http://www.sitcomsonline.com/boards/showpost.php?p=4842807&postcount=3
Making Popular more like Dawson's Creek, as well as moving the show to Friday nights for the second season. The one night their audience is most likely out and not watching TV. The show became too dramatic, ratings declined, canceled with a "to be continued..." 2001
The head of the network defended canceling Everwood by showing 7th Heaven had better ratings. I don't blame 7th Heaven, like many Everwood fans do. There were other shows on that network at the time that could have gone before both Everwood and 7th Heaven. Everwood was canceled by The WB after four outstanding seasons. The show had tons of life left in it. 2006
Losing Buffy the Vampire Slayer (and Roswell) to UPN in 2001.
Canceling Roswell, Popular, Birds of Prey, Angel, Jack & Bobby, Reba.
The horrible influx of reality shows. Popstars, Jaimie Kennedy Experiment, High School Reunion, Beauty and the Geek, The Starlet, Survival of the Richest, The Surreal Life, etc.
Shows that The WB "screwed":
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/ScrewedByTheNetwork/LiveActionTV
Angel was suddenly canned to the confusion of those making the show, as it was consistently high-quality with high ratings. The reason the network gave was even more confusing: the show was so popular and good that they wanted the series to end on a high note instead of letting it die in obscurity. Possibly the only example of a show being canceled (ostensibly) because everyone liked it too much.
Word of God says that the network wanted to wait until the end of the season to consider renewal. Joss demanded an answer at mid-season and Jamie Kellner canned it, seemingly out of spite.
Worse, Word of God was that this had happened for the last several seasons of the show. Joss finally snapped since the show was, as established, quite popular. For some reason, the network dropped the ball on what probably would've been the best season yet for fear of Joss actually gaining enough leverage to know if those scripts he'd been writing for next season were a waste of time or not.
The WB screwed over Birds of Prey by trying to turn it into Smallville:
WAY too much Helena/Reese, too little Barbara/Dinah.
The network ordered the pilot to be completely reshot just weeks before airtime (The original pilot, available as an extra on the DVD release, was deemed by the network to be "too dark".)
The show was moved from Toronto to Los Angeles, thereby putting a serious crimp in its budget.
MASSIVE Executive Meddling.
Perhaps most lethally, the show kept teasing every week that Batman would be returning to Gotham imminently (as in "in next week's episode")...and then he didn't, in arguably the most shameless example of Trailers Always Lie in the network's history. By midseason, virtually all the casual fans and even a majority of the more ardent fans were sick of being lied to every week, and quit watching.
End Result: Dead Show, Dead Network.
Jack And Bobby wasn't treated very favorably by the The WB — it was hardly advertised at all compared to most of the network's other shows, and after Winter break there was no advance warning of any new episodes airing, so unless you used an episode guide you'd never know the show was even still on. To be fair, it did get a much more significant amount of advertising towards the end of the season, but the damage was already done as the ratings were far too low for it to have a chance of renewal.
Further, Jack and Bobby wasn't exactly an easy show to sell based on marketing — the ads made it look like a typical WB teen drama, not even hinting at the story of Bobby being President in the future (being told through flashforwards). Those looking for a teen drama were caught off guard by the political storyline, while those who didn't mind the politics didn't watch because it didn't look too different from every other teen drama on the network. In the end, the show's unique premise was its undoing.
The WB was so quick to cancel Run of the House that it didn't even to get to finish its first and only season (the last few episodes were only ever aired overseas). It wasn't like the show's ratings were that bad, either, as it had What I Like About You as a lead-in.
Twins and Related were also victims of this. Really, The WB was almost as infamous as FOX for cancelling shows left and right...and now The CW seems to be following in they're footsteps, given how badly they screwed over Reba, the highest-rated show on The WB.
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