It seems a bit unbecoming for a king, but the NBC Kings twitter account is requesting fans plead with DirecTV at the king’s behest to save the show.
Chances of @DIRECTV ignoring the pleas? I have them at 100%.
Categorized | Internet
NBC’s Kings begs for DirecTV bailout on Twitter
Posted on 20 April 2009 by Robert Seidman
36 Responses to “NBC’s Kings begs for DirecTV bailout on Twitter”
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Wow… just wow…
Ha, that’s hilarious.
LMAO!
Ya
Right.
HA!
Clearly royalty ain’t what it used to be.
Wait, is this Kings’ official account?
Robert’s chances of DirecTV ignoring this are at 100%? Wow, he’s being really kind. I was thinking about 500% myself. Then again, DirecTV is paying $1 billion a year for the NFL Sunday Ticket package, so they’re used to throwing money around.
Jon L, it appears to be, though I have not contacted NBC to verify it and its possible its completely outsourced even if it is. It’s pretty much a straight marketing feed: watch the show, watch on hulu, buy on iTunes, with some “save our show” mixed in.
Yeah, Direct TV is really going to want to pick up a show that’s getting a .7 in the demo and less than 2 and a half million viewers.
wow, thats just a it bit pathetic! Im surprised somebody asnt said that Chuck should do the same thing!
@ Josh, because we Chuck fans have dignity:))
It’s an official Twitter, so …
Will these twitty fans be soliciting donations, a la the “Moonlight” crew? ‘Cause I’ve got 12 cents and a Burger King crown. I figure that ought to be enough to save it, right? It’s twice as much as the show is worth.
It would be kinda funny if the DirecTV twitter feed blocked the Kings feed. Though I suppose they wouldn’t do that…they do do business with NBC after all, buying FNL.
I mean, unofficial. It says so on it’s bio.
good catch Crystal, I posted this here for entertainment purposes only, but I still should’ve caught that!
ROFL thats hilarious
Your King needs your help indeed.
This show costs 4 million dollars and episode. You know how much you would have to cut out so DirecTV would even be interested?
wow and i thought i was the only one begging for KINGS on twitter…
That’s really sad and pathetic, but what it is the NBC.
They should just get a lower budget and move to sci-fi channel if possible.
This reminds me of, like, if you give one kid a piece of candy, and other kids see you give the kid the candy, and then all the kids expect to get their own piece of candy. DirecTV saves one show, bubble shows see that, and now they all expect to be saved.
Weak metaphor, I know. I’m tired.
I’ve tried several times to watch this show and every single time, it’s bored me beyond tears and I’ve turned it off within minutes. The only good things about it are Ian McShane, the actress who plays his wife, and Sebastian Stan.
Since I didn’t follow the DirectTV bailout of Friday Night Lights, precisely why was that done? What was the reasoning? Would any of that reasoning apply to, say, TSCC?
The show is good. Very good in fact. Very reminiscent (sp?) of Battlestar Galactica. But it’s also a highly conceptual show clearly not intended for network TV. Kudos to NBC for trying, though.
NBC is desperate!
I tweeted DirectTV
Maybe NBC can merge KINGS and CHUCK into one show bailed out by Direct TV? Call it – KING CHUCK as Chuck stumbles into a mysterious lab and flips the wrong switch and teleports into the KINGS universe and becomes the new King using the information stuffed into his head.
@Richard Steven Hack
DirecTV decided to try Friday Night Lights as a co-production deal for one season because they love sports-themed series, they wanted an original series with strong critics’ buzz, and they wanted a quality “family” show. (There are unconfirmed but reasonable rumours that they also wanted a more female-friendly show to help get wives on board with their husbands ordering DirecTV.) It also had to be a show that didn’t have a superhigh budget to begin with.
FNL was a worthy experiment on all counts. The football theme was perfect, critics adore it, it’s always listed in the “quality” column no matter who looks at it, and it was female-friendly without deviating from the sports theme of most DirecTV original series.
Oh, and it can be done quite inexpensively, since many episodes can be dialed back to a few characters in existing interiors. You’ll notice this season had a lot of dramatic encounters between 3 to 5 characters in their own homes, rather than big crowd scenes in the school cafeteria, at an actual football game, at Applebee’s, or at a big party. Sure, they had some crowd scenes sprinkled throughout the season, but it was mixed. Even the one church scene was a Christmas choir with fewer than 20 people in the room.
From NBC’s side, it wanted a show that it would be willing to let go but that it would also be seen as a “good guy” for trying to save, regardless of the outcome. And it wanted something that it felt at least some people would watch a second time at a different time of year.
So DirecTV and NBC agreed to split the production costs, DirecTV gets to show the episodes first (not coincidentally during football season), and then it comes in for NBC as a Friday night midseason replacement in January.
The experiment worked well. DirecTV got everything it wanted. NBC’s ratings for the show weren’t great, but they weren’t horrible either, and it fits fine as a short-run fill-in. So they’ve signed up for 2 more short seasons of 13 episodes each.
DirecTV isn’t likely to be interested in anything else that’s around right now for several reasons. First, and most importantly, FNL gave them what they wanted already. Critics like it and write about it, it’s sports-themed, and it’s female and family friendly. It fits perfectly into the “pay extra for us and you can watch every NFL game–and look, you get original Friday Night Lights episodes, too!” marketing pitch.
TSCC, on the other hand, doesn’t bring DirecTV any audience they don’t already have. It doesn’t fit with their other original series. It doesn’t have a sports theme. It’s relatively expensive (although it can be dialed back somewhat). It’s not at all clear that people would watch it a second time around on NBC. Saving it means catering to a small group of genre fans, not being a “quality programming” hero. And all of the above apply to Dollhouse as well.
So it’s not that DirecTV is shopping around for bubble shows to save. It’s that FNL just happened to be a near-perfect fit at a near-perfect time for both companies. Everybody gets credit for trying to save a quality show, and if it works it makes financial sense as well.
Terminator and Dollhouse are so expensive that they really only make business sense as big hits. Which…they’re not. But big hits are not what DirecTV was looking for, anyway.
Nothing is impossible, but the things that made sense with FNL aren’t present in a similar deal for TSCC, Dollhouse, or even Kings.
marty118 explained the DirecTV/FNL reasoning more carefully than I could have. Well done.
Excellent explanation. Thanks.
The reason I asked specifically about TSCC being a possible pickup is that apparently DirectTV has runs ads on the show and some fans were suggesting that as a way to save it. Now we can see that’s not in the cards.
Is the name of this show “Kings” or “Court Jester”?
Neither. It’s “Cancelled.” As in, no longer airing even in the dregs of Saturday. As you can see, this was a very successful Twitter.
Guess I’ll just have to find another use for my Burger King crown…
Both the official NBC site and TV Guide still show a new episode scheduled for this Saturday, April 25…I don’t see any indications that it’s been pulled from the Saturday schedule yet.
http://www.nbc.com/Kings/
I see the official site has now been updated with a “new episodes in June” notation, so this Saturday’s episode is, indeed, off air. That’s severe, no question.
Cancellation of Kings only shows what short attention span people have. McShane is too good for below average audience. I tuned in for April 25 episode, not on. Was sickenened it was replaced by pathetic perverted sex crime show.