ATV original running order

No doubt Marc will see this so I,ll address it to the group.

On Marcs site (excellent) in the FAQ section Timelash is
indicated as 18th in the original running order.

I distinctly recall it actually being shown as the last episode
prior to the series being immediatly repeated on ATV on
Saturdays at 5.15 pm after World of Sport.

This would probably have been around February 1971.
The reason I recall it so vividly is because, although I,d caught a couple of episodes when it was originally shown
on Wednesdays Nights at 8.00 (at that time I always went
swimming on Wednesday nights because the club I was with had the whole swimming baths to itself) Timelash was the first I saw all the way through.

It was seeing this episode that got me hooked,and I remarked to a friend how I was looking forward to next Wednesday.I remember him saying to me its being shown
on Saturdays now at 5.15.
At this time I also started to draw UFO,s (Derek Meddings
creation has fascinated and amazed ever since) and I used
the first copy of Countdown (a comic based around the series) which had a picture of a UFO entering Earths Atmosphere on its front cover as a guide as to how the UFO appeared.Countdown,s first copy was dated February
1971.



[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Mark writes:
>On Marcs site (excellent) in the FAQ section Timelash is
>indicated as 18th in the original running order.
>
>I distinctly recall it actually being shown as the last episode
>prior to the series being immediatly repeated on ATV on
>Saturdays at 5.15 pm after World of Sport.
>
>This would probably have been around February 1971.

Well, living in the United States, I of course have no memory
of when it was shown in the UK... however, this ATV order has
been published several times in the UK -- it first appeared
in issue 4 of TIME SCREEN, then later appeared in SiG and FAB
magazines (and is currently on Fanderson's online
UFO episode guide).

These guides say that TIMELASH was originally broadcast
Wednesday February 17th, 1971, which agrees with your memories.
They also began rerunning the original episodes IDENTIFIED,
etc. on February 27th. However, at that point they still
had only shown 17 of the 26 episodes! This ATV episode
order takes into account when they finally showed the
episodes they never showed in the first place:

ORDEAL - 24 April 1971
COURT MARTIAL - 1 May 1971
COMPUTER AFFAIR - 15 May 1971
CONFETTI CHECK A-OK - 10 July 1971
THE SOUND OF SILENCE - 17 July 1971
REFLECTIONS IN THE WATER - 24 July 1971 (postponed from 8 May 1971)

And this was the end of the new episodes in 1971. However, they
STILL hadn't shown 2 episodes, because of their "adult" content.
These episodes finally ended up being shown the first time at
11:30 PM in 1973:

THE RESPONSIBILITY SEAT - 8 March 1973
THE LONG SLEEP - 15 March 1973

Certainly, this isn't the *best* presentation of the series... for
example, COMPUTER AFFAIR is a key setup episode, showing that the
UFO's cannot be in the Earth's atmosphere for an extended period
of time. And yet, this episode was never even shown the first
time around!

With all this talk about what killed UFO, I don't think one
needs to look any further than scheduling -- the episodes were
shown in a terribly confusing order in both the UK and the USA,
and there were also key time slot changes which didn't help.
People always like to blame the USA ratings for the cancellation
of UFO, but nobody even bothers to note that the ratings began
to fall when UFO was changed from Saturday nights to Sundays
in several cities (as we discovered when going through old
USA TV guides)

Marc

I'm not steeped in UFO minutiae so I don't have much of a leg to stand on
here <g>, BUT I'm going to disagree and say that poor scheduling doesn't
have that much to do with a series demise - in general.

If a show is successful and popular, it would NOT get moved around on a
constant basis like UFO did. For example, look at the NBC line up -- in
general, once NBC finds that particular series work on Thursday night, they
don't get switched around. "Friends" has been on Thursday nights at 8:00pm
for years (perhaps its entire run?). "Friends" is certainly a ratings
powerhouse for NBC and they wouldn't dare bounce it around the schedule.
Same goes for the 9:00pm comedy on Thurs. -- at one time Cheers (IIRC),
Frasier and now Will & Grace. Again, all three were/are ratings winners and
won't be moved (much). As a matter of fact, Will & Grace and Frasier
switched nights and still seem to be going strong.

