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Broadcasters
today seem to have a low opinion of their viewers' intelligence.
It seems we must be constantly reminded of which channel (and
often which programme) we're watching and viewers of the BBC's
digital channels can't even be trusted to remember the URL of
one of the most popular websites in the UK.
This
lack of faith in viewers also extends to a belief that we'll
believe anything we're told, as anyone who's ever found cause
to complain to one will know.
Of
course, in many cases a stock response is all that is required,
but when something more is called for, being fobbed off can
be almost as what caused the initial complaint.
ROSWELL
provides us with a prime example of how broadcasters are happy
to lie to viewers and how they avoid actually answering their
complaints.
In
the US, ROSWELL
has always been considered a primetime series, and this year
it has been scheduled immediately after BUFFY
THE VAMPIRE SLAYER.
Given how the two series are treated by the BBC, this is particularly
ironic.
When
ROSWELL
first arrived in the UK it was retitled ROSWELL
HIGH.
Although this reflects the book series on which it is loosely
based, it was rather unfortunate as most fans would argue that
it has far more in common with BUFFY
or even THE
X FILES
than teen fare like HEARTBREAK
HIGH.
The
new title became even more of an issue when the series migrated
to terrestrial television. Few viewers would consider a series
that airs at 8pm on Sky One to be aimed at teenagers, but when
that same series is shown at 6pm, the title seems more than
likely to put off potential viewers. The BBC's promotion, with
a tacky, over-the-top "teenage alien lifeforms all over
your TV!" tagline, will have done little to persuade viewers
otherwise.
Despite
this, the series ratings grew steadily over the course of the
season, although the BBC was still prepared to lie to fans in
order to cover up its own shortcomings.
Anyone
who complained that the season ended one episode short was told
that the BBC had decided to tag THE
WHITE ROOM
as the "last episode in the current series" in order
to avoid confuse viewers as the real finale, Destiny, couldn't
be shown at this time.
The
BBC went on to explain that because it shares the rights to
ROSWELL
with Sky One, it was unable to show any episodes after 8 February
2001 and since "some transmission slots [were lost] to
other programmes, such as sport, between December and the end
of January", it had no alternative but to end the run one
episode early.
This
statement ignores two important facts.
Firstly,
when faced with a situation such as this, surely the obvious
solution is to schedule an additional episode while it is still
possible? That way, the season would have been wrapped up before
the BBC handed over to Sky, and the storyline would not have
been left hanging for seven months.
More
importantly, the BBC was deliberately misleading viewers when
it claimed that slots had been lost to sport - there was only
one blank week in December and January, and that was between
Christmas and New Year. Far from being an unexpected or last
minute changel, this could have been easily predicted as BBC2
has regularly dropped its entire 6-7.30pm block over Christmas
in recent years. Yet instead of acknowledging this and apologising
for giving out incorrect information, anyone pointing this out
was merely given the standard "your comments have been
passed on" brush-off.
The
BBC's unwillingness to schedule an additional episode of ROSWELL
before 8 February is made even more frustrating by the fact
that this could have prevented other scheduling problems. Had
THE
WHITE ROOM
been shown in place of BUFFY,
not only would the BBC have been able to show all of ROSWELL's
first season, but the BUFFY
two-parter THIS
YEAR'S GIRL
and WHO
ARE YOU?
wouldn't have been interrupted by sport!
I
do tend to be pretty cynical about these sorts of things but
I suspect that the BBC was quite happy to finish the season
an episode early. Although this might have upset viewers and
disrupted the series, it also prevented a smooth handover to
Sky One. After all, it wouldn't be the first time the BBC had
pulled this little trick - back in March 1999, the head of Sky
One told me that he'd agreed BBC2 would show the first eight
episodes of BUFFY's
second season before his channel picked up from episode nine.
What happened? The BBC pulled the series after five episodes,
again citing unexpected breaks for sport as the reason for leaving
viewers in the lurch.
When
the series returned to Sky One on 21 February, it was under
the "correct" title of ROSWELL.
Sky's BACKCHAT
featured explained that the "new" title reflected
the move away from the high school setting of the previous year.
Clearly
it would have made sense for the BBC to follow suit, allowing
them to pick up viewers who had come to the show during the
second Sky run, as well as those put off by the ROSWELL
HIGH
title.
I
e-mailed the Beeb to ask which title they would be using, and
was told that they would be sticking with ROSWELL
HIGH,
using the logic that "as [ROSWELL]
might be a meaningless name to the majority of the British public,
our retitling would increase the chance of the programme reaching
its target audience of mid and late-teens."
As
a fan who's somewhat older than the BBC's "target"
audience I believe this logic to be deeply flawed. ROSWELL
is on a minority channel and it is therefore largely irrelevant
whether or not the majority of the public find the name meaningless.
And far from providing the series with a more meaningfull title,
retaining the old one is likely to put off potential viewers.
Apart from the fact that anyone watching ROSWELL
on Sky One might not automatically make the connection that
ROSWELL
HIGH
on BBC2 is simply the same series under a different name, the
"High" suffix pigeon-holes the series as one about,
and designed for, younger viewers.
