It sucks! Vampire Diaries fans slam GO!
Fans of The Vampire Diaries slammed GO! on their Facebook site for pulling the show at the last minute.
- Published by David Knox
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- Filed under Programming
Fans of The Vampire Diaries slammed GO! last night on their Facebook site and in online forums for pulling the show at the last minute.
Nine’s “Urgent” amendment, replacing the show with a movie, Bride Wars, was announced at 5:13pm, less than 3.5 hours before the show was due to air. It was even too late for online EPGs let alone print guides. Angry fans even vented that Nine’s own website was still plugging Vampire Diaries. Many insisted they would watch the show via downloads instead. Some were so angry they set up a “Boycott GO!” Facebook page.
TV Tonight also received a significant number of complaints.
Fan fury follows GO! recently resting the series only to drop it with just 3 episodes remaining in the series. It’s a terrible way to treat viewers. With the network’s ratings right now it is a risky move to jeopardise viewer loyalty.
The reason for the late change isn’t clear, but some were questioning whether Nine had pulled Vampire Diaries to try to send more viewers towards the premiere of Between the Lines at the same time.
By late last night the official GO! Facebook page had been flooded with complaints, none of which had been answered by the moderator. The question now is whether the network will explain the reason for the switcheroo and apologise to viewers.
Here is a sample of some of the complaints:
Cat Taylor
I want to see “The Vampire Diaries. Season 2 Episode 20. “The Last Day”. 🙁
Tara O’Flaherty
what the hell….. why do u keep doin this…. Y wasnt Vampire Diaries on???
Jessica Dreyer
u really suck go for taking vampire diaries off again for the second time without explaination after advertising it all week 2 be on!!!!
Nicole Challis
I am with the rest of the people who currently don’t like GO. I was looking forward to Vampire Diaries and Mars Attacks. It was just wrong, when you advertise something you should show it.
Sarah Palmer
Sick to death of really looking forward to watching the next epsiode of Vampire Diaries to only have it replaced by BRIDE WARS!!! GO get your self sorted and play what you advertise!! Seriously can not believe you have done this yet again!! Even your website says it should be Vamp Diaries!!!!!
Damian Harper
Gotta get your priorities straight!!!
Andrea Fabe-Heywood
GO! = Worst channel ever
Adele K. Thomas
Im not surprised, its actually pretty normal of Nine to do this. Ive seen them screw around with some of my favourite shows like ER. I cant believe one season wasnt on for like two years, then when they started playing it again, no notice. So to see them doing it with Fringe, Vampire Diaries and Nikita is no shock.
Codee Mullings
does anybody know when vampire diaries comes out on dvd? kinda REALLY getting sick of GO! screwing us around so ima just wait for the dvd!!
Kylie Brown
Please tell my why the hell vampire diaries was not on tonight!!!! Not cool at all I’ve been hanging all freaking day for it???????? Is it on next week?? It’s only be back on for 3 weeks… Put it bak on!
Vicky Soar Smith
GO! You Suck!!!….Got no fickin idea with what the hell is going on with your tv programme. What happened to Vampire Diaries? I only found out it was back on last week by mistake and on a Thursday after it had been on Monday’s for ages. Why keep changing all the time? Looks like there is a few unhappy viewers on here too. Hope you get more complaints!!!!
Rachel Hewish
What happend to The Vampire Diaries tonight??!! You got some stupid marriage flick I’m not interested in….very disappointed. Stop advertising what you don’t screen…not the first time…
Sarah Palmer
Go have updated thier website saying that the next episode is Sunday 15May at 2.10AM!!!!! Seriously sort your crap out and realise what your viewers want!!!!!
UPDATE: Vampire Diaries is now 11:50pm Sundays beginning May 15.
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- Tagged with Between The Lines, The Vampire Diaries
56 Responses
You just can’t do that, if you advertise a programme right up until the day it’s meant to air, and then suddenly decide to pull it for no reason. It’s professional to say the least. To think that I used to regularly watch 7 hours of GO a week when it first launched, now I barely turn the channel on, it’s just not worth my time.
Go! was a breath of fresh air when it first started. I especially liked the fact that it didn’t even feel like a Nine channel (‘cos 9 is mostly horrible). I used to watch quite a bit on it. But then, slowly but surely, little bits of Nine poison insidiously started seeping in.
