History ScrewedByTheNetwork / LiveActionTV

[[folder:City]]

** TBN Salsa itself was screwed from the get-go by having its distribution limited to subchannels of its over-the-air stations, not being made available on the iTBN streaming service. TBN hasn't even bothered to make its programming listings available online, either via its main website, that of TBN Salsa, or via online/mobile television listings services (which still incorrectly still list 24-hour listings for Smile and JUCE on separate subchannels in their broadcast station listings in TBN's OTA markets).
* In June 2016, The Church Channel was retooled into a new collaboration with the Australian Hillsong Church called the Hillsong Channel, pushing aside many traditional programs for the more cheerful and youth-skewing views of Hillsong, which seemed especially jarring as it launched the day after Jan Crouch's death.

* The Chuckle Brothers were never informed by BBC about their decision to cancel ''Series/Chucklevision'' despite the Chuckles being told by Lorraine Heggessey, who was the head of CBBC in the 90's, that they had a lifetime contract.

* WesternAnimation/{{Sammy}}: This might just be the single most screwed over animated show in TV history. NBC treated the show like dirt as a result of them completely losing faith in animated shows after WesternAnimation/GodTheDevilAndBob had mediocre ratings(in spite of the controversy where religious groups railed against the show and called it "blasphemous"). Despite NBC having ordered 13 episodes, only TWO of them ever made it air, with both of them being burned off during the summer with almost zero-promotion(NBC's mandate only allowed the promos to be ONE SECOND long), with some affiliates not even bothering to air the show at all(Which is the main reason why no TV recordings have yet surfaced) and those episodes that did air were aired OutOfOrder. To add insult to injury NBC refused to sell the rights to the show to Creator/AdultSwim after it's cancellation like they did with "God the Devil and Bob".

--->'''Markie Post:''' "Their attitude was always, 'Hey! ''Series/TheCosbyShow''! Hey, ''Series/FamilyTies''! Hey, ''{{Series/Cheers}}''! [[MyFriendsAndZoidberg And... oh, yeah... Night Court...]]"

* ''WesternAnimation/Sammy'' an animated series starring David Spade is quite possibly the most egregious example of them all, with it getting canned after only two episodes aired OutOfOrder as a burn-off during the summer(with some affiliates not even bothering to air those)due to NBC losing faith in animation after ''WesternAnimation/GodTheDevilAndBob'' got lower ratings then expected(which was ironically NBC's own fault as they promoted the show less and less once religious groups started complaining about it)

* ''Series/MarryMe'': It looked to have it pretty good, it aired in the 9pm Tuesday slot after ''Series/TheVoice'', but, midway through the season, it had its lead-in of ''The Voice'' taken away, and without its lead-in ratings collapsed. The show was pulled from the schedule by the time ''The Voice'' returned, and there are four episodes that remain unaired.

** At times, NTV has screwed over ''Series/WheelOfFortune'' and ''Series/{{Jeopardy}}'' because though ''Wheel'' airs at 5:00 p.m. and ''Jeopardy!'' airs at 8:00 p.m. on weekdays, both shows have aired in late-night timeslots in the past, [[WhatAnIdiot when both shows were airing new episodes as opposed to summer reruns]].

** The new series wasn't immune to this, either. The series debuted on the US [[Creator/{{Syfy}} Sci Fi Channel]] in 2006 (a year after the UK, and after Sci Fi initially rejected the series for being "too British") and was screwed from the start. Varying minutes of material were cut from episodes for time ("[[Recap/DoctorWhoS30E13JourneysEnd Journey's End]]", originally 65 minutes, was cut down to 45), the trailers for the show the channel ran often revealed hefty spoilers, and finally they got rid of the show completely in 2009. BBC America picked it up and have been treating it much, ''much'' better than Sci-Fi Channel did. The Canadian network CBC also mishandled the series after a promising first season in which they even had the stars record unique intros to each episode, but eventually the CBC lost interest in ''Doctor Who'', which was later picked up by the cable network [[Creator/SpaceChannel Space]] and handled much better.

