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The Firefly Effect: Difference between revisions
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'''The ''[[Firefly]]'' Effect''' refers to viewers being afraid of committing to a new series because they don't believe the series will last long enough to make up for the investment of time and emotions. "The network is just going to cancel this, so I'm not giving it my heart." If enough viewers think this way towards a particular TV series, it may become a [[Self-Fulfilling Prophecy]]—people don't watch because they think the show will be canceled, and then the show is cancelled ''because'' no one is watching it.
[[Corrupt Corporate Executive|Television executives]] don't tend to want to invest in intelligent or overly complex series, because they worry that the given show will be less popular
This trope usually only applies to science fiction, or anything similar which is likely to be weird, non-mainstream, or otherwise cause the suits to worry that it won't rate well. It can be a real problem for all the ''[[Lost]]'' clones and other [[Ontological Mystery|Ontological Mysteries]], which aren't worth watching if they don't get more than one season, and especially if they don't even get a full season—and they often don't. That is also the sort of TV shows most likely to be hit by this effect, but it can hit ''any'' show that makes it clear upfront that you need to be ''involved'' in the characters or the overarching plot to make sense of the show in the long run. That demand up front plus the uncertainty that there will ''be'' a long run allows [[The Chris Carter Effect]] to start before the TV show does, meaning the fans never ''start'' watching...
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Even some shows that seemed feasible only over one (22-ep) season (such as ''[[Reunion]]'', ''[[Day Break]]'', ''[[Kidnapped]]'', ''[[Vanished]]'', and ''[[Drive]]'') suffer from this effect, due to the episode order getting shortened to 13. In ''Reunion'''s case, the producers didn't even bother finishing the storyline, because it only made sense over a full 22 episodes rather than the shortened 13.
Incidentally, many of these shows (including [[Trope Namers]] ''[[Firefly]]'') were on [[FOX]]—basically because Fox was likely to give the sort of show that gets this effect an initial run, but tended to be too Nielsen-sensitive to be patient.
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