Talk:Friday night death slot

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To-do list for Friday night death slot:	edit · history · watch · refresh
Major re-write that follows our manual of style. Categorization of US Broadcast networks and their varying practices. Add references to prove the credibility of this article.

Contents 1 Comments 2 Poorly formed article, several tags added 3 Rewrite 4 Verification

[edit] Comments

I was a bit surprized by the frankness of the phrase "In the case of The X Files, many of its original viewers (i.e., nerds)," although I must admit I can't come up off the top of my head with a better way to phrase it.

Wouldn't it be good to have some kind of explanation to this phenomenon? --Allycat 19:19, 26 July 2005 (UTC)

Does anyone else think Star Trek gets too much of this article? Mister.Manticore 15:52, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

Friday Night Smackdown! should be mentioned on this page as well. When UPN moved this show to Friday after airing on Thursday nights for 5 seasons, it was though by many to be in anticipation of it being cancelled due to Raw being moved back to the USA network. Smackdown is now one of the highest rated network shows on Friday nights. Lawnboy1977 19:21, 21 November, 2005 (AST)

Friday Night? In Germany 20:30 is referred to as "evening", 20:15 being prime time. Regardless, this seems to be an American phenomenon. On German TV shows sometimes span Monday to Thursday, but leave the Friday for actual movies (be it straight-to-TV or Hollywood). I guess Germans just don't have anything better to do than watch TV on Friday evenings -- well, those who watch German TV in the first place, anyway. -- Ashmodai 14:20, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure some of the shows listed as succeeding on Friday nights actually aired on Saturday nights (which probably has the same negatives as airing on Friday nights, but nevertheless were not Friday nights). Some fact checking would be useful to be certain of accuracy. KP 09:32, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

Okay, no one did any fact checking, so I did what I could. Dallas seems to have started on Sunday night later moving to Saturday night, while The Love Boat and Fantasy Island seem to have been Saturday night shows. I don't question that Saturday night is likely hard to succeed in for the same reasons Friday night is, but the article is about Friday night shows specifically. -KP 22:17, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

Truly, Friday is and has been tough to schedule for American audiences over the last several years. Friday may be the place (at least some) shows go to die, while Saturday is currently the graveyard, containing no original scripted programming for a few years now. — ArkansasTraveler 22:22, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

What kind of badly argued article is this? After exposing a 'phenomenon' it provides an equal number of examples and counter-examples, which leaves the reader totally unconvinced that there is even such a thing as a 'Friday night death slot'. Either someone find some real proof or delete this artice.

The phenomenon has been referred to (by various similar names as well) for years. "Everybody" supposedly "knows" that Fridays are a bad night to show new episodes of a series (in America, that is). Therefore, noting the shows that have failed after starting on or being moved to Fridays (I'm especially thinking of Wonderfalls, which was canceled after four episodes despite general critical acclaim) is important, because it is shows like that that tend to make people believe it's the "time slot of death". However, it's equally important to note exceptions to the "rule", as those shows' successes, especially on networks such as NBC and CBS, who normally have higher expectations for ratings, are often surprising to people BECAUSE of this perception of the "time slot of death" and do in fact run contrary to the general perception of Friday being a bad place to air a show.

Now, I find it silly to say that both sides can't be presented, Mr. or Ms. Does Not Sign Their Posts, because of course there "is no such thing" as this. It's not an industry term, and it's not a concrete phenomena that's been proven and time-tested, hell it's not even an academic theory, as far as I've heard; it's a concept that's risen over the years in response to the general public's observation that many shows, most of which did not appear to suck, got canceled after being stuck on Fridays, even if they were in "prime time", especially on the lower, bigger networks (NBC, Fox, CBS, ABC). Whether or not shows actually do have a higher chance of being canceled if stuck on a Friday night is frankly irrelevant; all that matters as far as this article is concerned should be that many people believe that, showing evidence as to why they believe that, and showing evidence that also contradicts the "common knowledge" that shows are never successful on Fridays. That's all that need be done, and most of it is, although the structure could use a little work for sure. Runa27 01:44, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

I personally don't think Malcolm in the Middle suffered in the Friday Night Death Slot considering it stole the Sunday night spot of gold in between Simpsons and X-files. That spot was the only place guaranteed to keep a show running based on the popularity of the shows before and after. On a sunday night most would watch Simpsons and X-files, and for the half hour in between very few people would go to another channel. This was a spot originally promised to Futurama and once Fox started moving it to different slots every three weeks it got cancelled. The same thing happened to Family Guy. Both of those shows were popular and only had low viewers based on bad management of Fox. Malcolm in the Middle stayed in the Sunday slot for many years and appears to have run it's entire course rather than get cancelled - it covered the entire time of the title character's high school years. It certainly doesn't merit mention as a show killed by the slot.Abrynkus 21:33, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Poorly formed article, several tags added

This is a very poorly written article, formed in a non-encyclopedic style that has very little regard for WP:NPOV. I'll go on to say that this article is fairly significant in explaining a meaningful slot in the US Broadcast Television market, but it just isn't up to par. I will be tagging it with several tags, and hopefully will work to improve on it later. -Chris Saribay 00:42, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Rewrite

Gave it a complete write, incorporating all your suggestions, but could not find references. Hope you like! 206.27.244.254 18:33, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Verification

Does anyone have citations for this article? It reads like WP:OR, or like an urban legend. Certainly people seem to perceive it to be true, but hopefully there has been some sort of statistical work done to see if such a phenomena really exists. This article is linked from a number of articles, but not a whole lot. Perhaps it's worthwhile to address the truth (or verifiability) now. --GargoyleMT 02:04, 11 November 2006 (UTC)