X Killer Cleanup

Found this example on FranchiseKiller.Film:

• Regarding The Muppets, many point to Jim Henson's untimely death in 1990 as the point where the Muppets began losing ground. While the franchise overall has strayed away from being completely dormant, it has had a bumpy road in terms of films and television shows over the years following Henson's demise:
  • Muppets from Space from 1999 received mixed reviews and flopped at the box office, and consequently caused The Muppets film series to be put on ice for twelve years. To make matters worse, its failure is also believed to be the reason why The Jim Henson Company was sold to the German media company EM.TV, only for it to be bought back by the Henson family three years later. Disney secured the rights to the Muppets shortly afterwards (which is also why Jim Henson Productions' film division has not produced a Muppet film since, or any other film for that matter). Before and after the transfer, the Muppets were only able to muster three direct to TV/video films, none of which were received very well.
  • Disney successfully revived the Muppets' film series in The New '10s with The Muppets, which was very well-received and considered by many to be a true return to form. However, its unsuccessful follow-up Muppets Most Wanted brought the series to a halt yet again. The underperforming box office results and Contested Sequel reception (plus bad timing, as it was a film about Kermit getting imprisoned in a Russian gulag that was released during the 2014 Ukraine crisis) prompted Disney to scrap any plans for future installments and focused on a reboot of The Muppet Show for ABC titled The Muppets. Even that failed to save the Muppets as it was axed after one season, with the blame being put on the show's Broken Base over its more mockumentary-style setting, and it was Steve Whitmire's final starring role as a Muppet performer. Still, Muppet Babies (2018), the two successful live shows at the Hollywood Bowl and the O2, as well as the announcement of Muppets Now for Disney+ all ensure that the series has kept on going.

Is this a valid example?

Edited by gjjones on Feb 13th 2021 at 1:39:38 PM

He/His/Him. No matter who you are, always Be Yourself.

"Strayed away from being completely dormant" = not dead. Cut.

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Reposting from the previous page:

Bringing up the following example from The Ring:

• Genre-Killer: This film, together with 28 Days Later that same year, effectively read the obituary for the teen horror genre of the mid-late '90s, and arguably for the slasher genre as a whole. While it was rated PG-13, it removed its Decoy Protagonist teenage characters from the picture after the opening scene and featured adult protagonists from there on out, while also eschewing the body-count slasher formula. Both it and 28 Days Later were sleeper hits that were widely acclaimed by critics and horror fans, and teen horror and slashers, which were already on life support by that time, mostly faded out in the '00s.

I don't know enough about horror to say, but unless "teen horror" is a distinct sub-genre (which it might be, IDK) it might be cuttable. Also Examples Are Not Arguable.

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This was added to Trivia.Mickeys Twice Upon A Christmas:

• Franchise Killer: The film was so poorly reviewed, that there have been no more Mickey Mouse films (outside of Television) since then.

Is this a valid example?

Edited by gjjones on Feb 21st 2021 at 6:47:01 AM

He/His/Him. No matter who you are, always Be Yourself.

I don't know. There haven't been any Mickey Mouse films since then, but there has been a successful series of Mickey Mouse shorts, so the mouse himself isn't dead. Even if we're just talking about films, I doubt Twice Upon a Christmas killed them, as Mickey is a big franchise and I've barely heard of this film, and I think I (or others) would have heard more about it if the film killed off any movies starring the beloved mascot of Disney. I think you can cut, this entry seems off.

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From the main page for Genre-Killer:

• To a similar degree, dedicated guides to cheat codes and other easter eggs in video games have died out because most developers have simply stopped taking the time to put cheat codes or easter eggs into their games - most cheat codes are in the realm of the rare PC release that allows players to use the developer's console (hidden behind two or three different activation flags and, for obvious reasons, not available in the online mode that is where 80% of their playtime comes from) or console ones on singleplayer-only releases from a long-running developer that was particularly associated with them back in the mid/late '90s, and easter eggs too, save for a small handful of devs that were famous for them, tend to be one-offs existing solely to add an achievement that can't be acquired just from playing the game normally. Websites dedicated for the purpose still exist, but for all intents and purposes they're more as dedicated retro pieces than a serious source of info to help players with modern games - most pages for a seventh- or eight-generation game are simply a copy-and-paste of the game's own list of achievements and, for Call of Duty clones, what ranks the guns in multiplayer are unlocked at, maybe with hints on what exactly you need to do to unlock the achievements if you're lucky.

