The conspiracy to cancel Dark Skies
VERSION #2 Updated May 2, 1997
By now, most of you know the litany of injustice: bad time- slot, constant pre-emptions, no repeats, little promotion after getting on-the-air and misguided critics acting like somebody else owned the copyright to UFOs and government conspiracy. It all adds up to a show on the verge of extinction. Just another one-season wonder, destined to fade into distant memory.
Do you have to accept this fate for a show you care about? Not necessarily. After all, John Loengard had to face an alien invasion that went after the woman he loved and threatened to destroy the planet, as well as a government which felt it was more important to keep the secret than to tell the people. He fought back and spoke out and you can, too.
While producing our twenty hours of programming during the past season, I have kept close watch on the message boards and web sites. I understand your frustration. Since NBC put the show into a record-breaking nine-week pre-emption last March 15, many of you have no idea what's happening. Since then my e-mail box has overflowed with messages telling me to do something to keep "Dark Skies" on-the-air.
The truth is simply this. A writer/producer can't save the show. Only a genuine expression from you, the fans well timed, clearly stated and numerically significant can do that. You have the power and you can use it if you choose to.
THIS LETTER WILL MAKE CLEAR EXACTLY WHAT OUR SITUATION IS AND IT WILL GIVE YOU CONCRETE, SPECIFIC SUGGESTIONS FOR HOW YOU CAN BRING THE SERIES BACK FOR A SECOND SEASON.
In order to pull this off, you have to make a lot of noise to the right people. You have to start NOW, and keep it up for several weeks. Not only will your communications get the attention of the Powers-That-Be, but the Media will get wind of your passion. That will give legitimacy to your effort and, possibly, create a miracle.
Let's get one thing in perspective. Only because NBC is the #1 network in a mass medium is the show ready to fold. You are not an insignificant group. At least seven million people each week (and often more) fought to watch the show, against all the odds.
The way to flex your muscles is to start COMMUNICATING your case. In the world of swaying network decision makers, there is a clear hierarchy as to what works best.
AN HONEST-TO-GOD LETTER ('SNAIL MAIL') STILL GETS THE BEST RESULT.
It tells them you cared enough to write something, to find an envelope and to pay 32 cents to mail it to them. That's commitment. It also forces them to open and process these letters. That's consciousness.
After letters, try phone calls and e-mail. Send a telegram. Stir up your friends and fellow fans. Whatever else you can think of. This has to be your Resistance, not mine.
NBC will announce its fall schedule on May 12th. They are already locking it in. For example, The Pretender and Profiler (the other two-thirds of the Thrillogy) have just been given full-season orders. Although I have not received any notification, it's been reported that they have cancelled us. It's not official, however, until it's announced May 12, 1997 at a big bash in New York City.
To use the E/R take, our show is on life support, and our NBC family is about to pull the plug. We have to talk them out of it. There is time, but it is running out fast. Here's how to get in touch with NBC:
Warren Littlefield
President, NBC
3000 West Alameda Avenue,
Burbank, California 91523
(818) 840-4444
darkskies@nbc.com
Tell Warren Littlefield how much Dark Skies has meant to you. Tell him how hard it's been for you to establish a regular appointment with the show like other fans do with hit series like Friends and E/R. If you record the show on your VCR, break off one of those little black recording tabs, and tape it to your letter. Tell him about the friends you've shown your videotape to who are never measured by Nielsen ratings. After you've written Littlefield, you may want to fire off something to Don Ohlmeyer, the man whose original enthusiasm caused him to actually buy Dark Skies for NBC in the first place. Ohlmeyer can be reached at the same address.
While you're at it, you may want to mention Robin Cooke's: Invasion, a four hour mini-series which airs the first week of May (Sunday/Monday). Tell NBC to order up the real thing (Dark Skies) for a second season since they obviously believe that alien invasion can be an audience grabber for them. Ask them how well they think we would have done given the time slot for Invasion.
Having said all this, however, understand this is not about bashing NBC (at least from my perspective). They gave us the biggest promotional send-off in the network's history. Also, the creative executives we dealt with, David Nevins and John Landgraf, gave us the support to do the show we set out to do with very little interference.
HERE'S WHERE OUR LITTLE GUERILLA SAVE-THE-SHOW MOVEMENT GETS UNCONVENTIONAL.