** For a while, the BBC had a tendency to air the series at differing times through the season, sometimes at a different time each week, and rarely after 7 PM (sometimes even before 6 PM). Strangely, the show seemed to dip in the ratings the earlier it's scheduled, whereas episodes aired after 7 were consistently among the highest-rated, but the Beeb didn't seem to register this fact, nor did it seem to realize that fans would appreciate having more than a couple weeks' notice of when a new season will actually start, as has been the case for a number of revival-era seasons.

** It's also worth noting that several parties have [[Administrivia/RuleOfCautiousEditingJudgment alleged]] that the ''real'' reason that Grade fired Colin Baker was because he was a close friend of Baker's ex-wife and after having witnessed their messy divorce, had a personal vendetta against Baker. Whatever the truth, one thing that people agree on is that Grade did ''not'' want Baker working for the BBC.

* Global dropped ''Series/MightyMorphinPowerRangers'' after only a few episodes because of only TWO complaints from [[MoralGuardians parents who believed the show was too violent for children]]. Kids' cable channel YTV also aired the show, and they dropped the show after the same number of episodes, leading to a joke from one of the channel's hosts where he made fun of a complaint on the air. Unless viewers had cable so they could watch it on FOX, there was no other solution because the franchise was stuck in limbo for many years. When it aired on Family Channel as part of the Jetix block, it was given InvisibleAdvertising and a very poor timeslot, and later installments did air on Teletoon, but two generations of fans had come and gone by that time.

* The American rights for ''Series/TrailerParkBoys'' were picked up by BBC America and it was gone after just two episodes. Compare that to the not-as-popular Canadian series ''Series/CornerGas'', which has had a strong run on WGN and in syndication. Luckily, the complete series is available to rent on Netflix.

* Despite ''Series/{{Empire}}'' being a massive hit back in the United States, Rogers put the Canadian broadcasts of the show on Omni Television (a group of stations that airs ethnic programs and [[AdoredByTheNetwork many reruns]] of ''Series/TwoAndAHalfMen''). Granted, had Empire aired on sister network [[Creator/{{Citytv}} City]] at the time, it would've forced off ''Series/ModernFamily'', one of their bigger shows. However, because Omni was smaller than other broadcast networks, this would cause ''Empire'' to not really take off in Canada. Even when the show moved to City for the second season and aired an hour before {{Creator/FOX}}, most Canadians would take the American airing anyways since they almost always air previews for the next episode, unlike most Canadian broadcast networks. As a result, halfway through Season 2, City decided to pull the show and stream the remaining episodes to Shomi (a subscription video-on-demand service jointly owned by Rogers and Shaw Communications).