Since
ROSWELL
was still in production, the BBC were also be rather pre-emptive
in making this sort of judgement about its appeal. Season three
marks a further shift away from the high school setting and
should it be renewed for a fourth year, the BBC will either
have to revert to the correct title after all or stick with
calling it ROSWELL
HIGH
even though none of the characters are left in school! Surely
it would make more sense to make this change sooner rather than
later?
Furthermore,
the BBC's target audience is at odds with both the series' 9pm
timeslot on UPN and the average age of its US viewers. According
to a report in USA
TODAY
(19 April 2001), the average US ROSWELL
viewer is aged 30.2 years, nearly two years older than the average
BUFFY
viewer. Yet while the BBC thinks that BUFFY
has sufficient adult appeal to warrant an uncut late-night repeat,
ROSWELL
is aimed at an audience of 15 year olds.
Sticking
with the ROSWELL
HIGH
title, the series finally returned to BBC2 on 4 September 2001,
with the delayed season one finale. Although the series was
now "promoted" to a 6.45pm timeslot, the new season
still suffered by the BBC's stupidity of the previous Spring.
The
Beeb had claimed that since THE
WHITE ROOM
ends on a cliff-hanger, this made it a sensible place to end
the series' first run. However, in common with many US series,
ROSWELL's
chronology broadly follows the September-May pattern of the
US TV season, so a new season picks up around three months after
the previous one. Yet thanks to the BBC, terrestrial viewers
now had a seven-month gap between episodes that directly follow
one another, and only seven days between ones that were clearly
set three months apart!
Coupled
with non-existent on-air promotion and some half-hearted coverage
by BBC Online (especially when compared to the space devoted
to the seemingly godlike BUFFY),
the delayed season one finale attracted the series' lowest BBC2
audience to date - down by nearly one million from the ratings
that it was attracted towards the end of the first run.
Outside
events then hit the show, as SKIN
AND BONES
was shown on 11 September, when real-life events in New York
rather than fictional ones in New Mexico were at the forefront
of most people's minds, and it's hardly surprising that ratings
sunk even further - barely scraping past the one million mark.
With
this sort of start, it was hardly surprising that ratings for
the next couple of episodes continued to be poor, but by the
fifth episode of the run they were back up to 1.62 million -
not great, but up by a third over the average ratings for the
first four episodes. Admittedly the show was still lagging behind
many shows in the 6-7.30pm block, but given the series' poor
start, this was a reasonable recovery.
Despite
this, the BBC weren't satisfied, and the series was pulled from
its 6.45pm Tuesday slot and moved to 12.15pm on Sundays. Even
though the ratings for the final two episodes shown in the early
evening slot showed that the ratings increase wasn't a one-off
blip, the move went ahead, while the BBC's credibility with
fans sank to new depths.
Their
initial response was to complain that the "series was not
achieving a regular time slot on BBC2 on Tuesday evenings",
something that was blatantly untrue - during the eight weeks
when it was still being shown on Tuesdays, ROSWELL
was only dropped once. Whilst this may be frustrating for those
viewers inclined to complain to Ceefax at the first sign of
the word 'snooker' in the schedule, ROSWELL
was
subject to no more disruption than the likes of BUFFY
or
FARSCAPE.
Even more amazingly, BBC Information tired to claim that he
lack of a regular time slot went as far back as the series'
first run on BBC2, when it was only dropped from the schedules
twice in 23 weeks!
The
BBC went on to claim that the new "excellent slot"
would allow "this popular science-fiction series.to reach
its maximum potential" - rather a strange claim for a timeslot
sandwiched between yet another repeat of ROBOT
WARS
and the regional political programmes.
Most
viewers would consider that a series maximises its potential
by pulling in as many viewers as possible. Yet the first episode
in the new Sunday timeslot saw ratings slump by over a third
from the level that the series was achieving just five days
earlier.
When
I pointed out that many viewers unaware of the schedule change
would merely believe that ROSWELLhad
been cancelled outright, the BBC claimed that this was nonsense.
Upon not seeing a series in its usual slot, viewers would scan
the listings in search of it - not just in likely slots, but
in the most unlikely ones as well. Personally, I think this
is unlikely, and those relying on a manual search through the
listings would be in serious
danger of missing the change, not least because aytime schedules
are usually afforded much less space than peak time ones.
Obviously
any schedule change has the potential to upset viewers. However
what disappointed me the most was the BBC's insistence on sticking
to a prepared line even when this line has been shown to be
untrue, rather than the move itself. This may be because I've
already seen the series on Sky One and would buy any future
DVD release, but clearly many are not so lucky. I believe that
the BBC should at least be honest with these viewers - if a
series is being moved because of poor ratings, then it should
at least have the decency to say so.
(Although
do we really want a BBC that is willing to drop new episodes
of a series in search of a couple of hundred thousand extra
viewers when it is replaced by the umpteenth repeat of STAR
TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION?)
Benjamin
Disraeli is alleged to have said there were three kinds of lies:
"lies, damned lies and statistics"; personally I'd
like to add "broadcasters' excuses" to that list.
An
earlier version of this article previously appeared on the TRANSDIFFUSION
website. Part 2: WHAT'S HIGH SCHOOL WITHOUT
GRADUATION? / BACK
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