Ordinarily, griping to NBC would be it. Historically, viewers write the network which is about to cancel their favorite show and tell them not to. The networks, naturally, do it anyway. The fans are upset, but there's no recourse and they eventually forget about it. Well, this internet which binds you together isn't the only sign of changing times.
For starters, we don't live in a three network universe anymore. There are five other networks besides NBC now, multiple cable outlets, and syndicators, all competing for the best product. In other words, there are OPTIONS. In the past few years, several shows have gone from one network to another. Last season, NBC cancelled JAG but CBS picked it up. Also last season, ABC cancelled The Jeff Foxworthy Show but NBC put it on their schedule. They also picked up Tea Leone's The Naked Truth from another network. This kind of thing is happening more and more it's something of a trend.
This is probably the show's best bet, turning this increasing possibility of musical chairs to work for you. Once you've made your point to NBC, keep right on going. Write to everyone else: ABC, CBS, FBC, UPN, WBN.
You see, right now Hollywood is in the final hours of pilot season. All the series pilots have already been shot, and are in final editing before delivery to their respective networks. It's all part of this insane ritual the networks do every May when they get the pilot films, look at them quickly, get lobbied by the production companies, make some last-minute changes and then go off to New York for several weeks of parties as they announce the schedules. Decisions are being made and changed, even as you read this.
IT IS NEVER TOO LATE. LAST YEAR, NBC DECIDED THE FRIDAY BEFORE THE MONDAY ANNOUNCEMENT TO PUT DARK SKIES ON THEIR SCHEDULE!
So, if you want to have an impact on some of these other network executives, you still can. These are the names and addresses you'll need for that campaign:
UPN announces its schedule on May 20th. Many people think this could be our best shot. If our audience came over to UPN, we'd be a bona fide hit, at least as big or bigger than Star Trek: Voyager. Their other sci-fi drama, The Burning Zone, came in dead last in the ratings last week. They could use us and SONY (our production company) could make them an attractive financial deal.
Lucie Salhaney
President, UPN
11800 Wilshire Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90025
(310) 575-7000
http://www.upn.com/email2.html
CBS-TV announces its schedule on May 22nd. Last year when SONY sold Dark Skies to NBC, they were very interested in buying it themselves. This could be their second chance.
Les Moonves
President, CBS-TV
7800 Beverly Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90036
(213) 852-2345
audsvcs@cbs.com
ABC-TV announces its schedule on May 19th. They've gone through a lot of changes this year but Jamie Tarses, the new president, was at NBC when Dark Skies was being developed. Also, ABC knows that our time slot (8 pm, Saturdays) is a show killer. They just moved Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman into the slot and it's getting crushed. The ratings for that show are far worse than ours ever were.
Jamie Tarses
President, ABC-TV
2040 Avenue of the Stars
Los Angeles, CA 90067
(310) 557-7777
FBC-TV announces its schedule on May 20th. They're a natural for a show like ours, except for the fact that they also have The X-Files and Chris Carter has made it clear he doesn't much like us around. We've heard that he's even forbidden any Thrillogy writers from ever being considered for one of his shows. Fortunately, Chris isn't running the network yet. For the time being, you can write to:
Peter Roth
President, FBC-TV
10201 W. Pico Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90035
(310) 369-1000
WBN announces its schedule on May 13th. This could be a longer shot than most since they seem to be aiming for ethnic comedies but, as with UPN, if even half our NBC audience transferred over to them, they'd have a hit on their hands.
Jamie Kellner
President, WBN
4000 Warner Blvd.
Burbank, CA 91522
(818) 977-5000
Tell the presidents of these other five networks that you watch Dark Skies and that if NBC is foolish enough to cancel us and they're smart enough to pick us up, you will follow the show to their network. Don't forget to mention that you will tell all your friends what a terrific network they have become thanks to this enlightened decision.
Hopefully, you will all be able to weave what you've seen of the series on-the-air so far, what you've thought and felt, conversations with friends, and the rest of this letter, into some heart-felt arguments for Dark Skies.
So what happened? How did a series which began with the biggest promotional push in the entire history of the NBC network end up at the bottom of the heap for the season in need of a letter-writing campaign to keep it alive?
It started with our time slot. Saturday nights are historically the worst viewing nights. People go out, they party, they see movies, and they have dinner. They don't maintain regular viewing habits.
The 8 o'clock slot on Saturday nights is the worst time slot on the worst night. Granted, our competition, Doctor Quinn: Medicine Woman, did well there but their family audience is home watching TV while ours tended to be out having a life. And, even so, Quinn has been on for a number of years and had time to build an audience.