No clear killer, possibly too general. Should I cut?

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Think so.

Also, I'm thinking about doing a cleanup of the Anime and Manga section of the Franchise Killer page. This is going to be a long one, but here goes nothing...

Gundam

• The Gundam franchise had been on shaky grounds for several years, in part due to low ratings, but also the conflicted leadership of Sunrise, the studio behind the series. Victory Gundam, the last televised installment to take place in the Universal Century continuity, was under massive pressure from main sponsor Bandai, resulting in a reshuffling of early episodes to showcase the titular mecha of the show earlier, and the addition of several toyetic mechs later in the show's run. Yet the show did not prove to have satisfactory sales, and combined with Sunrise being bought out by Bandai, was replaced with the extremely different Alternate Universe G Gundam, which featured many, many Gundams, and has an extensive toyline. The ratings for the series did not improve, but the toy sales went up, setting a precedent for future TV shows to always be set in alternate universes. The Universal Century still lives on though, quite successfully at that, with OVAs like The 08th MS Team and Gundam Unicorn setting sales records.
• Gundam X's ratings almost killed the franchise, presumably due to there having been Gundam on screen every week for 4 years at that point. The series disappeared off TV for 3 years until the similarly unsuccessful ∀ Gundam (although the series continued on Video and Film with The 08th MS Team and Endless Waltz). It was not until the massively successful Gundam SEED that the series was revitalized. Gundam X is one of only two Gundam TV series to be cut short of a full two-season run. The first? The original Mobile Suit Gundam; it's easy to forget given what a massive franchise it has become when the original installment had poor ratings.
• In America, it was Gundam SEED that killed the franchise. In this case, one can blame the heavy edits Toonami made. Desperate to air the show in a daytime slot, Cartoon Network's cuts turned the show into a complete mess, most notably by forcing the series to Never Say "Die", drastically changing battle scenes, and featuring the use of the notorious "Disco Guns." In spite of the show's serious nature, the bizarre and drastic edits caused the fanbase to not take the show seriously and it showed in the ratings. By episode 26, the series could only be seen at Friday at midnight. After its shaky run, Gundam would go back to being only seen on DVD until Sci Fi Channel revived the franchise by airing Mobile Suit Gundam 00, and Toonami didn't air any new Gundam series until 2016, when they got Mobile Suit Gundam: Iron-Blooded Orphans.^note While the network did air an episode of Mobile Suit Gundam Wing as part of its April Fools broadcast in 2012, SEED was the last full TV series the network aired until IBO.
  • Gundam SEED Destiny managed to kill Sunrise's official English-language Gundam message board (the centerpiece of the English language website), despite not even airing outside of Japan until years later (and even then it only aired in Canada). Numerous American fans were watching fansubs of the SEED Destiny episodes within days of their air dates (or even sooner in the case of American fans who speak Japanese, which in the Gundam fandom turns out to be a surprisingly large number) and thus it was the biggest topic of discussion the message board (without, of course, the fansub aspect being mentioned; it was the official message board after all). The extremely divided fan opinion about SEED Destiny is well known, but the disagreements were kept mostly civil. And then the final episode aired, and the opinions voiced on the message board were almost universally (and often quite vehemently) negative, even among those who'd generally approved of the way the story had gone in the second half. Shortly afterward (and without advance notice), Sunrise pulled the plug on the message board entirely, leaving GundamOfficial.com little more than an empty shell that to this day no longer gets updated (when Gundam 00 aired on Sci Fi, it was given its own separate English-language website).^note Particularly tragic in that Mark Simmons' excellent fansite "Gundam Project" was shut down after he was hired by Sunrise to run GundamOfficial.com. In fact, given that the SEED Destiny finale aired in Japan less than six months after the SEED finale aired in North America (many Gundam fans, especially those newly-introduced to the franchise, went straight from watching SEED in English to watching fansubs of SEED Destiny), this incident may have even played a role in Gundam's long disappearance from American TV broadcasts, with Sunrise drawing the ridiculously false conclusion that negative reaction to the SEED Destiny finale meant that Americans just didn't like Gundam.
  • Seed's success once even started talks that the Cosmic Era timeline could become the new Universal Century in terms of production of sequels and side-stories. However, production troubles involving Destiny and the subsequent release and success of non-CE series Gundam 00 have since dashed those hopes. A movie meant to tie up the Cosmic Era timeline has been stuck in Development Hell for years (due to the declining health and in 2016, eventual death of head writer Chiaki Morosawa, the wife of SEED and SEED Destiny director Mitsuo Fukuda), and its fate is uncertain.
• There was Toonami's broadcast of the original Mobile Suit Gundam, a series that was made in 1979 and had yet to receive any sort of modernization. It didn't help that Mobile Suit Gundam was following on from Mobile Suit Gundam Wing, a series that (at the time) was one of the most modern Gundam series (made in the 90s and all). The result? Mobile Suit Gundam never finished its initial run, with Cartoon Network using 9/11 as an excuse to pull the show a good chunk of episodes from the end. That being said however, it was briefly revisited during a New Year's Eve special, in which series belonging to favorite Toonami block villains (as voted upon by fans) were broadcast on the Midnight Run. Surprisingly, Char Aznable was voted near the top slot (beating out The Joker as he appeared in Batman: The Animated Series, no less), and as a result Toonami ran the final episode of the series in his honor.