* ''The Screen Savers'', among most other Creator/TechTV shows. When G4 "merged" with [=TechTV=], it was a merger in name only. In everything else, it was a thinly veiled example of a textbook ''hostile takeover''. The G4 execs fired most of the existing [=TechTV=] talent (the shining example being Leo [=LaPorte=]), moved some shows around, canceled other shows, and eventually turned ''The Screen Savers'' into ''Series/AttackOfTheShow''. The last show that survived from [=TechTV=] during G4's final years was ''X-Play'', and the departure of Adam Sessler on acrimonious terms in April 2012 put the coffin of that show on the ground. As if to add insult to injury, the "[=G4TechTV=]" name of the merged channels was then changed to G4, and it was later revealed that Comcast, the owner and operator of G4, wanted to drop [=TechTV=] in order to lower the channel's price before the merger.
* [=DirecTV=] removed the channel in November 2010, citing that they didn't see any value in the channel due to low ratings despite the network claiming that it came with the same price it had been. After what happened below, it never came back.
* The launch of the Esquire Network itself might as well be an example of a launch where the network came to air having both of its feet shot, with an extra shot in the arm for good measure. After promoting for months an April 22, 2013 launch date, a week before with launch promos peppering the network with promotion of ''Series/ParksAndRecreation'', ''Series/PartyDown'' and ''Late Night with Creator/JimmyFallon'' reruns, management decided to change course and switch the launch to the always-vague "Summer 2013", claiming it wanted to have more of their own original programming at launch (which is all of seven series bound to hit endless rerun loops by the time Christmas rolls around), along with the start of the new ''Series/AmericanNinjaWarrior'' season. Eventually they settled on September 23, '''two days''' out of Summer 2013 to tie in an Esquire anniversary special, but right in the middle of the debut of the new TV season and giving a three-week head start to probable competitor FXX (which also has ''P&R'' reruns). Esquire launched without any promotional steam; ''ANW'' was lucky to have NBC run episodes twice a week over the summer to avert a guaranteed lowest-rated season ever on a network without any new program support.
* That was not it, however. After looking at things, the new cable chief of NBC realized that G4 both couldn't launch a new network with their schedule and the [=DirecTV=] issue, so she decided to change the network being taken over by Esquire to the women-targeted Style Network, which has better cable positions and DirecTV carriage, but is also the odd duck out among E!, Bravo and Oxygen in targeting, so Style's programs were moved among those three with Esquire launching on Style's channel space. Esquire Network didn't escape unscathed to start out with; for three months after its launch the network was stuck with a contractual obligation to air ''Series/SexAndTheCity'' reruns, a show which got [[LaserGuidedKarma tons of backlash from its namesake magazine]] when it was on the air.
* G4's rights to syndicated programming expired in September 2014, meaning its only use if one still had it until the end of the year it was to complete your ''Web Soup'' recording collection with seemingly never-ending reruns of that and ''X-Play'' reruns that only knew the UsefulNotes/XboxOne and UsefulNotes/PlayStation4 as pure rumors, along with other former programming. ''American Ninja Warrior'' is also thriving now that it's fully an NBC show freed from being stuck with G4's baggage. NBCU finally ended the ghost feed of G4 just before midnight on New Year's Eve, which by then was only carried by U-verse and a few small cable systems which were sticklers about keeping the channel on until the last possible moment in its contract.
* In the end though, all NBC and Hearst got out of the Esquire rebranding was a literal cash furnace and crickets. The programming offered by the network was uninspired "follow the leader" travelogue and food programming that was better done and for less cost on Website/YouTube by independent creators, and outside of their originals, it basically became a rerun farm in the vein of Cloo, which died at the start of February 2017 for offering things easily found on other channels or streaming platforms. Cable companies didn't want it any longer, and the newly merged Time Warner Cable and Charter under Spectrum did it in. On June 25, 2017, Esquire Network went ignobly off the air with little ceremony in the middle of the afternoon with a promised "relaunch" as a digital-only network seemingly said only to soothe the few loyal viewers and never occurring. FXX not only took advantage of their head-start but having the rerun rights to ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'' and a well-regarded slate of comedy programming (with some moved from FX) meant that Esquire had no shot at winning over them. Meanwhile, G4's Canadian channel ended on August 31, 2017, outlasting both the American G4 and Esquire Network, and ''American Ninja Warrior'' will likely go on well into the next decade as a summer stalwart for NBC, with the only sign of its origination as a cable show being early season reruns with G4 logos on the sideboards.
* And to put salt in Esquire's wound; G4 will return as a hybrid online/cable network in 2021 with most of its original cast, likely with much better management.

* {{Series/Rome}} got a bit of this, being deemed too expensive and canceled after two seasons, although they had time to wrap up current plots. HBO execs later admitted canceling it was a mistake, partly done due to a loss of funding from the BBC... see the entry under that folder for how the BBC screwed them.

* For some reason, E! decided to convert its main news show, ''E! News'' from a traditional Los Angeles-based evening entertainment newscast to a morning show at the start of 2020, where E! had absolutely no presence over the years outside of sitcom reruns and infomercials. It moved to New York with completely new hosts (and a cramped studio whose previous purpose was a place to put MSNBC talking heads behind a New York background), 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 low-viewed 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 live 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 news operation does continue online, but it has no public face or show on E! to drive viewership.

* In December 2015, ''Series/TheSoup'' ended its run after being on the air for 11 years. It didn't end because of dwindling ratings, mind you. According to host Creator/JoelMcHale, after Chelsea Handler left E! for Creator/{{Netflix}} and the death of Creator/JoanRivers, E! no longer had a very strong comedy brand. To make matters even worse, E! stopped airing [[{{Rerun}} repeats]] of episodes in order to avoid paying writers[[note]]Which is all but guaranteed and mandated by the [[UsefulNotes/UnionsInHollywood Writers Guild]].[[/note]]. To add insult to injury, E! [[ExecutiveMeddling asked]] the writers of ''The Soup'' to stop making fun of the [[Series/KeepingUpWithTheKardashians Kardashians]], who had become E!'s [[AdoredByTheNetwork golden goose]].