Why? They have a solid viewing audience. Why? They're well constructed
series with strong characters and amusing storylines. (Personally I think
Frasier wins this match-up hands down with consistently funny situations --
Will & Grace is enjoyable too, though on a less intellectual level, but I
digress. :)

So...well constant schedule changes don't help a series, I daresay they
don't hurt it as much as people would like to think. Either a series finds
its (core) audience or not. If it does, then that audience tends to be
faithful and will follow the series no matter where it goes -- in general,
of course. While I don't watch "Once & Again", my understanding is that the
core audience followed the series around the scheduling track -- though it
wasn't enough to keep it from getting cancelled in the end. An opposite
example is the current series "Watching Ellie" on NBC -- starring Julia
Louis Dreyfus of Seinfeld fame. Here was a series that was supposed to kill
the curse that has plagued former Seinfeld cast members (short lived
series), but even sandwiched between two episodes of Frasier, "Ellie" has
failed to crack the top 22. I don't know it's current rank, but I don't
think the series has lived up to its original expectations -- and all the
help from Frasier doesn't seem to be doing the trick. What does that tell
us? The series ITSELF needs to be good not just its time slot or its
positioning on the schedule.

I do agree that networks don't give series enough time to find an audience
but we are talking about a 30 year old series -- in those days, I don't
think the changes/cancellations were as cutthroat. There was something more
that caused UFO to be cancelled -- and perhaps Pam and Denise are hitting on
the answers -- poor stories, acting,etc. I don't know (I don't have all the
episodes yet and haven't viewed the vast majority in years so I can't chime
in). It's funny though -- in checking Marc's ratings of the episodes, he
only gives about 3-4 a "D" with most getting an A or B and some (I think?)
getting a C -- a vast difference from some of the more recent postings
saying that only 13 episodes warrant anything above a C and far fewer than
that warranting an A or B.

In reading Marc's UFO web site -- the UK Sci-Fi Channel is running UFO
now -- let's see if they run it consistently in the same time slot for any
great length of time. If they do, let's check their ratings (if possible)
and draw some conclusions from that.

Of course, the above is merely conjecture on my part -- I have no reams of
data at my fingertips to back up my suppositions. I made them up from thin
air, but I will stick by my general premise: a successful series is not
harmed greatly by schedule changes. A weak series is killed by schedule
changes. Which was UFO?

Anthony
----- Original Message -----
From: "Marc Martin" <[hidden email]>
To: <[hidden email]>
Sent: Thursday, April 25, 2002 10:32 AM
Subject: Re: [SHADO] ATV original running order


<snip>

>It's funny though -- in checking Marc's ratings of the episodes, he
>only gives about 3-4 a "D" with most getting an A or B and some (I think?)
>getting a C -- a vast difference from some of the more recent postings
>saying that only 13 episodes warrant anything above a C and far fewer than
>that warranting an A or B.

Yes, well, obviously I disagree with Pam's appraisal that most of
the episodes were "crap". Certainly I wouldn't have created a large
website devoted to the series or run a mailing list for it for
the past 8 years if I did! :-)

Also, I think you'll find that I gave an "A" grade to some of
the episodes being criticized -- as had been said before, there
is certainly no universal opinion about which episodes are the
best and which are the worst. In fact, this seems to be quite
a controversial subject!

Marc

----- Original Message -----
From: "Anthony D" <[hidden email]>

<big snips on the thing about sheduling and why a series gets cancelled
after the first season: because it's got big problems, if I got the general
idea of this>

So?

Star Trek got moved about, and, if memory serves, it got cancelled after the
first season and was brought back by a core of very well organised fans.