Zoids

• Zoids: Fuzors is often accused of being one of these by the Zoids fanbase in North America, but it was in fact the fan-favourite Zoids: Chaotic Century that killed the franchise, having gotten such low ratings during its run on Cartoon Network that it was cancelled, with the final four episodes only being shown after complaints from the fanbase. Fuzors was more of a last-ditch effort to salvage what was already a doomed franchise.
• In Japan, Zoids: Genesis got a so-so reception, but The Merch failed to sell, effectively dooming the chances of another Zoids anime being made any time soon, and causing Tomy to change its marketing strategy by pandering exclusively to Otaku rather than general audiences as they did before. The announcement of a new series titled Zoids Wild 12 years later surprised many to say the least.

Pokémon

• In Japan, between Volcanion and the Mechanical Marvel (and the XY movies as a whole) performing poorly at the box office, and the next one, I Choose You! setting itself in an Alternate Universe (one which continues into its own sequel), it seems that Volcanion may be the last Pokémon movie set in continuity with the main anime for the foreseeable future.

Edited by gjjones on Feb 24th 2021 at 12:40:57 PM

He/His/Him. No matter who you are, always Be Yourself.

Bringing up the following example from Galavant:

• Career Killer: Galavant was commissioned at a time when ABC was taking risks with programming selections that resulted in a number of shows with low audience numbers being protected and renewed in the hopes that they would eventually start attracting viewers. This didn't happen and the resulting loss of revenue resulted in a number of ABC executives being fired in a power struggle.

The example doesn't specifically say that Galavant was a "Creator Killer" (which is additionally mislabeled as "Career Killer".) I think it can be cut.

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Bringing up the following example from Quest for Fire:

• Genre-Killer: Of the "One Million BC" genre until Alpha (2018). The movie set the bar so high that nobody dared try to compete with it for decades.

"One Million BC" is not a genre. You can cut.

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Bringing up the following examples from Trivia.Yu Gi Oh The Movie Pyramid Of Light:

• Creator Killer: This is the final theatrically released movie with the 4Kids banner on it; they never put another movie in a cinema after the movie failed in America.
• Genre-Killer: Yu-Gi-Oh!: The Movie was released only months after Disney's Home on the Range, and helped ensure that, apart from Studio Ghibli films and the Curious George (2006) movies, there wouldn't be another 2D-animated film until The Princess and the Frog in 2009. It received a theatrical re-release in 2018 alongside a preview for Yu-Gi-Oh! VRAINS.