* While ''Series/AmazingStories'' (or ''[[InCaseYouForgotWhoWroteIt Steven Spielberg's Amazing Stories]]'', as the BBC insisted on billing it) was no classic, it still deserved better scheduling than it got from Creator/TheBBC, with episodes being flung onto the lineup at whim (and even going from [=BBC1=] to [=BBC2=] ''and back'') and turning up anywhere from early in the morning ("Family Dog") to mid-afternoon ("The Mission") to early in the evening ("You Gotta Believe Me") to late at night ("Mirror, Mirror"). If anyone managed to catch the entire run when it was screened terrestrially in Britain ([[Creator/{{Syfy}} Sci Fi]], to their credit, gave it a coherent run), you're a better man than I am, Gunga Din.

* In 1985, [[Creator/TheBBC BBC]] controller Michael Grade (you know, the one Creator/ChrisMorris called a [[CountryMatters c**t]] in ''Series/BrassEye'') cancelled the original series of ''Series/DoctorWho'' (a show he reportedly loathed) until public pressure resulted in the cancellation being modified into an 18-month hiatus. To his credit, he allowed the series to continue afterwards but then decided to fire then-star Creator/ColinBaker. Grade later claimed that he did the former out of spite and the latter out of dislike for the actor's style. Since the Queen is a noted Doctor Who fan and Grade is the only ex-BBC Controller ''not'' to receive a knighthood, it is widely suspected by the fanbase that a) these two facts are connected, b) it's LaserGuidedKarma.
** Further, when he returned the show in 1986 he scheduled it against popular SoapOpera ''Series/CoronationStreet'', which was a major factor in the show's 1989 death.
** ''Coronation Street'' wasn't the only timeslot killer. Part of the Sixth Doctor era aired at the same time as ''Series/TheATeam'', and Season 18 just happened to premiere at the same time as ITV's syndication of ''Buck Rogers in the 25th Century'', putting ''Doctor Who'' at its ratings nadir.

** The new series wasn't immune to this, either. The series debuted on the US [[Creator/{{Syfy}} Sci-Fi Channel]] in 2006 (a year after the UK, and after Sci-Fi initially rejected the series for being "too British") and was screwed from the start. Varying minutes of material were cut from episodes for time ("[[Recap/DoctorWhoS30E13JourneysEnd Journey's End]]", originally 65 minutes, was cut down to 45), the trailers for the show the channel ran often revealed hefty spoilers, and finally they got rid of the show completely in 2009. BBC America picked it up and have been treating it much, ''much'' better than Sci-Fi Channel did. The Canadian network CBC also mishandled the series after a promising first season in which they even had the stars record unique intros to each episode, but eventually the CBC lost interest in ''Doctor Who'', which was later picked up by the cable network [[Creator/SpaceChannel Space]] and handled much better.

* 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 had left off: it went back to Episode One and started all over again. None of these things killed [=ST-V=] in Britain, but they did not help either.

** ''Python'' also suffered, due to its original scheduling time, from the BBC's "regional opt-out", a device allowing BBC regions, at certain times of day, to over-ride nationally scheduled programmes with material of great regional interest, such as ''Cumbrian Dry-Stone Walling Techniques'' or'' Pig Slurry: The East Anglian Farmer's Friend''. Some British regions therefore never even got to see the show on its first run.
*** This issue resurfaced on the 30th Anniversary Week in 1999, where at least on paper, episodes of Python were being repeated nightly for seven days. Viewers in the North-West tuning in at 10:00, expecting to see a classic ''Python'' episode as per national schedule were less than thrilled to find BBC North-West was running thrilling highlights of the Rugby League fixtures. Despite BBC North-West promising to screen the scheduled Python at a later date, said date never arrived.

