Needs Help: Screwed By The Network

To-do list:

• This is now defined as "Network made a bad business decision regardless of intent that resulted in low returns, thus cancellation", as opposed to "Network intentionally sabotages the work", any form of speculation or audience complaining about Cancellation.
• After the description is updated (which is being done via Sandbox.Screwed By The Network), cleanup and discussion is being moved from TRS to Long-Term Projects.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Jun 29th 2022 at 4:27:26 AM

Opening

Addendum to the OP that I forgot at the time but should add now: A lot of the Unclear examples are web context creators that got banned or had videos removed from public platforms.

As this article was created before modern web content creation had really grown to the size it is now, and was never really updated for it, it leaves a definite question mark as to how to handle these examples.

TBH, Darth doesn't sound like an awful idea. Not necessarily because I think it's complaint-bait like What An Idiot, but because Darth is just the negative side of the wiki, and moving it to Darth would allow a bit more casual language and exaggeration. It certainly feels a bit too negative to just be Trivia; it's trying to be objective, but it's not a completely objective subject. Anyone who cares about the work in question would be passionate about what happened, and it might bleed into the writing even by accident.

I guess I just think we shouldn't stress ourselves over finding citations and sticking to a high standard of objectivity, and just let people talk about the screwing.

Plus, the name already sounds pretty Darth-y.

I don't mind moving this to Darth. It's an inherently negative trope so it should fit in there.

I was thinking that myself. I originally was the one to suggest Darth, and this definitely seems like a Darth Wiki kind of thing. It's also IMO a valid concept—there are tons of works the networks screwed over, and especially now that we have the internet we can find out more about why a show got cancelled.

Take Invader Zim for instance—that was a very popular show that got cancelled one season in, and we know now that high animation costs were why. Home Movies was another, that one initially lasted 5 episodes on UPN before getting the chopping block/eventual move to [adult swim] (although I can't remember why. Probably because UPN didn't do so well IIRC.) There are obviously tons of others, but that's the first that came to mind for me.

to a Darth move.

EDIT: Low ratings for Home Movies, actually.

Edited by themayorofsimpleton on May 19th 2022 at 4:07:45 AM

I don't really want to move it to Darth because it is an actual phenomenon that I think should genuinely be discussed. No offense to Darth Wiki, but it's a much less formal and much less known portion of the site and it is very possible to discuss the trope in objective ways as purely documenting a situation that tanked the popularity of a show. Even if we did conform to the misuse, what would the trope even become? "Shows that became less popular"? I don't really see a point in such a trope since its too common to trope. (The opposite, a show maintaining high ratings and viewership through to its finale, is a far rarer and more tropeable concept IMO.)

I would rather we just did clean up to get rid of bad examples than relocate the trope altogether.

Edited by amathieu13 on May 19th 2022 at 4:19:33 AM

Moving it to Darth doesn't have to mean conforming it to the misuse, it just means we can stress a bit less about trying to enforce objectivity for a "trivia" item that really feels a bit YMMV anyway. We can objectively say what a network did to a show, but we can't always objectively say that the show got "screwed over", which is both a statement of intent and a pretty strong, loaded term for what's supposed to just be trivia.

We can still delete misuse while moving the examples off Trivia, we do it for What An Idiot.

"Screwed over" implies a degree of unfairness, which can be subjective. Take the Invader Zim example. If the show's animation costs were too high to justify renewing it, is it unfair that the show got canceled? Should the executives have renewed it in spite of the costs?

I'd prefer to just do cleanup since it sounds objective enough, it's hardly different from the rest Creativity Leash and other production tropes, also it's quite a rare exception to require citations. If the name is a problem, then a new one can be picked. I can default to Darth since I foresee it's what it's going to end as.

Yeah, I think if anything going through the whole rename process would be harder and less beneficial than a move to Darth would. I can't think of any names that really encapsulate this concept quite as well, and anything less-strong would sort of just water down the concept to me.

I don't think you need to focus on "unfairness" though. I think the example just needs to show that Series A was doing fine until Executive Meddling and then was decidedly not fine via discussing an actual decline in viewership and popularity, which you can objectively know by looking at data. The issue with the trope as is, is that it doesn't place that requirement on it, which is allowing for a lot of YMMV aspects to seep in and just plain misinterpretation of the trope.

