Fox forgot to cancel my show... Very awkward. They looked and said, "Oh, this is our bad. We forgot to cancel your show. You're going to have to make more."
The infamous
Friday Night Death Slot is the result of years of poor (some would say deliberately poor) marketing and overly high expectations followed by observations thereof by audiences... that, and the fact that a lot of people like to get out and do stuff on Friday nights, especially since most movies open on a Friday now.
Basically, the idea is this: people - most especially certain demographics, such as 18-34s - don't watch as much TV on Fridays, mostly because they like to go out to bars, see movies, etc., and just basically blow off a little steam after work/class. Scheduling a show on a Friday - especially early in the evening, such as 8 PM Eastern - is practically the kiss of death.
Especially if the show is neither family friendly (folks with kids ostensibly stay home on the weekend more often), nor a show that already has much of an audience. And really,
really especially if it's on Fox. Or produced by
Tim Minear. Or on Fox.
Fridays are thus often reserved for mid-level half-hour sitcoms (see:
The WB's lineup of Fridays past as well as ABC's old TGIF lineup in the 90s), reruns (see: NBC at one point), movie airings (Fox, UPN etc.), the afore-mentioned "family-friendly" fare, and, it seems, shows that the network has absolutely no faith in, or love for (see:
Screwed By The Network). Also, compounding this is the fact that Fridays are more likely to have regular shows preempted for say, baseball, on the lower networks.
Generally when a show
survives in a Friday slot, it's greeted with surprise; when a show is
moved to one, the move is greeted with nervousness on the part of fans, who are smart enough to have noticed the number of shows that met a quick and quiet end after being aired that same night. When a show
starts in a Friday slot, and it's not a "sneak preview" or "special time" for it, it's almost automatically assumed to be doomed. Even
Adult Swim avoided airing shows on Friday for its first few years, and only starts its airings at 10 PM, at the tail end of
Prime Time.
Some networks and shows, however, manage to find a surprising amount of success on Fridays, ranging from the ongoing success of
CBS'
Ghost Whisperer, to
NBC's successful move of
Las Vegas from Monday nights. GW is somewhat family-friendly and
Vegas had a large, dependable fanbase, a mostly comedic style, and a lot of celebrity guest appearances along with the preexisting tendency to re-air it on Fridays anyway, so these aren't all
that surprising, but fans of the shows certainly breathed a sigh of relief when they survived to be renewed. In addition,
CBS in its history had numerous series that got great ratings for Friday, the lineup of
The Incredible Hulk,
The Dukes Of Hazzard and
Dallas in the late 1970s and early 1980s are the major example. (Meanwhile, Saturday nights, typically another iffy time for TV programming, were practically CBS's bread and butter in the '70s, thanks to a lineup that included shows like
All In The Family,
M*A*S*H,
The Mary Tyler Moore Show,
The Bob Newhart Show, and
The Carol Burnett Show.)
ABC's
TGIF block in
The Nineties was perhaps the most spectacular subversion of this, as it not only turned the entirety of Friday night into a moneymaker for the network, but also one of its few success stories in what was otherwise a bad decade for the network.
More common and less surprising is the fact that Friday lineups do much better on cable. Such as
Adult Swim's Friday lineup,
USA Network's airing of
Monk and
Psych on Fridays, or more impressively,
Sci Fi Channel's
Sci Fi Friday lineup, which they claim is one of their "biggest" nights as far as ratings go; both the
Stargate SG-1 and
Stargate Atlantis TV series met with great success in this lineup, as did the imported new
Doctor Who series, the 2000's version of
Battlestar Galactica, and even the surprisingly successful re-airing of
Firefly in 2005, which managed to be their second-highest rated series during
November Sweeps of that year, despite its easy availability on DVD. (That is, it
was their biggest night, before they separated
SG-1 and
Galactica, canceled the former, moved the latter to Sundays, and generally built up more animosity towards the channel than existed towards them when they canceled
Farscape. And then back again, since
Eureka is their most-watched show.)
However, these are frequently treated as exceptions to the rule. The list below shows why.
- Though a number of factors combined to kill it in just 14 episodes (only 11 of which were ever actually aired, in the wrong order), part of the reason Firefly got canceled by Fox was because it was in the 8 PM (Eastern) Friday slot, failing to attract the more adult audience at which it was aimed and being constantly preempted by sports broadcasts to boot. Its success in the 7 PM Friday slot on cable years later is usually considered ironic. Creator Joss Whedon now reportedly refuses to work with the network ever again precisely because of how badly they burned him with Firefly. Of course, producer Tim Minear didn't even allegedly vow such a thing, but in light of other shows of his that have aired on the network including the next listing, probably should have.
- Unfortunately, Joss Whedon still had a contract with Fox for one more show for them, and so he, alongside Eliza Dushku, went back to Fox for Dollhouse, which aired 2009-2010 on Fridays. Despite poor ratings, the online views convinced Fox to renew this for a second season in the death slot, although it was canceled fairly early in its second run.
- Wonderfalls. Three of its first (and only) four weeks on Fox, it was slotted in the 8PM Friday slot. It wasn't as family-friendly as its competitor, Joan Of Arcadia, was and died fast. Though it did well on cable as well, when GLBT-friendly Logo aired it.
- Joan Of Arcadia, despite surviving longer than Wonderfalls, also got the boot not long after, failing to be renewed for a third season even though it was relatively popular and critically-acclaimed. Aired at 8 PM Fridays on CBS.
