I know I'm supposed to be on vacation, but I'm reading Fark while I wait for everyone else to wake up (I'm staying with friends until I move to a hotel later today) and I just came across an article that can't wait until I get back from Vegas to post (but I did set to publish later today, because Typepad can do that and I like shiny things).
There's a new show on ABC that I've been really excited about, called Masters of Science Fiction. It adapts classic stories from, well, masters like Harlan Ellison and Robert Heinlein. It also appears to be dead on arrival, though, because it's too "artistic" for ABC's president of entertainment, who has put it in a "Television Siberia" where it is guaranteed to fail.
That's what they call it when you air Saturday nights at 10 in August. It simply wouldn't be possible for a broadcast network to more effectively guarantee that a series be viewed exclusively by close friends and family members of the production team, unless they cut the national signal and screened it instead on someone's front porch.
But this, alas, is the fate that has befallen "Masters of Science Fiction."
[...]
The problem is, it apparently doesn't track as nearly shallow enough for the suits whose job it is to prevent pretty much anything that's unique and imaginative from accidentally leaking out to the public.
But hey, as long as there's room in sweeps for such literary masterpieces as "National Bingo Night" and "Shaq's Big Challenge," ABC should remain safely insulated from most programming that could somehow be construed as brainier than your average speed-dating mixer. Imagine the same guy whose network boasts such MENSA candidates as "The Bachelor" and "Wife Swap" referring to a show that dramatizes short stories by such legendary writers as Harlan Ellison and Robert A. Heinlein as "very uneven" and "a little bit problematic." That's how McPherson described "Masters" in justifying his slicing it down and burning it off. And by comparison, this would make "According to Jim" . . . what? A bellwether of consistency? A landmark comedic achievement?
I was positively angry with rage when I read this story, but now that I've thought about it, I'm just sad. It's not entirely the stupid network executive's fault; he's just pandering to the American Idiots who would rather watch "Wife Swap" and similar garbage than something intelligent, artistic, and unique.
Hopefully, whatever episodes they've produced will come out on DVD, or maybe the series will find a new home on cable (like Masters of Horror, which was created by the same people). Until then, we science fiction fans just have to keep reading, I guess.
