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Fan fury at Nine

Fringe fans got a bit of a rude shock last night when they found their show had vanished, and vented their anger via the internet.

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Fans of Fringe who were unaware the show had been pulled from Nine’s current schedule got a rude shock last night and vented their anger in online messageboards.

They were universally vehement in their displeasure with Nine’s programming.

This site alone now totals 95 posts in one thread alone.

Over on Nine’s own messageboard there were more furious comments:

Fringe Dweller: C’mon channel 9, have some balls and tell the people why Fringe has been pulled! Oh I’m sorry, you don’t care about what people like. Maybe we could lose one of the four hundred different versions of CSI. God Bless ‘Two and a Half man’ where would you be without them. Maybe you can rename yourselves to Channel Two and a Half Men CSI Malibu!!! Why I’m at it, you pulled Fringe and we still have to put up with that The Strip crap.

Derek: How can Fringe be cancelled when there is crap on that station like, The Chopping Block? Biggest Gordon Ramsey rip off there is! The Strip – Crap Australian attempt of a crime show. Why would anyone watch channel nine, when chances are another series will be cancelled. Oh well lets crank up the torrens, Why it just wasn’t moved to another night, were it would have faired better? no brains

Matt: Guys at channel 9 , have you ever wondered how things Grow? Back in the day before our limited forsight was the rule of the day. Things where left to grow and gain an Audience. People didnt have to “hunt” for there favourite shows there where there week in week out and allowed to grow. Please allow Fringe this honor. Till then I like the people below will be boycotting you

Tania J:… I guess after having this happen so many times now Fringe is the final straw for me if they don’t bring it back i swear channel nine will just have to go without me as a viewer not that its a gigantic loss to them but i know i’m not the only one who’s fed up…..

“Captain Feathersword” seemed to sum it up: I don’t think I’ve yet made it through a complete season of anything in this country. Thank God for bittorrent.

Nine’s only clarification on the show is that its fastracked episodes have been interrupted by the US election (it still has one unaired episode), but said The Mentalist would move into the slot, leaving the show in limbo. Since then Nine has announced on November 5th The Mentalist will go unaired due to the election too, replaced by CSI: NY.

Source: ninemsn.com.au

48 Responses

  3. Fringe here was incorrectly marketed, I didn’t want to watch it because I had no idea what the flipping heck it was about. Also when advertising shows in Australia perhaps says from the creator of “Alias” rather then “Lost” because really we’ll end up Lost on the show.

  4. wow there are hundreds of complaints on the nine message boards, and those are just the ones that got through, sometimes you post a message over there and it never shows up, plus who knows how many phone calls. burn notice got less than that on the ten site and they brought it back, but 9 are so pig headed that they will never admit that they made a mistake. plenty of people are saying this is the last straw for them, for me that was one show ago, i knew 9 would do this, i hoped they would prove me wrong but they have let all their viewers down, yet again.

  5. I found the pulling of Fringe to be reminiscent of when 10 shifted the similar themed Torchwood to the midnight slot last year.

    Unfortunately I am not surprise with 9 removing Fringe from its schedule. After all 9 does not have a good history when it comes to sci fi.

  6. With what 9 did to the last episode of Fringe, in Sydney at least…about 15 or so seconds ended up jammed between 2 ads, and didn’t really match up with what was on either end of the ad break. Mum and I were sitting there asking what had just happened.

  7. They were stupid to move either shows!! Fringe would have found a following in the Wednesday slot and the mentalist rated well for nine because there is nothing on on Sundays so it was a welcome change. The guys at nine have completely lost touch with the audience and common sense.

  8. If Jasons theory is correct it will be interesting to see if all those people that didn’t see the promo expect to see it on sunday and then think it has been axed or something.

    Ch 9 really has screwed this up

  9. No matter what Mentalist got it still lost almost half a million viewers since Sunday night, even with all the promotion of it’s move to Wednesdays and also lost half a million viewers from it’s lead-in, 2.5 Men.

    IMO nine will not be pleased about the loss in ratings and if the trend continues then maybe it will be moved again?

  10. I know networks need to make business descisions on what they air when, but when my TV guide from Sunday’s paper still has Fringe airing on Wednesday night all they do is alienate viewers of both shows, what about the fans of Mentalist that didn’t know it would be on Wednesday?

    Networks need to treat viewers with at least a little respect.
    I was just getting into Fringe too

  11. Jason’s made an excellent point but it’s a shame no one from the big TV networks actually knows the internet exists so they won’t read it. None of the networks seem to have grasped that many viewers, especially those in the much sought after under-40 demographic, simply don’t sit in front of the TV for night after night as would have been the case in the past. And none of the networks seem to have a clue about how to engage this growing audience segment. Which is why FTA will probably disappear all together in my lifetime: they’re like the people who continued to produce horseshoes while Ford was busy selling a Model-T to every family in America.