SF series seem to get in trouble more easily than sitcoms or other genre
series...
Other people may know how long Blake's 7 lasted? Space 1999 did a bit
better... The ST spawns knew their share of trouble but were largely held up
by the TOS appeal and Roddenberry's legacy... The Twilight Zone and Dr. Who
are different. Someone mentionned TZ's guy having made his list of best
eps... I'm sure there would be a lot of his fans who'd disagree with him...
:-)

> I do agree that networks don't give series enough time to find an audience
> but we are talking about a 30 year old series -- in those days, I don't
> think the changes/cancellations were as cutthroat.

No?
Maybe... But, how many series do we actually remember from those days? How
many were there? How many lasted only a season?

> Of course, the above is merely conjecture on my part -- I have no reams of
> data at my fingertips to back up my suppositions. I made them up from thin
> air, but I will stick by my general premise: a successful series is not
> harmed greatly by schedule changes. A weak series is killed by schedule
> changes. Which was UFO?

Maybe a series badly scheduled, because of GA's reputation for doing
kiddies' shows. Maybe a series too sophisticated for its time. Maybe a
series killed by politics. Surely a series that deserved, at least, a second
season.

--Anny

Add one more idea to the thread, UFO was not a CBS product. I think, (Also
conjecture but hey!) CBS would have been more likely to get behind a show
they were producing instead of an import. Hence there willingness to move
it around. Anyone remember how much it was promoted on the air? We've
seen a bunch of clippings from newspapers but was there a true push to get
the show out there, say the way CBS promotes Survivor now? Or Big Brother?


>Maybe a series badly scheduled, because of GA's reputation for doing
>kiddies' shows. Maybe a series too sophisticated for its time. Maybe a
>series killed by politics. Surely a series that deserved, at least, a second
>season.
>
>--Anny

I distinctly remember during the U.S. run of UFO on
CBS that it was shown on Sunday afternoons...and it
just was slowly pre-empted out of sight..but I
remember that last episodes that I saw were "Timelash"
and "Long Sleep" so the series probably just ran it's
course. I was heartbroken because these damn golf
tournaments kept running longer..and longer and
LONGER...and then "Wild Kingdom" would come on
afterwards. UFO just faded away...

I remember that one tournament was The Masters in
which Seve Ballesteros was leading by 17 and Jack
Nicholas came back and won the green jacket, and I'm
getting so mad because the time for UFO had come and
gone.

JF

__________________________________________________
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Hey, wanna talk about shortened SF series?? Let's talk
"Star Cops!" It lasted 9 episodes and the only good
thing about it was the talking PalmPilot!!

JF

__________________________________________________
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According to the UFO documentary (I think :), Gerry says the series was
created to capitalize on the then current UFO craze/interest. So, I don't
think the series was ahead of its time.

Until I see all the episodes again, I will stick by my original premise --
either a show is a ratings winner and gets renewed or its not and gets
cancelled. Very simple.

Why was UFO cancelled? We'll probably never know the actual reason, but I
can surmise that it didn't make its rating numbers, thus not pulling in
advertising thus losing money for the network/tv station. Very simple.

Also, the fact that GA made kiddie series should have no bearing on UFO --
Thunderbirds was surely a hit, thus, if anything, it should have given GA
more leverage in getting another series out there.

I think the biggest problem is that GA never had a series run on an American
network in prime time. That would have given the series the exposure it
needed, IMO.

Personally, I think it's refreshing to see Pam and Denise hold up a mirror
and say "The Emperor has no clothes!" Admitting a series has problems, etc.
certainly is not a bad thing. Reading some thought provoking opposite
viewpoints is a much needed adrenaline boost here, IMO. :-)

Like I've said, I can't comment in depth on any episode or even the series
until I see the DVDs later this year.

Are there any plans to bring back the Episode Analysis when the US DVDs are
released?

Anthony
=======================
----- Original Message -----
From: "Anny Theberge" <[hidden email]>
To: <[hidden email]>
Sent: Saturday, April 27, 2002 10:29 PM
Subject: Re: [SHADO] ATV original running order


<snip>

> Maybe a series badly scheduled, because of GA's reputation for doing
> kiddies' shows. Maybe a series too sophisticated for its time. Maybe a
> series killed by politics. Surely a series that deserved, at least, a
second
> season.
>
> --Anny