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Gone: Fringe

Another big US drama is kicked to the kerb as Nine drops Fringe, to be replaced by The Mentalist.

Nine has just pulled the plug on one of it’s big new dramas, Fringe.

The big budget “thrilling new drama” the network recently promoted as with a big marketing push has been pulled from it schedule effective immediately.

Nine will instead move The Mentalist into its place from next Wednesday at 8:30pm, followed by CSI: NY.

This week the series rated a disappointing 671,000 viewers -thrashed by Criminal Minds’ 1.47m, beaten by Spicks and Specks 1.23m, and pipped by House’s 885,000 viewers.

The complex, futuristic drama starring Australian actors Anna Torv and John Noble has fared better in the US, holding most of its 9million viewers and winning a full series.

Nine has had trouble with its Wednesday line-ups, already pulling Kitchen Nightmares USA and McLeod’s Daughters from the 8:30pm timeslots, the latter last aired to 931,000.

Nine has also had a run of bad luck with sci-fi shows including Moonlight, Terminator: Sarah Connor Chronicles all under-performing, while Seven’s Bionic Woman and Heroes had uneven results and Torchwood and Battlestar Galactica were moved by TEN onto TEN HD.

When Nine announced with considerable fanfare that it had picked up the rights to Fringe, readers on this site were sceptical, vowing to download it for fear of Nine pulling the plug on the show.

Tim Worner, programmer at rival Seven, recently commented on the difficult game of programming saying, “The aim of our game is to try to please most of the people most of the time and it’s a very tricky equation.”

No doubt Michael Healy concurs today.

Plans for a special by Mythbusters on October 29 are also now shelved. Nine is yet to announce plans for unaired episodes of Fringe and a regular Sunday show where The Mentalist was sitting…

UPDATE: A spokesperson for Nine said Fringe’s fastracking was complicated by the US election but could not confirm a new timeslot for the series yet.

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122 Responses

  1. Aussie TV stations hate SciFi in all shapes and forms.
    I’ve given up on local TV and it’s been all elsewhere for me for the past year, with the exception of sports.
    Never been happier with TV.

  2. Ah ha channel 9 is the new channel 10 this is (was) mine and my daughter favourite show 9 you suck. I for one will not be missing any of these episodes the internet is you friend 🙂 so it goes 9 10 and Fox are all series killers.

  3. So the low lifes in 9 have done it again and screwed us over with that garbage mentilist, i don’t normally watch the idiot box except for house and ncis because there themes are very different from main stream bullshyt, but Fringe was an excellant show with exceptional potentional and i found extremely entertaining and you had to actually think ….. bugger yes i know i said think about what was happening in the show. But once again 9 stuffs up by taking a very good show off and putting crap like that mentilist shyt on, good on you 9 once again u have shown what a bunch of drongo’s you are.

  4. Big mistake to drop Fringe… this one would have climbed to the first real winner in a long time. The new “cut the rope” policy of killing a series before half the viewers even discover what it is, may be the number one reason TV is of such poor quality generally .

  5. Damn typical of Nine, they don’t have many decent shows worth watching and when they finally get something really worth watching they pull it off air. Viewers would be more loyal if they could ever manage to run a whole season. At the very least Nine could air the show late or out of ratings time. There are only so repeats of CSI that I can stomach!

  6. well this is just like the bloody norm for ch nineIts all the f”–n money hey get off your big fat arses and leve the tv shows on the f–n screen when something like this comes along you f—er’s f—-k the show again It’s bad enough that all the good shows are gone or are on to f—-en late at night
    hey remember kids go to bed at 7.30 not f—en 9.30 at night

  7. I too have been a fan of House until I got hooked on Fringe…

    I like the mentalist but I do prefer House.

    Bring back Fringe and they have me on Wednesday and put back the Mentalist to Sunday!

  8. brilliant stuff channel 9, you baffoons! For crying out loud, when will you learn?? Fringe was a great show, and you did not give it a chance. My wife and i actually stopped watching channel 10’s House to watch fringe. I thought “finally’, a show that is half decent and is not your typical cop show.
    Very disappointing!!!
    I hope the people at channel 9 have realised that there are alot of very unhappy campers, and i reckon 9 has lost alot of veiwers. Like i said channel 9, brilliant you baffoons!!!

  9. I am so glad to see that I am not the only one who thinks that channel 9 is losing the plot (and taking us all along for a proverbial ride).

    The people who make the programming decisions at channel 9 should not still have a job, as they very clearly show that they can not make good judgement calls under pressure situations…honestly now…who is it yanking their chains???
    Well…channel 9, this has gone beyond a joke…this time swapping of series shows…filling in old episodes between “brand new” episodes is something only an idiot would do…do not insult your viewers intellegence or patiencs this way…eventually we wake up and move on…too much stuff available by other avenues these days for you to continue stuffing up in monumental proportions.

  10. Ch 9 – I’m very Pis@#$ ed off. You can not pull programs all the time you have to get them supported. Wednesday 830 is a tuff slot. You actualy pulled my wife and I away from watching house so that we could watch fringe. . . . . Guess whay you fools ….. we are back watching House.

  11. Just typical really. Why do all the Networks do this. You all suck! And you wonder why we all download illegal copies of tv series. Get sick in tired of the networks never finishing what they start. I have yet to see a whole series of a program without some sort of interuption to the schedule. TV exes have no fn clue when it comes to scheduling. High rating shows are put in pathetic time slots like 10:30 pm. When in other countries they are in primetime. Don’t even get me started on this so called ‘Fast Track’ bulls**t. I can download a program faster than they can air it. You all suck!!!!

  12. im extremely unhappy!
    i barely ever watch tv.
    but when i found fringe, i wouldnt miss a show. i hooked my friends into it and we would gossip about the day after about how fantastic it was.
    when it suddenly wasnt on, i was very very very annoyed.

  13. I am so disappointed with channel 9 for taking Fringe off the air. Why take it off completely? I was just starting to get into the story line. Why couldn’t it go to the 9:30pm time slot? I had just started getting back to watching a couple of shows on channel 9, but as usual every time I come back to watching a show (the other show I like is two and a half men at the moment–so I guess you’ll pull that too!!!) it gets taken off air. I agree with Leanne McDermott who on October 23rd, 2008 11:36 pm said it could go in the 9:30 slot on tuesday night.

  14. i am very cross that hey have removed Fringe completely without a by or leave. They should have moved it to another timeslot so we could at least record it.

    Oh well over to Amazon to order the series

  15. Typical of the networks to pull something without notice, channel 7 is normally the worst. You program managers have little concept of what you do to the loyal viewer, we are getting fed up, you’ll end up with no-one watching free to air, lets hope one of the fox channels picks up Fringe. Friday nights on all channels 7, 9 and 10 have crap, put it on that night. Put it on a Tuesday night after 2 and a half men, there’s nothing decent on then, I end up going to bed. Hire Program Managers that don’t keep switching and swapping, axing and postponing shows, keep the continuity, you’ll keep the viewer – simple isn’t it!!!

  16. I assume all the genius programmers at 9 have been ‘boned’ over the years.

    I just started watching a couple of shows on 9 again and they pull one of them.

    No point complaining though, just be like the other millions that don’t watch that Network anymore .. when will they work out that the quality of the show is only a part of keeping viewers.

    If you want to make a point, don’t boycott watching, take down the names of their program sponsors and send them a letter telling them why you won’t be using their services, when the ads are dropping, 9 might notice a problem.

  17. I cant believe this it is the only show I really enjoy Thanks 9 not happy at all…I really thought 9 had finally got it all together, guess i was wrong!!!

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