Network to the Rescue: Difference between revisions

** In 2004, the general perception of ''[[Doctor Who]]'' was that it had run its course and wouldn't fit in to the new TV landscape especially in light of the failure of [[Doctor Who/TVM the TV Movie/Recap|the TV movie]] (in '''America''', not the UK, where the movie predictably performed well) produced by... that's right, Fox! But [[The BBC]] took a chance and commissioned a new series headed by [[Russell T. Davies]]. The general perception has swung to the other way since.

*** ''Doctor Who'', back in '63, got the "second pilot" treatment before ''Star Trek'' did. The same could also be said of ABC's ''[[Life On Mars]]''--it got a second pilot (albeit with a new cast save for Jason O'Mara and a relocation from San Francisco to New York City) after ABC executives nixed David E. Kelley's pilot.

** After 10 seasons on the air (not even counting the KTMA season). As Kevin Murphy said on the ''[[The Lord of the Rings (film)|Lord Of The Rings]]'' [[Riff Trax]], "I'd like to fail like that."

** Another, even earlier case came when MST was on the Comedy Channel before it merged with Ha! to form [[Comedy Central]]. Ha! wanted to remove MST from the line-up, but Comedy Channel considered it the "flagship of its fleet" and refused to merge unless it remained. Not only did they keep it on, they gave it a contract for three 26-episode seasons.

* Fred Silverman, who was CBS's then vice president for programming, canceled ''The $10,000 Pyramid'' in 1974 after only a year as NBC's ''Jeopardy!'' (which NBC programmer Lin Bolen tried to mercy-kill by slotting it against ''Pyramid'' and failed) was beating it. Five weeks later, ABC Entertainment president Martin Starger nabbed ''Pyramid'' and it not only had a six-year run on ABC but a nighttime version and an Emmy win. The real kicker, however, was that Silverman later replaced Starger in 1975, causing him to now see the program as an awful ink blot on an otherwise distinguished career at CBS. In addition, even before ABC picked up the daytime version, Bud Grant, CBS's then vice president for daytime programming, actually disagreed with the cancellation decision and before he carried it out, he gave series creator and executive producer Bob Stewart the phone number for Viacom, a syndication firm founded by CBS, and suggested to him that he have them help stage the weekly nighttime version in the first place. ''Pyramid'' later did a [[Take That]] against Silverman during the show's [[Grand Finale]] with a mock category named "Hit Shows on NBC-TV", a not so subtle jab at the fact that Silverman, now working as president and CEO of NBC, was green lighting flop after flop on the network. Silverman was not amused and, presumably in retaliation, swiftly cancelled another show from Bob Stewart that was airing on NBC at the time, ''[[Chain Reaction (TV series)|Chain Reaction]]''.

* The CW canceled ''The Game'' after three seasons. BET picked it up, and when they premiered the fourth season nearly two years later, it ended up being the biggest sitcom telecast on cable in history, drawing over 7 million viewers.

* Family Net put the musical anthology The Venue in the [[Friday Night Death Slot]] in January 2011 with the intention to drop its Saturday Night slot the very next month. They apparently listened to the fans and kept the Saturday Night airing due to the popularity. However, they took it off the air altogether in favor of ''[[Glurge|Live at Oak Tree]]''.

* ''[[Stewart Lee|Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle]]'' underwent a mix of rescued/[[Screwed by the Network|screwed]] [[The BBC|by the BBC]]. According to Lee, he was summoned by the Beeb to produce a series with no need to do a pilot. He was in two minds, not wanting his manager's studio to make the show, but a BBC in-house studio. By the time he got around to telling the BBC, they now wanted to see a pilot, and eventually cancelled the non-existent series they commissioned in the first place. A couple of years later, the BBC again asked Leeto produce a new comedy series... thankfully this got made.

* Was anyone expecting ''[[Capcom vs. Whatever|Tatsunoko vs. Capcom]]'' to be published internationally, as [[Public Medium Ignorance|most people don't know what a Tatsunoko is?]] Capcom USA went the extra mile and dealt with the crazy licensing issues involved in getting characters from [[Tatsunoko Production]].

* ''[[Red Dead Revolver]]'' was originally being developed by Capcom but was dropped. Rockstar Games bought the game in 2002 and completed it while giving it a [[Spaghetti Western]] feel. It did well enough to warrant the sequel, ''[[Red Dead Redemption]]''.

* [[Atlus]], and recently [[Nippon Ichi|NIS America]] are really the patron saints of this, at least in the RPG world. So many great, niche games which [[No Export for You|you would never expect to come to the States]] do so because of these companies.

** The same goes for [[XSEED Games|XSEED]]. Their announcement of localizing the [[Ys]] games made them heroes in the eyes of the Ys fandom (and the fact that they did a great job with the localization definitely doesn't hurt).