

[[folder:Netflix]]
* Netflix announced that ''Series/Sense8'' would not be renewed for a third season due to low ratings that didn't justify the show's massive budget (at least $9 million per episode). In response, fans created petitions and a hashtag calling for the show to be uncancelled, as well as threats to cancel their Netflix subscriptions en-masse. The backlash did succeed to some extent - although Netflix wouldn't green-light a third season, they have allowed for a two-hour long special to bring closure to the series[[note]]Since the service depends less on ratings than simply pure subscription numbers for its money, they're very motivated to ensure their original programming will have decent closure even if it has to end before the crew was ready[[/note]]
* ''Series/WhiteRabbitProject'' has been taken out to the back and shot. Grant Imahara claims that Netflix refused to renew the series for a second season because they expressed that they wish to invest more in scripted dramas that are binge-watchable (for example, ''Series/StrangerThings'' and ''Series/BlackMirror'').
* After season 4 of ''[[Series/{{Degrassi}} Degrassi: Next Class]]'' ended in Summer 2017, there was no news or updates on the show for over a year. There were rumors that Netflix was trying to retool the show with a completely new cast with some American actors and different tone, much like their premiere teen drama ''Series/ThirteenReasonsWhy''. In September 2018, Stefan Brogen finally confirmed that the show was canceled.
* The Netflix Marvel shows (''Series/Daredevil2015'', ''Series/JessicaJones2015'', ''Series/LukeCage2016'', ''Series/IronFist2017'', ''Series/TheDefenders2017'', and ''Series/ThePunisher2017'') were subject to this from October 2018 through February 2019. Many speculated that Netflix cancelled the shows because their existing partnership with Marvel was ending and didn't want to extend the contracts. The impending launch of Disney+ basically meant the shows were going to be a revenue stream competitor. Speculation also exists that Netflix tried to sabotage the shows by scaling back the show's marketing campaigns.
[[/folder]]

* ''Series/TheWubbulousWorldOfDrSeuss''

* ''Series/{{Crossroads}}'' was never a stellar piece of drama and in fact became a by-word for SoBatitsGood. But the death-knell of the show was spurred by the regionalisation of Creator/{{ITV}}. In TheSeventies this meant that [[OopNorth Northern]] regions such as Granada and Yorkshire were six months ahead of Southern English regions in screening the long-running soap opera. [=ITV=] management decreed that national coverage should be harmonised. Rather than giving the south [[CruelAndUnusualDeath double doses of the show]] till the region caught up, a solution was bodged where InUniverse, main character Meg Richardson (Noele Gordon) featured in a special episode. This began with Meg in her office talking to her son Sandy - then she looked right into the camera and started to address the viewers. Sandy looked 'startled' and said something like "[[BreakingThefourthWall you're not allowed do that]]". The character then addressed the viewers directly, summing up what for many British viewers would be six months worth of missing, now never-to-be-seen, storylines, so as to bring viewers up to date. Viewers had been forewarned by the continuity announcer prior to the show that "Noel Gordon was to give a special announcement". But a bad, some might say deliberate, decision by TV execs broke the spell for viewers and the writing was on the wall for this show.