  12. I completely agree with everyone.

    Whilst I can understand NINE removing it from the timeslot there was nothing stopping them from trying a 9.30 or chucking it at 10.30 at least the fans could still watch….

  13. Whether we like it or not the FTA business model is based on ratings and when a show doesn’t rate it gets taken off air. Networks don’t care about a few people who complain because they are in the minority according to the ratings.

    The biggest problem nowdays is that shows must rate immediately or they are taken off air. Shows use to be given time to build an audience but nowdays if you have rated in 2 airings you are off.

    Nine would be happy with the change as Mentalist rated 980,000 compared to Fringe 671,000 the previous week.

  14. Interestingly what this response proves is that there are a lot of people who didn’t even see a promo during the week showing that The Mentalist was in the Wednesday slot, to me this indicates that there are a lot of people who don’t watch broadcast tv as a habit – this means if networks want to promote shows that appeal to the under 40s they need advertise in more places than just their own airtime.

  15. Yay, now i get to go back to watching MORE SCI and Two and a half men!…………Not.
    The ONLY good thing Nine have left for them is Survivor, and its on at 10:30.

    Nine is just like a hermit crap, it sticks its head out for a look, but it will always go back into its shell.

    WHY are most of you so surpirsed by this? Its Nine for crying out loud. Ten would have done the same thing. Seven would’t have, and thats why i watch them the most.

  16. Nine claims that “its fastracked episodes have been interrupted by the US election” – but fails to acknowledge that at the end of last week’s episode they ran the promo for the episode that was supposed to be on this week.

    If they’re surprised that they’re being besieged by hordes of pissed-off viewers, then they’re more stupid than any of us thought.

    By the way, the torrent of this week’s episode on the most popular TV downloading site was PACKED with Australian IP addresses last night…

  18. I think it is time that “fans” of shows started go go back to the “old ways” of getting the point accross to these idiots who make all these crap decisions at the networks … get together and start picketing and protesting outside Channel 9!!! Much more powerful than posting on message boards etc which is forgotten in a day …
    Can you imagine the field day that Today Tonight would have with footage of such protests!!!!
    God i wish I was a big shareholder in Channel 9 … I would be giving them hell for their incompetence and demanding they replace the programmers immediately! But then again, if i was a shareholder I would be loosing out big time because of ther stupidity as well!!!!
    A major change in the way networks treat shows is LONG overdue in this country!
    Jack!

  19. well ch9 defs had to do something about it, but could have pushed it to 10:30 or 9:30 and dodged a bullet. they could have pulled CSI:NY an hour earlier as it seems it will be spending some time there anyway, and kept the mentalist where it was.

    with the numbers it was getting it may even be yanked from 8:30 during the summer (if thats why they’re holding onto it)

    and i’m with nathan, they really should have told fans what they’re plans were so that they were not completeltly in the dark about their shows future.

    another nail in the coffin for 9

  21. I think people would be much more understanding if ch9 told them exactly what their plans were ie. see it later this year. I can always understand if a show that i enjoy has to be cut because there are not enough viewers. they are a buisiness afterall

    I guess with all of ch9’s “epic new drama” ect. some people thought they were watching a top rating show. i doubt those people will be back.

    If a network is going to discontinue a show i think the best way to do it is the way ch7 did with kath & kim. = announce straightforwardly “the yanks have been yanked” on the add and allude to the fact that it was unpopular.

  23. I was really liking this show and am sad that it is gone from Channel 9 for the foreseeable future. I did know about the cancellation but I still wish 9 would have just aired it in a later timeslot or something. Damn you channel 9. 🙁

  24. Can’t wait to see the ratings in a few hours, I wonder how maybe people didn’t know the Mentalist was on thus didn’t tune in?

    Does ch9 think viewers are stupid, you can check in seconds what has aired when, we know there was an ep of Fringe last night and the next ep is Nov 11.

  25. Most insultingly, our channels don’t even usually let the viewers know that the show they’ve been waiting for isn’t on. Is it too much of a courtesy to expect? Or they think they can confuse us into watching Mentalist instead of Fringe, or a documentary on some biblical tomb instead of an episod of Torchwood?

    David, thank you for TVTonight, which I check every day, so I know about ‘bumpings’ and cancellations a few days beforehand. But why should the viewers scour the internet on a daily basis to find out whether they can see the next episode of their show?

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