Posted on 01/26/2006 3:54:45 PM PST by Melinda in TN
On January 11, I wrote to our Chattanooga NBC affiliate with my opinions about the show "The Book of Daniel". I received a very nice understanding reply from the manager immediately. Today, I received this update from him about the show being pulled. I've had the feeling all along that he was on our side even though he didn't actually say so.
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"Please forgive this mass e-mail; but, I wanted to contact everyone who wrote me about “The Book of Daniel” as quickly as possible. NBC has cancelled the program effective immediately. The system worked exactly as it was designed to work. Instead of refusing to air this show, we gave our viewers information about the controversial nature of the content. Through news stories on WRCB and in other outlets, through e-mails from advocacy groups and through word-of-mouth from religious organizations, viewers were able to make an “informed choice” about whether to watch the show. The General Managers who did not allow the show to air proved nothing to NBC as they represented less than two percent of the households in the United States. The viewers who were given an “informed choice” and chose not to watch sent the network a message. If NBC had difficulty selling commercial time in the show and the program generated poor ratings, the network had nothing to gain by keeping the show on the air. The lessons learned by the network because people did not watch will do more than any General Manager’s unilateral actions to convince NBC to not go down this road again.
Thank you for taking the time to write me earlier and express your opinion. I appreciate your watching Channel 3.
Best regards,
Tom Tolar
President/General Manager
WRCB-TV
900 Whitehall Road
Chattanooga, TN 37405
ttolar@wrcbtv.com"
I am surprised. But again, the consumer rules.
You did good.
The gay person who wrote this piece of trash "felt" that this was important to get this show on network TV.
Well The Book of David was shown and the plot line was basically, that sin is good and we should all have disfunctional families to keep things interesting. They first said it was a drama. Then it was a comedy. Then it was a satire. Then the program morphed again to be -- REAL LIFE.
The viewers' decision not to watch the movie was an 'informed' decision; ie, based on NBC's trailers and description of the series. We don't need to watch Brokeback Mountain to know that it's about two gay cowboys.
That may be true for the local affiliate but it is not true of NBC. Blue-State America wants to shove their immorality down the throats of the Red States. That's what the network has to gain. If they can shock normal people and push the gross-out envelope still further, they think they've won a victory. And if they can get away with ridiculing the church and Christians, to them, that's even better.
A REAL business would care about satisfying their customers but, over and over, the mainstream media proves how little they think of their audience. Maybe the folks in Chattanooga are nice people but I don't consider the networks the same way.
Glad to see that "hate TV" didn't survive.
I believe our local station aired warnings, etc. about the show prior to it being shown. It was scheduled for 10:00pm on a Tuesday or Thursday night.
(Instead of refusing to air this show, we gave our viewers information about the controversial nature of the content.)
I don't buy this for one moment. Imagine if this series was full of racism. You'd better believe that affiliates wouldn't have aired it. There is something called principle, and principled people would refuse to air trash no matter how many people watch it.
Bottom line is this: This series was obviously bigoted and offensive toward Christians. The only reason it aired is that Christians are the only group that nobody cares to offend. Had it been any other group being attacked by the series, it wouldn't have aired. Period.
This series has effectively turned me off from NBC's other programming. I will not do anything to put any money in the pocket of a bunch of Christophobes.
Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. ABC/Disney ran "Nothing Sacred" for a couple of years, even though for the last year it was ranked dead last in the ratings for the entire year.
Sometimes the network bosses are actually willing to lose money in order to ram something down the viewers' throats. Just as long as their own salaries aren't at risk, they could care less if the ratings are poor and maybe a few thousand flunkies have to be fired.
What finally killed "Nothing Sacred" was the Catholic League's web site which launched a full-scale campaign against the advertisers. It wasn't just killing the show, it was making advertisers wary of peddling their wares on ABC.
If it hadn't been for the controversy this show caused, I think it would have been cancelled even sooner.
I never saw an episode, the plot, sounded to dumb for me to even consider it.
A close friend of mine who is pretty liberal watched 20 minuits and felt bad that he would never get those 20 minuits back again which he felt would have been used more productivly sleeping.
It was a bad show, that had low ratings, which would have been even lower if folks hadn't tuned in to see how bad this was.
That goes One Step Beyond even what they said about Lost In Space
"Danger, Will Robinson! Sponsors are fleeing, ratings are dropping! DANGER! DANGZhrrrr-SPOING-phtt!!"
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