4Kids still existed after the former, so that can be cut. And I highly doubt this movie played any role in killing off hand-drawn animation for the latter, if any movie killed off that art form it was Treasure Planet. Oh, and "2D animation" isn't a genre anyway. Cut both.

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I've got several examples from FranchiseKiller.Live Action TV that need to be looked at, so in my opinion...

---

• CSI: Cyber did not necessarily kill the CSI franchise, but it was the final nail in the coffin. The franchise's popularity had waned in recent years, with the original show and spin-offs being shuttered in the four years leading up to Cyber's premiere. Cyber launched concurrent with the flagship's final seasons and struggled from the beginning with mixed reviews and low ratings. As many fans noted it's not the same as the original CSI and there are a lot of mistakes which would made an IT expert (or in some cases, anyone who uses a computer) roll their eyes. Changes in the second season failed to bring in viewers and Cyber closed out the sixteen-year-long franchise with a reduced season.

That may have taken five years now, but I don't think CSI: Cyber wasn't that bad to begin with.

• Major League Baseball's Saturday afternoon Game of the Week went on a two year hiatus (1994-95) after CBS, who took over from long runner, NBC in 1990 lost half a billion dollars off of their contract. During the CBS period (1990-93), they didn't air a Saturday afternoon game for all 26 weeks of the regular season (instead covering about 18 on an inconsistent or sporadic basis). On the weeks that they didn't cover a baseball game, they would air other sports programming like golf. Even when FOX received an MLB package beginning in 1996 (following the failure of a joint venture between Major League Baseball, ABC and NBC called The Baseball Network), they didn't start their baseball coverage until Memorial Day weekend. It wasn't until 2007 (18 years after NBC aired their final GOTW), that the Game of the Week was once again broadcast for each week of the regular season.

TV sports examples shouldn't count for this, right?

• The weak reviews and bad ratings of Law & Order: Los Angeles (despite NBC's Wolverine Publicity of the show) served to kill off that franchise in the US. However, the UK remake of the show fared better, lasting for seven seasons. Law & Order: Special Victims Unit continues to carry the torch in the US, but its continued existence seems to be almost entirely a function of ratings impotence from the rest of the network.

Not an example since the Law & Order franchise is still ongoing, so I'd rather cut it.

• Let's Make a Deal (original run: 1963-77, plus revivals in 1980-81 and 1984-86), frequently averted this effect:
  • 1990-91: The year was flooded with mediocre game shows, many of which were one-season revivals. With original Deal host Monty Hall in semi-retirement (although he stayed on as executive producer), the 1990 Deal revival was hosted by Bob Hilton, who was far more experienced as an announcer than a host, and considered a poor fit. Due to falling ratings, Hall stepped out of retirement and hosted the rest of the season with intentions to scout out a new host for Season 2, but the show was canceled instead.
  • 1996: An "edgier" remake called Big Deal (hosted by Mark DeCarlo) lasted a whopping six episodes on FOX in 1996 (although it was slated to be Un-Cancelled in March 1997), and it went down quickly due to phony attempts at being "hip" and "modern" (and constantly being preempted for NFL doubleheaders).
  • 1998: A pilot hosted by Gordon Elliott was proposed by Buena Vista TV (Disney) but also fell through.
  • 2003: Hosted by Billy Bush for NBC, and canned after three episodes for many of the same reasons as Big Deal.
  • 2009-present: With Wayne Brady as host, Let's Make a Deal has finally started thriving again on CBS daytime. Between 1993 and this version's debut, daytime television had no game shows at all other than The Price Is Right (also a CBS property).

Too complicated, and again, it's still going to this day.