[[folder:PBS]]
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. Also check out the PBS folder in [[ScrewedByTheNetwork/WesternAnimation Western Animation]] to learn about how PBS cartoons were screwed over.
* ''The Adventures of Dudley The Dragon'' didn't become as popular as it was in its native country of Canada. Most PBS stations aired the show in the 6:30AM to 8:30AM timeframe, which was when the target audience was either asleep or getting ready to go to or leaving for school.
* ''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/ThomasAndFriends'', 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).
** 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.
* While most affiliates treated ''Series/TheNoddyShop'' fairly, some affiliates didn't treat the show the same way. One example was KQED in California, which not only shoved the show in a Saturday morning time slot at 6:30AM but skipped some episodes of the series after they aired at least once, notably the first episode. The channel stopped airing the show in March of 2001.
** Quite a few stations that aired ''The Noddy Shop'' dropped the show after the first 40 episodes, including KPT and KUAT.
** NJN, despite having a mini-site based on the show, only aired the first 40 episodes and "Anything Can Happen At Christmas".
** WNED had it worse-not only did the show premiere late (February 6th, 1999, compared to other stations premiering it in the fall of 1998), but after "The Big Mess" aired, the show was shoved into a 5:30AM timeslot.
* Sort of averted with ''Series/SesameStreet'' as of August 2015. Sesame Workshop announced a partnership with HBO; older and newer episodes were aired on the network, while newer episodes premiered on PBS months after their HBO airings. As ''Sesame Street'' isn't a time-sensitive program that has to be watched right away, this was a somewhat flawed but acceptable solution to keep the show airing.
** In 2020, the show moved to Creator/HBOMax. Five additional seasons were commissioned ahead of time, but the end may be near for the show given that (depending on your point of view) it has been stuck in SeasonalRot for the past eighteen or so years now and has been watched by less and less people since it was bumped down to a half hour.
** The show's run on {{Creator/Sprout}} began at Season 30 and stopped at Season 42, not every season was complete, and Seasons 36 and 38 were skipped.
* ''Series/{{ZOOM}}'' is a weird example. The show continued airing until early 2007, but older seasons had been progressively removed from the network for several years. Season 1 hadn't aired since early ''2003'', and even then it was only to air 12 of the season's original 41 episodes (the remaining 29 were last seen during the first half of 2002).
* ''WesternAnimation/LibertysKids'' and ''Series/ItsABigBigWorld'' both got dropped by most PBS affiliates a year after their debut. In the case of the latter, its' place in the Mrs. Laurie and Hooper block was usually pre-empted by affiliates for repeats of other shows like ''WesternAnimation/{{Caillou}}'' and ''WesternAnimation/DragonTales''.
* KUAT had a bad case of this. Several kids' shows took a few years to appear on their block. For example, ''Caillou'' didn't air on this affiliate until 2003, while it took until late 2001 for them to get ''Series/BetweenTheLions'' and ''WesternAnimation/CliffordTheBigRedDog''. They also dropped ''The Noddy Shop'' after a year without airing season 2.
* ''Series/MisterRogersNeighborhood'', despite being one of the most well-known and celebrated shows in all of PBS's history, has completely dumped all of its reruns into a once-a-week time slot that member stations can choose to air (starting in 2008), but no option to air it five days a week, despite the show running on a format that was ''specifically designed'' to be watched over the course of a week. In addition, the rerun schedule only consists of 52 episodes for each week of the year, which is only a small fraction of the 300 episodes from the show's second run that they could pull from (if you don't count the "Conflict" week that hasn't been seen since the mid-90s). Some member stations used to run daily reruns on their own schedule, but this has become rarer and rarer, with one of the only surviving member stations still doing this being WETA in Washington, DC. They haven't even put any daily reruns on the national PBS Kids channel either, even though the schedule is filled to the brim with duplicate airings of the same shows. Can also be considered a subversion due to the show at least getting the Twitch 24-hour marathon treatment, but the show has largely been ignored in the realm of reruns since 2008.
* [[WordOfGod According]] to Creator/LevarBurton, ''Series/ReadingRainbow'' was forced to cease production 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 fostering a love for reading. As an end result, NCLB ate into the funding for ''Reading Rainbow''. Prior to this, No Child Left Behind also funded ''WesternAnimation/DragonTales''.
* The Canadian comedy series ''Series/TheRedGreenShow'' was once a PBS classic in the States and its re-runs aired a lot of PBS stations up until Spring 2016 when they seemingly lost the rights to the show. Not even Iowa Public Television (who really loved the show) was safe from the whole "losing the rights" thing. In September 2018, Heartland began reairing the series.
* ''Series/TotsTV'' got this treatment from most PBS affiliates. Most of them only aired the show once a week on Sunday, instead using the weekday slot that was planned for the show to bring in the then-new ''WesternAnimation/{{Arthur}}'', which premiered the same year.
* ''Series/WimziesHouse'' was primed up to be the next big hit for the channel after ''Series/ShiningTimeStation'' ended its' run. However, the show got overshadowed by a number of new shows, including ''Series/{{Teletubbies}}'', ''Series/TheNoddyShop'', ''Series/{{Zoboomafoo}}'' and ''WesternAnimation/DragonTales'', causing most affiliates to either dump it after a year or only play it in an early morning timeslot. The show was last seen on August 31, 2001, and completely vanished off PBS' schedule a month later.
* ''Series/TheElectricCompany2009'' was cancelled after 3 seasons ''while the 4th was in planning'', presumably due to low ratings.
* [[WordOfGod According to Toni DiBuono (Pat Tuesday) and Joe Howard (George Frankly)]], Children's Television Workshop abruptly canceled ''Series/SquareOneTV'' despite high viewership because they wanted to free up funds for ''Series/{{Ghostwriter}}''.
* ''Series/LomaxTheHoundOfMusic'' was screwed directly from the get-go; it received little to no promotion, was only funded by the Bingham Trust and the National Endownment for the Arts, and was then burned off in just two months with zero reruns. After 13 episodes, it was cancelled and PBS lost the rights to the show. As such, hardly anyone is aware of the show's existence.
* ''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.
[[/folder]]