- Lest we think that Fox and CBS do most of the canceling here, let us not forget NBC's Raines, a surprisingly good, somewhat subversive, more than a little weird series about a homicide detective who may or may not be seeing the ghosts of his latest assignments... which didn't last more than a couple of months on the network in the Friday night slot. Despite being put next to Las Vegas in the lineup. Of course, it was also a midseason replacement, which never really bodes well for a series' longevity.
- Also canceled by NBC from an 8 PM Friday slot, despite initially high ratings due to (undue) controversy about it: The Book Of Daniel, a series about an Episcopalian priest whose family is having troubles and who apparently has hallucinations (we think) of speaking to a laid-back Jesus. Oh, and an addiction to painkillers. Yeah, that went over real well with the church-going audience. Some of the network's local affiliates (most notably WSMV in Nashville, Tennessee) refused to even air the series and only about four of its eight episodes were aired on TV at all, and three others were dumped onto NBC.com to languish in obscurity before everyone forgot it even existed.
- Well, that series was doomed from the start, thanks to the aforementioned controversy. Apparently, you can only cover religion on television if you do a 7th Heaven-style drama.
- In a foreign subversion, Venezuelan channel RCTV managed to got some programs who survived this dreaded slot. The last of those was a war-of-the-sexes Game Show titled "Aprieta y Gana", who lasted four years and would lasted five if it weren't canceled depite being still popular.
- Another one by Fox. Dark Angel aired Fridays, although the first season was actually fairly healthy, ratings-wise.
- Despite critical raves and an audience whose demographics would have today guaranteed its survival, ABC threw Max Headroom into the Death Slot in an effort to get rid of it by any means necessary. The whole situation surrounding the show is still regarded as a scandal by SF fans today.
- Star Trek Enterprise caught a double whammy: moved to the Death Slot during its and its network's final season. It was very well-known among a subset of Trek fans that the only reason it had gained a fourth season in the first place was to get enough episodes for syndication. Then, the show started to drastically improve in quality, bringing some fans some hope that there might be a Season 5. Those hopes were dashed when the Death Slot took away any improved ratings it might have garnered from the improved quality.
- The Original Series also suffered the Death Slot in its final season on NBC.
- Inverted in the case of Life, which has actually been moved from Friday nights to a Wednesday lead-in for Law And Order.
- Averted in the case of the Australian version of The Late Show (think Saturday Night Live WITH NO BUDGET) - it was put on at 9.00 on a Saturday, where most of its intended audience would have gone out. However, it became very popular with parents who had to stay home to look after their children, and so lasted three years.
- Averted with Friday Night Lights, which from the beginning had fans saying that given the title, airing on Fridays seemed completely natural for it rather than its original Wednesday slot. Starting in the second season it did run on Fridays, which was met with widespread approval (plus a wonderful Narm-y tagline: "''Friday Night Lights'', finally on Fridays! This Friday on NBC.") Despite low ratings for its entire run, the show is currently guaranteed for five seasons.
- Still could be a strange choice for time slot; a series about High School football is being aired in a timeslot when those most interested in the subject matter can't watch it because they're at their own team's game. Just timing the release of new episodes so they don't fall during HS football season solves this problem, though. Unless you're watching on Direc TV and get the episodes early...
- Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles: 2007-8 season: on Monday nights. 2008-9 season: moved to Friday nights. 2009-10 season: Terminated.
- In the US, the game show Duel was originally a series of specials that ran on weekdays during prime time (similar to the initial run of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?) with a finale on a Sunday night. Its second season ran on Friday nights at 8:00 PM. The ratings numbers halved, and ABC canceled it.
- WWE Friday Night Smackdown is a very successful subversion to this trope, to such a point where episodes have begun relatively recently bragging about how viewed their show is.
- Actually, it's RAW, their Monday night show, that gets the ratings they brag about - Smackdown is lucky to pull in a 1.8 these days. Which is why it's recorded on the same day as - and often shares a "cast" with - the live-aired ECW, which has a much more friendly Tuesday night timeslot.
- Mike Judge's political correctness satire The Goode Family recently recived this dubious honor.
- Ugly Betty is going here in its next season, fueling speculation that ABC wants to kill it. The concern is arguably justified considering prior to this ABC took it off the air for weeks so they could air back-to-back episodes of Samantha Who and In The Motherhood.
- In the late 90s, a very well-acted, well-produced modern update of The Six Million Dollar Man debuted on CBS. The show was titled Now And Again, and featured an intricate and tightly-woven running premise, stellar acting by Eric Close and Dennis Haysbert, Kim Chan as one of the most surreal sociopaths in TV history, and frequent cameos by the likes of John Goodman and Mick Foley. It was an intelligent, thought-provoking show, which downplayed the premise's gimmick in favor of more real, dramatic interactions between the major characters. ...but its timeslot was 10pm on Friday, and it faded away with little fanfare after one season (at least a third of which never actually aired on CBS, and would only surface years later in syndication on Sci Fi.) This troper still fondly remembers the opening theme, Dr. Morris' deep-voiced intonations, and the sheer creepiness of the Eggman.
- Moonlight is an especially weird case, as it was getting a good 8 million viewers on its Friday slot when CBS cancelled it. That and the fact that vampires are the new black makes this a very questionable choice in retrospect.