• The downfall of NBC's Thursday night "Must See TV" block, can be attributed to the combination of oversaturation of sitcoms all across NBC's line-up (to put things into proper perspective, during the 1997-98 season, NBC had about 18 sitcom slots on Mondays-Thursdays and Sunday), which for the most part seemed nearly identical to one another (i.e. multi-camera shows about young, affluent white people living in New York City), the mismanagement of Jeff Zucker (which on its own, can be considered a Dork Age of NBC), who because of his "super-sizing" concept for Friends, made it much harder to nurture another show right after it, the lack of strong shows to replace staples like Seinfeld, Frasier and Friends (which in the meantime, were usually sandwiched in-between otherwise mediocre or forgettable shows like The Single Guy, Suddenly Susan, Caroline in the City and Veronica's Closet) such as the disastrous American adaptation of Coupling, other networks' (i.e. CBS and ABC) Thursday night line-ups becoming increasingly stronger by around 2004, and The Apprentice moving into the 9 p.m. timeslot.

Block Programming are not Franchise Killer examples, so cut.

• The failure of Power Rangers Operation Overdrive was the defining factor in Disney's grinding the Power Rangers franchise to a halt and selling it back to Saban in 2010.^note Their buyout of Marvel in 2009, filling the same superhero/boys-oriented action niche as Power Rangers but on a far grander and more reliable scale, was assuredly another factor in the sell. It is also ironic when one considers the early history of Super Sentai and thus Power Rangers. The only reason Power Rangers Jungle Fury and Power Rangers RPM were made (2007-08 and 2009 resp.) was because Jetix Europe and Bandai respectively asked them to for each series.

Also still ongoing, so cut too.

• Star Trek: With the 1987 premiere of Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Trek was once again a TV staple, and thanks to Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and Star Trek: Voyager, the franchise was still healthy in 2001. Then came Star Trek: Enterprise. Plagued with Executive Meddling, a title ambiguous to the general public,^note For the first two seasons, unlike literally every other TV series in the franchise, including the later CBS All Access revival shows, it did not have the Star Trek moniker and was instead simply titled Enterprise, meaning a number of people didn't realize it was Star Trek. a horrible theme song that only comparatively improved when it was remixed, and two rather weak seasons, the third and fourth seasons, though drastically improved, couldn't keep the show on the air, and it was cancelled in 2005, meaning there was no new Star Trek television for fans to anticipate for the first time in 18 years. And on top of that, Enterprise was given an infamously awful final episode that essentially served as a giant middle finger to the fans and cast via making it a nonsensical tie-in to The Next Generation instead of any sort of actual ending to the Enterprise story. Both The Agony Booth and Chuck Sonnenburg of SF Debris points to the episode "A Night in Sickbay" as the breaking point for both Enterprise and the franchise as a whole, referring to how the episode in question received fairly high ratings when it aired, but the show's overall ratings started plummeting after its airing and never managed to recover from this downwards spiral, despite attempts to retool the show, and the otherwise well-received fourth season would turn out to be the last.

I'd also cut this one, as we have two new Star Trek shows as of now.

• Super Sentai Series:
  • As detailed here, the series had been on a gradual ratings slump from 1986's Choushinsei Flashman until its nadir in 1990's Chikyuu Sentai Fiveman, not helped by some serious mismanagement killing toy sales.^note i.e. Max Magma toys became shelfwarmers because the robot only appeared in two episodes and was destroyed in the second. However, just when Toei was ready to pull the plug on Sentai, the next season became a smash hit, with high ratings due in part to a Periphery Demographic and toy sales.
  • Years later, Tokumei Sentai Go-Busters did so poorly in sales- and ratings-wise that it was rumored that Bandai actually approached Toei and Saban Brands and asked them to skip it in favor of Zyuden Sentai Kyoryuger, leading to the creation of Power Rangers Dino Charge.^note It was later revealed that this was only part of the reason. The other reason was Saban knew that kids would be more enticed with dinosaurs than spies. Not only that, but the annual crossover essentially derailed it from being a crossover between Go-Busters and Kyoryuger to basically "hey, let's get the other two Dinosaur Sentai together!", with the Go-Busters getting little-to-no additional closure. This is additionally telling with that crossover's post-credits scene where an upgraded version of Go-Busters' Big Bad shows up, completely late for the movie and ends up getting defeated by the passing-by Sentai cameo from Ressha Sentai ToQger. However, the announcement of Power Rangers Beast Morphers suggests that while ratings and toy sales might've caused Saban to pass over it initially, ultimately Bandai themselves were the ones who stopped Gobusters from being adapted, mainly due to the fact that the series was so different from traditional Sentai, and more akin to a Marvel/DC superhero movie (the toys for the former comic company being published by Hasbro, who replaced Bandai as the toy maker for Power Rangers after Super Ninja Steel), that Bandai feared that kids wouldn't buy into the spy theme, and opted for the much safer bet of dinosaurs instead.