* [[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 fostering a love for reading. As an end result, NCLB ate into the funding for ''Reading Rainbow''.

* ''Lomax, the Hound of Music'' was screwed directly from the get-go; it received little to no promotion, was only funded by the Bingham Trust and the National Endownment for the Arts, and was then burned off in just two months with zero reruns. After 13 episodes, it was cancelled and PBS lost the rights to the show. As such, hardly anyone is aware of the show's existence.

* The CW rented out the Sunday-night slots for the 2008-09 season to Media Rights Capital. The shows — ''4Real'', ''In Harm's Way'', ''Easy Money'', and ''Valentine'' - didn't get any advertising whatsoever. They scored such terrible ratings that The CW repossessed the timeslot and put in reruns of ''Series/TheDrewCareyShow'' and ''Series/{{Jericho}}'', plus movies. The ratings immediately jumped back to pre rent-a-block levels (although still test-pattern low), and after the season The CW gave up completely on Sundays for nearly ten years and gave the time back to their stations. It will return to Sundays in the fall of 2018, but with only two hours which should be easier to program.

* When ''Series/{{Jericho}}'' got canceled the first time, CBS decided not to announce its impending doom until '''after''' the cliffhanger season finale aired (it made the nuts all the more necessary).

[[/folder]]

** When NTV aired ''Series/{{ER}}'', it aired at ''midnight'' Newfoundland time, leaving fans with faulty VCRs and/or no cable annoyed. This has happened with many other popular shows, including ''Series/NYPDBlue'' and ''Series/HowIMetYourMother.''

** Ironically, one show that Ostroff ''tried'' to screw repeatedly and never succeeded in was ''Series/{{Smallville}}''. Repeatedly firing and replacing writers, sometimes ''in between seasons'', moving the show from its very popular timeslot on Thursday to [[FridayNightDeathSlot Friday]] for no reason, and cutting the budget of one season in half and giving it to ''Series/TheVampireDiaries'', it was obvious he just wanted this show to die. But despite all the changes, ''Smallville'' managed to hang onto good ratings and the series ended on its own terms and not on him.

* Global dropped ''Series/MightyMorphinPowerRangers'' after only FOUR episodes because of only two complaints from [[MoralGuardians parents who believed the show was too violent for children]]. Kids' cable channel YTV also aired the show, and they dropped the show after the same number of episodes, leading to a joke from one of the channel's hosts where he made fun of a complaint on the air. Unless viewers had cable so they could watch it on FOX, there was no other solution because the franchise was stuck in limbo for many years. When it aired on Family Channel as part of the Jetix block, it was given InvisibleAdvertising and a very poor timeslot, and later installments did air on Teletoon, but two generations of fans had come and gone by that time.