2.5 Spams appeared and the infection of endless repeats spread to The Big Spam Theory, and then the hallmarks of Nine’s programming started cropping up – long advertising lead-ins promising “soon” but not delivering, the slow-tracking of shows claimed to be fast-tracked, the bumping of slightly under-performing shows to later slots, moving programs to different days (always a winner), artificial breaks in the middle of a season, the favourite double-ep, and now ripping programs off a few hours before they’re due to be broadcast.
Go! used to be a breath of fresh air but are now an unpleasant slightly acrid odour of indeterminate origin. If the gangrene that is their programming dept is not cut out, it will soon be tinged with the stench of decay currently wafting over from it’s parent channel.
And they still wonder why people download.
The Vampire Diaries – The Complete 2nd Season.. will be released on DVD / Blu-Ray on September 7th here in Australia…
DVD ~ ezydvd.com.au/item.zml/817934
Blu-Ray ~ ezydvd.com.au/item.zml/819707
I was really excited when GO! first started. The type of programming it offered seemed to be missing from the other channels and I liked the idea of a place to watch trashy pleasures like The Hills, Gossip Girl and Pretty Little Liars. They even aired Adventure Time for a while (albiet at 6am on a Tuesday) which was fabulous.
I was a bit battered when they started showing the second season of Community and then it disappeared into the nether, only to be recently acknowledged as dead in the water, then realised Gossip Girl was only being shown after midnight. Then Fringe started to lag well behind the US and then Vampire Diaries dropped a few weeks after its hiatus.
To have it not only a few weeks behind (bearing in mind this is a show that is built around jaw dropping finales, spoilers are a pretty scary landmine to navigate around online at the best of times) then dropped at the last moment, only to be ditched for a death spot on a weekend…. I can’t do this any more. I suspect I’m part of the demographic GO! was originally set up to attract but I just can’t find any reason to enjoy watching eleven hundred repeats of shows I think would be better placed on Nine and left well away from the younger, trashier market (why is The Middle on GO! for instance? Who is supposed to be watching that?)
I’m not going to boycott the channel all together as a deliberate act of protest but I am certainly not going to politely wait for GO! to air the shows it has paid for any longer. I will get them online as legally as I can and try to put this bad break-up behind me.
GO! is not the first channel to treat me badly, Ten has been doing it for years with shows like Veronica Mars and Harper’s Island being given the shaft for such wonders as the four thousandth season of Smallville (which I see Still gets doggedly trundled out on Eleven, got to keep those actors fed well into their 20s I suppose).
GO! however sets itself up as an interactive service with a marketing push towards social media, then refuses to use it when it is not in their best interest. I fear for the drivers of those GO! jeeps when the legion of inarticulate Vampire Diaries fans descend on their next location.
no wonder people illegally download these types of things… we cant rely on our tv stations to not lie to us..its bullshit! so angry!!!
For a viewership of only 87,000 people last week it’s getting alot of attention for being axed, but is it really a surprise that GO! moves it to 11:30pm after getting those figures?
Is it Go!’s fault for its treatment of Vampire Diaries or is it the fault of its fans by not watching it in the past?
i download the new episodes every week (currently doing the season finale so damn pumped) but im still very p**sed off at this.
some people rely on GO! to watch the rest of the season and this is how they treat the fans?
It’s pathetic.
I just saw on Facebook TVDs new timeslot………. 11.30pm Sunday nights….. Are you freaking kidding me?
I agree with jay jay, you can’t do these things willy nilly, address the fans on social netwokring sites and expect wine and roses (im using many metaphors) but it works.
GO has some serious damage control to do here if they wanna maintain some respect. Not just for TVD fans but many others too. Hellcats, Pretty Little Liars….. it shouldnt be That hard to air these damn shows.
This was posted on the GO! webpage – not sure if it is true!!!
GO! TV Announcement: To all Vampire Diaries fans. GO! will now air the previously scheduled episode of The Vampire Diaries This Sunday @ 1150pm. The next episode will be next Sunday (May 22) @ 1150pm. The season finale will now be played Tuesday 24th May @ 1130pm!