Would this require some research on the part of tropers, yeah, but is that not the entire point of trivia tropes? More so than any other section for a work on the wiki, trivia is supposed to be somewhat backed up by actual proof rather than just by interpretation (trope examples) or widely felt sentiment (audience reaction)

Edited by amathieu13 on May 19th 2022 at 5:31:50 AM

But that definition is based off of the assumption that the Executive Meddling was the cause of the show's decline. It's entirely possible that the decline was caused by other factors that happened to coincide with the meddling.

Edited by RustBeard on May 19th 2022 at 2:56:50 AM

Or, it's possible that the meddling happened as a result of low ratings.

Exactly. I don't think this can be a Trivia trope, because it's so subjective.

Any possability to split more objective part or it'll run into the same issue?

The more objective part just feels like Executive Meddling. The trope is "Executive Meddling that screws a work over", which is generally more subjective especially as people speculate on the intent behind the meddling.

Conducting cleanup might be a valid play, but I'm actually worried that it'll go too far in the effort to be objective and try to enforce too-strict standards, as cleanup threads have occasionally done in the past. Cleanup also runs the risk of being equally as subjective, if people put a judgement on "how screwed" something was.

Edited by WarJay77 on May 19th 2022 at 6:45:42 AM

Ah. There being Executive Meddling, we can move good examples there where applicable and leave subjective complains about corporates ruining a work for Darth.

"It's entirely possible that the decline was caused by other factors that happened to coincide with the meddling."

sure, but again, the quality of the example is dependent on the info to back up whats written. If a cartoon was doing well, then Executive Meddling that cut back on costs by firing half the art team happened and the animation quality noticeably depreciated, coincided with the show losing popularity, then that's a pretty decent case for the show being Screwed by the Network.

I'm not arguing against the idea that many of the examples as written are too subjective / too speculative to be proper trivia. I agree and those examples should be culled, leaving (and encouraging) examples that are a solid case.

I feel like it'd be similar to Baby Name Trend Killer, another trivia trope: many reasons why a name can fall out of favor, but examples need to make a convincing argument that a particular work had a hand.

Edited by amathieu13 on May 19th 2022 at 8:05:22 AM

This is kind of tricky. While it's a legitimate phenomenon, we often have to go off "he said she said" sources for confirmation or infer based on circumstances. Because big companies often won't admit they tried to tank a show or movie or whatever. Also, I'd argue that Executive Meddling is a distinct concept where the suits directly interfere with the creative process for a variety of reasons, while SBTN has incredibly specific intent.

I'm absolutely against a Darth move and suggest a cleanup thread at minimum. Not sure how else to proceed with that, however, since we'd need a baseline for the cleanup to work with.

Edited by Karxrida on May 19th 2022 at 11:25:58 AM

A work has good ratings -> Corporate decision -> Directly work's poor reception

Edited by Amonimus on May 19th 2022 at 9:33:49 PM

IDK, I still feel a cleanup could be hard to manage and might end up being a bit overly-narrow, but it's more of a gut feeling. I don't have any real reasons to disagree, I just still prefer the Darth option; there could still be cleanup, we'd just have more wiggle room and less restrictions.

The wick check doesn't even support a move to Darth due to how little complaining there was. The biggest problems were misuse and lack of context.

Speaking of, I'd like to see a breakdown of how exactly the misuse manifested. It would be very helpful with identifying the problem.

I said it above, but I don't support Darth because I think it's complaint bait, I support Darth because it feels subjective and has a title that just screams Darth Wiki. It doesn't feel correctly placed as Trivia to me because it's so much more negative in tone and comes with an assumed intent about why the executives meddled the way they did.

It doesn't have to be complaining to be in Darth, IMO. It just needs to be less restricted, darker in tone, and often subjective, which all seems fitting here.

I honestly feel like trying to force this to be an objective Trivia trope would actually end up in it being way too watered-down compared to what the actual definition is. We'd have to change a lot, title included most likely, even though the current is the only thing that actually seems to make sense for what the concept is — because the current has a negative connotation and is pretty informal for Trivia. Trivia is supposed to be neutral. We can't speculate on the intentions of TV show execs on Trivia, we need to stick to the facts, but most of the time the facts alone don't support any claims of the work being intentionally screwed over. It could change to just being about executive changes that result in a work's reception and ratings suffering, sure, but then we can't really say it was "screwed", just mishandled, because who the hell knows what the intention was?

Edited by WarJay77 on May 19th 2022 at 2:58:38 PM

I'd be fine with a Darth move. Maybe we could move the handful of correct examples to Executive Meddling.