Fox Pres. Fields Questions on Serialization, Cancellation

Fox entertainment president Peter Liguori answered questions about serialized programs, and the effect of early cancellation of those series on viewers, at a session during the annual TV critics convention in Pasadena. The press asked Liguori what the implications are for viewers when serialized dramas don’t work out and are cancelled before questions raised in the shows are answered, according to Mediaweek.

Last week, CBS Entertainment president Nina Tassler was apparently pounded on the same issue when her answers, such as, “In success, those questions will be answered,” left reporters unsatisfied, according to the AP. If Jericho, a show about a town left in chaos as it wonders whether it’s the only place that survived a nuclear holocaust, was cancelled, she was asked, would viewers be given any answers? Again, she responded that hopefully the show would succeed and the question would be moot.

When asked whether viewers would sour on serialized dramas if they were repeatedly cancelled with no resolution, Tassler tossed it off as “irrelevant,” saying she didn’t think audiences made viewing choices that way. Her answer prompted a disbelieving reporter to ask, “Are you serious?”

Liguori, however, faced such questions head-on.

“It’s not an idea we like to think about going into a season. But frankly, we do have to have some plans, that, say these shows don’t work, how do we wrap them up, how do we give the audience some satisfaction. And I think that there are ways to do it. One, we’d love to have an episode that does wrap it up….even if we did a conversation with the showrunner or creator, put that out online, and have text on it. I do think the audience deserves some closure,” he is quoted as saying in Mediaweek.

He adds: “Frankly, I think the industry on the whole, we all have to start thinking about that, because if, in fact, some of these serialized shows are cancelled, and there’s no explanation, there’s no satisfaction, I’d have fear for next year, when a bunch of serialized shows come out, will audiences now be really gunshy about committing to these shows?”