Some people thought that even if we were on Saturdays we should have been on at 9 or 10 o'clock. Our concepts were adult, they reasoned, and so were our story lines. The Pretender, in contrast, seemed much more acceptable to a younger, family audience. They got a try-out in our time slot and, apparently, NBC is going to give The Pretender the 8 o'clock slot next season. That series was even exposed twice in the coveted E/R time slot this season. Dark Skies never was tried anywhere on the schedule but its original death slot.
Death slot or not, if people are going to even have a chance to watch, you still have to be on-the-air. It's the immutable law of TV. We routinely ran across people in our internet chat groups who saw the show mentioned in their local TV listings but couldn't find it on the tube because local stations had pre-empted us for everything from college basketball to Billy Graham. Those people got upset and angry and I don't know if they ever came back.
Many of you were also upset by all the network scheduled pre-emptions. After only two airings, for example, we were taken off the schedule for two weeks by NBC because of the baseball play-offs and the World Series. We faced four more sets of pre-emptions of two to three weeks each time. Networks have to pre-empt, of course, because they don't make as many episodes as there are weeks in the year, but often they run re-runs or promos telling your audience when you'll be back.
We were never repeated at all this season, not once. Even when we went into a pre-empt, there was never a notice at the end of one of our last shows when the next show would air. On the other hand, both The Pretender and Profiler had multiple repeats.
Because of the sporadic exposure for Dark Skies, as early as October many viewers simply assumed the series was cancelled. My own friends thought this and the constant rumor on all our web sites all year long was that NBC had taken us off the air for good. This is not the kind of environment in which a series can hold an audience, let alone build one.
Why the preferential treatment of one show over another? Well, both The Pretender and Profiler are either owned or partially owned by NBC-TV. I have no evidence that this has made a difference, but there are people in the business who tell me it probably did. A few years ago, the U-S Congress allowed the networks to own their own shows instead of buying them from others. It was supposed to increase competition but it's had the opposite effect. After all, is it any wonder that a network would care more about a series in which it has a financial interest?
There were other obstacles to our success which went beyond NBC programming choices. Fox, for example, runs network programming at 8 o'clock and they don't at 10 o'clock. We had to face Fox's Cops which, with its heavy male appeal, struck straight at our core audience every airing while Profiler faced only local news. Plus, depending on your local station, we often found ourselves up against Hercules and Star Trek, splitting the sci-fi crowd even further.
Speaking of something that hurt us badly at the first of the year was the perception in the sci-fi community that we were an X-Files rip-off. This was the easy hook for critics to use in writing their reviews. It soon became a loyalty test. You couldn't like Dark Skies if you liked X-Files. This makes no more sense, of course, than telling viewers they couldn't like NYPD Blue and Homicide or that once they made Bonanza nobody could ever make another western without ripping it off.
Eventually people who watched Dark Skies decided, for better or worse, we were not the same show at all, but the perception cut into our natural constituency, and we were only beginning to recover from it in the last few months.
Around the rest of the planet, however, critics and audiences alike were more receptive to the uniqueness of what we were up to. In England, where we are on weeknights at 9 o'clock without pre-emptions, we're getting a 21 share, tied with the E/R numbers. Dark Skies is currently a world-wide series, airing in Germany, South Africa, Australia, Brazil, etc. It's doing well in all these countries. We have web sites all over the globe. SONY gets enough money from these international sales that all they need to keep things financially viable is a US buyer. Anybody will do.
All of this damn near created a situation where people in the rest of the world got to see all the episodes but those of you in the United States did not. Fortunately, that will not happen. You will still have the opportunity to see how the season turned out. NBC is still planning on airing the final two episodes.
Strangers in the Night will air May 24th. Our season finale, Bloodlines, will air on May 31st. There is more story packed into Bloodlines than a normal five episodes. Mark your calendars for that one.
That final episode takes you to San Francisco in the Summer of Love where you'll meet Timothy Leary, Carl Sagan, Ronald Reagan and Charlie Manson, among others. You'll find out what happens to Kim, whether John finds his son or not, and you'll hear about a tenth planet, Project Intruder, and the bloodlines concept.
This potentially final episode is a terrific example of what has made Dark Skies unique: Big Ideas, Outrageous Concepts, and Twisted History. In fact, when you write NBC tell them to actually watch this episode before it airs on May 31st. Tell them to consider it a bonus pilot, and to compare it to what they've just shelled out a lot of money to produce. When you write the other networks, tell them to call SONY and ask for a copy themselves.
