smacky and bucky

I totally saw this coming. I called its fate after watching the pilot episode. Yep, Fox has cancelled the new show Drive, after four episodes. They only filmed six, so the other two will supposedly air "sometime this summer." The timeslot will be filled by reruns of House.

The most annoying thing about this, besides the fact that this is Fox and they've done this a dozen times (see Keen Eddie, Wonderfalls, and Serenity for good shows killed way too soon) is that Fox makes an obscene amount of money with American Idol. Crazy money. Imagine a figure in your head, something really, really big. You probably need to double that amount to approach the money Fox makes on American Idol.

Think about it. What does it cost to produce that show? The kids appear for free. The guest "talent" probably beg to appear for free since it's such great exposure to a young audience. Fox only has to pay the three douche bag judges and that asshole Seacrest. Everything else is pure profit.

What I'm saying is this: Since Fox consistently wins first and second (and sometimes even third) place in the ratings week after week, it makes enough money that it could easily afford to "float" a few scripted shows, allowing them to stay on for, say, ten episodes, allowing the shows to build an audience through word of mouth. More people would give shows like Drive a chance if they weren't afraid the show would be gone in less than a month. Now, all the networks do this (I think CBS canceled that Ray Liotta show Smith after three episodes). But imagine the good will the network would get if they said "We believe in this show, and we're going to give it a full season and let people discover it." Another bonus from that is then you'd have enough material for a DVD set, and those are gold.

So long, Drive. We hardly knew ye.