Update from GO – To all Vampire Diaries fans. GO! will now air the previously scheduled episode of The Vampire Diaries This Sunday @ 1150pm. The next episode will be next Sunday (May 22) @ 1150pm. The season finale will now be played Tuesday 24th May @ 1130pm!
– I just rang ch 9 & GO, & was told that reason why VD was bumped last night & now into the 11.50pm timeslot is that according to them, the show has been losing its rating for a few weeks & they decided to move later into the night. they don’t care that it’s a popular teen show being mistreated, they care about shows that will attempt to boost their dismal ratings.
This is such a huge issue, not just Go but across them all. I miss so many shows because of ‘last minute’ changes, or conintually moving things around or playing repeats – who knows where things are at! (ok you do David, but if I don’t check in here all the time I go on missing).
The insanity continues – they just announced the air dates for the remaining episodes. 11.50pm on Sunday night! Because school kids are totally allowed to stay up until that time to watch!
GO! is now a joke of a channel, it was much better back when it launched in Aug 09.
@Bogues GO! is now currently three episodes behind the US = three weeks so unless we’re shipping the tapes over, I don’t understand the delay, especially considering earlier in the season, they’ve been running the show within a week of US air dates.
It still floors me how non-responsive the social media feeds from Go! are to their fans on this issue – it’s an absolutely test case of what not to do. The idea of asking fans to support you with engagement/interaction and then making it a one-way conversation is completely crazy.
How low can they GO?
@Bogues: That might be true but if there was a logistical problem in bringing the program as scheduled then they should have said so. But given Nine’s reputation for programming-by-dartboard how likely is there to be a more logical explanation?
Have Nine provided a reason for this last minute change? As I understand it, we get the series pretty close to when it screens in the US. Nine might not have received the tapes from the US yet.
Did Channel 9 really think that Vampire Diaries fans would prefer to watch Eddie? Do they really not understand how multi-channelling works…?
GO had such promise when it started now it’s just a joke. I used to watch a fair amount of the channel in its earlier days but now I can’t say the last time I watched anything on that channel.
I had friends over to watch VDs and what happens? same old trick GO keep on playing!!! I’ve pretty much given up on that useless channel. I started buying cheap season packs of my fav shows and watching elsewhere ( which I’d prefer not to )
BTW. I tried to watch Between the Lines as I’m a sports nut, but it wasn’t great.. 30 minutes and I had to give it away and throw a Mad Men S4 disc in the player.
I am so over the Nine network.
if it was really dropped for Eddie’s new sports show, then it truly shows Ch 9 have no idea how to tailor programming to audiences… as if there would be many people who watched VD who’d watch a sports show?
What next? Ch 9 cancelling shows on other channels?
I’m sorry, but its the viewers fault.
How can they expect to trust GO! with shows with Mon$y forcing their programming decisions.
There is a very simple answer to their problems.
Torrents.
what annoys me (well not as much as Vamp Diaries being pulled) is that they have a facebook and twitter but refuse to respond to criticism. Isn’t the point of social media to respond to feedback and connect with viewers?
I hope the GO! Programming department read all the feedback and realise they have stuffed up.
GO! has competition now with One, Eleven and 7Mate. I loved GO! when it first started. It has now lost its way.
Haven’t seen last nights ratings yet but I predict Nine will be 3rd and GO! will get less viewers than most other digital channels.
When I read it here that it was not going to be shown I was wanting it to be an early April’s Fool Joke. I’ll admit I’m not upset as I watch the repeats due to conflicting timeslots. If they do put it on next week. Make sure it gets into the paper TV guides. Because is it on next week? What time? I hope the repeat also happens the same week. As I might not be able to watch especially on a Thursday or a Monday. I just wish they’d get if they have to change something announce it the week before during a promo. Then advertise the change. I actually watch the channel and its promos and I’m sure I’m not the only one. Especially with Fringe on. But I guess their habit of surprise changes is just too engrained. Sigh.
By the way David how did the last minute switches rate? Not to mention the other show on Nine on at 8.30pm?
As if a single vampire diaries viewer would have gone on to watch 9 when they did this, they would go anywhere but (I went to 11). Unless their copy was damaged or there was some other technical problem there is no excuse. But surely if they had a good reason they would have stated it in order to dampen some of this outrage. That between the lines theory sounds just like them but would not have worked at all, massive backfire.