Your priority is to write NBC first, then to try the other five networks who are setting their schedules in the next couple of weeks. However, you needn't stop there.
KEEP HOPE ALIVE.
Write the Sci-Fi Channel. They wanted to pick us up and we even had a meeting to that effect. The problem is they don't have the money. Maybe buried under an avalanche of letters they'd find some more. At the very least, badger them to buy the first 20 hours and put them on right away. The Sci-Fi Channel is owned and operated by the USA Network.
Rod Perth
USA Network - Los Angeles
2049 Century Park East, Suite 2550
Los Angeles, CA. 90067
Write HBO and Showtime. We could really do a memorable show on a cable channel. Imagine Dark Skies unleashed no restrictions on nudity, language, violence and certainly none on sheer outrageous energy.
HBO Original Programming
2049 Century Park East, Suite 4200
Los Angeles, CA. 90067
http://www.hbo.com/cmp.feedback.html
Showtime Networks, Inc.
10880 Wilshire Blvd., Suites 1500 1600
Los Angeles, CA. 90024
Bottom line: there is time, but it is running out. If you've read this letter on a website posting, tell other fans about it. If you've had it attached and e-mailed to you, attach and e-mail it to as many of your friends and fellow travelers as you can. Make this the international chain letter that sets the standard for fan activism in the new Millennium.
Let's start our own little conspiracy. Maybe we'll save the show. But if any guys in black suits and shades come to your door asking where you got these addresses we never had this conversation. Okay?
Resist Singularity,
BRYCE ZABEL
Co-Creator, Executive Producer Dark Skies
#================================================================
KEEPING THE SKIES DARK
Fan Campaign to Save "Dark Skies"
Phase Two
Updated May 12, 1997
NBC officially announced today that they will not have Dark Skies on the fall schedule. This is what we expected. Fan's letters, e-mail, telegrams and faxes to them, however, have already helped by starting decision-makers in Hollywood talking about your efforts. Now, your attention must turn to finding the new home for the series.
Your communications fire-power now goes in the direction of the other networks, who announce their schedules after NBC. In reality, it was a bonus that the Peacock went first because it leaves everyone else open to your persuasion. Those crucial new players are:
Jamie Tarses
President, ABC-TV
2040 Avenue of the Stars
Los Angeles, CA 90067
(310) 557-7777
Announces schedule on May 19.
Peter Roth
President, FBC-TV
10201 W. Pico Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90035
(310) 369-1000
Announces schedule on May 20.
Lucie Salhaney (President, UPN)
and/or
Kerry McCluggage
(Chairman, Paramount Television Group)
11800 Wilshire Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90025
(310) 575-7000
http://www.upn.com/email2.html
High Priority! Announces schedule on May 20.
Les Moonves
President, CBS-TV
7800 Beverly Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90036
(213) 852-2345
audsvcs@cbs.com
Wanted Dark Skies last year. Anounces schedule May 22.
Rod Perth
USA Network - Los Angeles
Attention: Sci-Fi Channel
2049 Century Park East, Suite 2550
Los Angeles, CA. 90067
Already expressed interest in "Dark Skies."
HBO Original Programming
2049 Century Park East, Suite 4200
Los Angeles, CA. 90067
http://www.hbo.com/cmp.feedback.html
Showtime Networks, Inc.
10880 Wilshire Blvd., Suites 1500 - 1600
Los Angeles, CA. 90024
The explanations for low ratings on NBC are as follows:
* Worst time slot (8pm) on worst viewing night (Saturday).
* Early and consistent pre-emptions.
* No repeats.
* No real promos after the launch of the series.
* Because of this, many potential viewers thought the show was cancelled.
* Most potential viewers of this material are out on Saturday night anyway.
Key points to make to these people:
* You will follow Dark Skies to their network and tell your friends.
* Based on people you know, Dark Skies was just starting to find an audience.
* Dark Skies will work much better on their network than it did on NBC.
* Like X-Files and Star Trek, Dark Skies needs a second season to really take off.
Remember, when communicating your thoughts to network executives, a real letter (snail mail) works best. It tells them you care enough to write something, to find an envelope and to pay 32 cents to mail it to them. That's commitment. It also forces them to open and process these letters. That's consciousness.
So let's go out and raise a little more of it in Hollywood ...