Not a valid example either, as Super Sentai was obviously not cancelled due to either of those seasons.

• The apparent suicide of Steven Dymond after he was a guest on The Jeremy Kyle Show caused ITV to suspend the programme and then, after the death caused outrage over Kyle's treatment of vulnerable guests to reach boiling point, ultimately cancel it.

That one violates the 5-year waiting period for Franchise Killer, so cut.

I'll get to the others later, but I think a Franchise Killer can be non-permanent. The Deal example outright says it is "averted" however, so it can probably be cut at least.

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Killers can exist even if the franchise/genre/creator/etc. is later "resurrected," but there has to be an actual gap of some kind. Most of the examples in that post didn't have that.

Trivia.Johnny Test

• Creator Killer: The massive hatedoms towards this show and Caillou killed its producer Cookie Jar Entertainment, as after Johnny Test was cancelled, they were folded into DHX Media (now Wildbrain), taking Cinar and DiC's catalogs with them.

I doubt that a bunch of Vocal Minority raging manchildren on the internet would make a company go out of business.

Thomas fans needed! Come join me in the the show's cleanup thread!

I don't think that's true at all. Cookie Jar was acquired by DHX in 2012 (two years before the show finished its run IIRC), and Johnny Test was really the only show they were still making at the time, so it would make sense for DHX to absorb it completely once that show was over. Considering the hatred the show got had nothing to do with Cookie Jar closing down, I think it's safe to cut it.

Bringing up the following example from Trivia.Jaws The Revenge:

• Genre-Killer: While previous Jaws sequels were cheesy and not as intense as the original Jaws, this film solidified the reputation of killer shark movies as over-the-top camp horror. Few shark films have ever venture into drama and serious themes, and fewer still have reached favorable comparison to the Spielberg's timeless classic.

"Shark movies" are not a genre. Cut.

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I've just came across this weird example—which happens to come from an unnecessary trivia page:

• Stillborn Franchise: Despite its intent to be ViacomCBS' answer to AMC and FX, Paramount Network was seen as a clear afterthought during its brief two years. Yellowstone and 68 Whiskey were the only original scripted programs on the network by September 2020, with the former managing to grow the beard despite mixed early reviews, and the latter getting axed after one season. The network's unscripted slate, with its most notable show being a revival of Wife Swap originally intended for CMT, was overshadowed in popularity by Spike TV holdover programming (Bar Rescue, Bellator fight cards {until October 2020, when they will move to CBS Sports Network to help Paramount avert Network Decay}, the Ink Master franchise, and COPS prior to its cancellation). FX and AMC would ultimately get the last laugh when ViacomCBS gave up and rebranded the network as a movies-centric channel with only Yellowstone surviving, while the network's unscripted programming (excluding Cash-Cow Franchise series Bar Recue and Lip Sync Battle, which moved to other ViacomCBS networks) were all axed in one swoop.

Trivia.Olafs Frozen Adventure has this:

• Genre-Killer: Seemed to become this for a little while. For many years throughout the late 2000's and most of the 2010's, Disney was very gung-ho about the animated shorts programs from both Pixar and Disney proper. From 2010 to 2016, the only two releases from Pixar and/or Walt Disney Animation Studios to not have shorts attached were Tangled ^note A short, Tick Tock Tale, was ready to go with Tangled 's theatrical release but was pulled shortly before release and Zootopia^note Walt Disney Animation Studios simply didn't have a short ready to accompany the film's release due to working on two films in one year.. Following Olaf's Frozen Adventure's release with Coco, Disney seems to have gotten cold feet about shorts. Since Coco, only Incredibles 2 has come to theaters with a short attached. The subsequent three animation releases from Disney - Ralph Breaks the Internet, Toy Story 4 and Frozen II - all had no accompanying short prior. This ended up being very short-lived as Onward and Raya and the Last Dragon both had shorts playing them during their respective runs. Soul also had a short announced to play with the film before its theatrical run was cancelled. That said, John Lasseter's departure from Disney and the rise of Disney+, has definitely seemed to have made consistent shorts less of a priority for Disney.

"Seemed to become this for a little while"? Is this Speculative Troping on a Trivia item? Then, the entry says short films are still made after this one. Cut?

Done. Thank you. :)

Edited by Tenebrika on Apr 9th 2021 at 1:56:00 AM

Cut for the reasons you said.

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Bringing up the following examples from GenreKiller.Live Action TV:

• According to Chris "Rowdy C" Moore of TV Trash, Unhappily Ever After killed off the live-action working-class dysfunctional family sitcom that Married... with Children popularized at the start of the 1990s, along with Roseanne and Grace Under Fire, to be replaced by the age of upper-middle class urban singles-based sitcoms like Friends and Seinfeld. Some dysfunctional family shows, like Titus and Malcolm in the Middle cropped up in the early 2000s and gained positive to mixed reviews, but it wasn't enough to revive the genre. The American version of Shameless is trying to turn this around (or, at the very least, reinvent the genre for premium cable).

• According to TV Trash host Chris "Rowdy C" Moore, after Sheena (2000) starring Baywatch alumnus Gena Lee Nolin was cancelled following two seasons^note According to Moore, Sheena had the potential to be another highly exciting action show with a highly developed female protagonist, such like Xena: Warrior Princess. But the creators wound up giving the audience little more than just a generic "Monster of the Week" series that just tried to sell itself on eye candy., it gave TV producers the hint that syndicated action shows (such as this, Baywatch, Xena: Warrior Princess, Queen of Swords, Relic Hunter, and She Spies) couldn't just sell itself on pretty women's faces and bodies alone. With the #MeToo movement shining light over Hollywood's most distasteful aspects almost two decades later, it's now highly doubtful that any shows could get away with females showing T&A for pubescent boys.
  • Cable likewise pretty much killed off scripted shows in first-run syndication. Shows in first-run syndication were massively popular in the Nineties (Baywatch, Hercules: The Legendary Journeys, Xena: Warrior Princess, with Baywatch and Xena each holding onto the title of world's most popular show at one point or another). However, shows that have tried since then haven't had the same success. First-run syndication was something of a shaky market anyway (after a show was bought, the station could air them whenever they wanted, and some would exile them to unholy timeslots such as 1am. Even if they weren't, varying timeslots made it nearly impossible to advertise; since almost every market had a different schedule, commercials and print ads couldn't show a time or channel, only being able to tack on a generic 'Check Local Listings'). With a guaranteed timeslot on cable and a promise of frequent reruns, along with Infomercials being more dependable sources of revenue, shows that normally would have went the route of first-run syndication instead went to cable networks, and shows in first-run syndication struggled (She Spies endured an ill-conceived retool and imploded, Mutant X simply stopped despite solid ratings after the production company went bankrupt, and all of the shows made by the Herc/Xena production team, such as Beastmaster, Cleopatra 2525, and Jack of All Trades, all of whom were hobbled by the same problems that plagued Xena's later years, namely a lot of the behind-the-scenes talent in New Zealand jumping ship and moving over to The Lord of the Rings, simply couldn't match their predecessor's success and withered away). While first-run syndication is still used to create daytime fare like game shows, talk shows, and courtroom shows, Legend of the Seeker might go down as the last-ditch attempt at a scripted series in first-run syndication specifically for the American market. Some first-run series may still run in weekend syndication, but are mainly Canadian content or European-financed action fare that was rejected by most cable networks.