So long, Veronica Mars, we hardly knew ya.

Despite a last minute surge in a fan-based effort to keep the show alive, series creator Rob Thomas recently told TV Guide columnist Michael Ausiello the inevitable bad news: television's youngest P.I. is indeed no more, officially dead and canceled after three seasons of lackluster ratings.

A critical darling and cult fan favorite, the weekly drama was a bottom dweller in the Nielsens from the very beginning. Although excellently crafted, intelligently written and well acted, the Rob Thomas-created series just never caught on with the masses, first with UPN and then on the UPN-WB merged CW. Despite ample support from those networks, improved time slots and various strong lead-ins, the television powers-that-be finally concluded that the ratings struggle was just too great to overcome.

Still, they gave it a chance. For three seasons. Sixty-five episodes. Fans of the show can't complain, not with full boxes of DVDs sitting on their shelves. What about the fans of the recent FOX series Drive? A drama about an illegal cross-country road race with a $32 million prize, it had the same excellently crafted, intelligently written and well-acted attributes as Veronica Mars. But despite heavy promotion by FOX, a two-hour Sunday night premiere and a prime Monday time slot, it lasted only four episodes before the plug was pulled. The reason? Poor ratings.

Which raises the question: what exactly is television? An entertainment medium, sure, that is in the business of making money. Nothing wrong with that. This is America, after all. But big screen motion pictures are also an entertainment medium in the business of making money. And, yes, the Spider Mans and Shreks and Pirates of the Caribbeans pull down the big dough, just like the CSIs and Two and a Half Men pull down the big ratings. But Hollywood also produces excellently crafted, intelligently written and well-acted motion pictures that don't reach the status of blockbusters. These aren't judged by their money-making abilities but, rather, the critical acclaim and Oscar-worthy potential that they exhibit.

If Hollywood can have it both ways — the strictly-for-the-money popcorn fares and the intelligent, sophisticated critical darlings — why can't television? As a medium, after all, it actually offers more opportunities. Some seasons of 24, for example, are better than the majority of the spy-thrillers Hollywood has ever made. And despite many excellent big-screen comic-book adaptations, can any of them really stack up against what Heroes has been able to accomplish in its twenty-two episode first season?

Truth is, American television viewers are willing to accept (and watch) the intelligent fare as well as the strictly-for-entertainment shows. Rating for Heroes and Lost (whose supposed viewership "erosion" has been greatly exaggerated when you factor in nontraditional mediums like Tivo, the Internet, iTunes and DVDs) prove this. And, yeah, those ratings may indeed be aberrations, considering how many quality shows are canceled before their time. But if Hollywood can accept lower box office numbers for critical faves as long as they are coupled with the big money makers, why can't network television?

Three of the most intelligent comedies of this decade — My Name Is Earl, The Office, and the canceled Arrested Development — are/were not ratings blockbusters, but do have that critical-stamp of excellence. Rupert Murdoch, however, on whose FOX network Arrested Development originally aired, once referred to that particular show as "elitist," and he didn't mean it as a compliment. In truth, Arrested Development simply refused to "dumb down" to a "lowest common denominator" as so many mediocre sitcoms do, but tried to raise the bar instead. It assumed the opposite of so many other shows — that we are not all idiots — and aimed for a higher level of comedy in the same way as The Office and My Name Is Earl. And what is so wrong with that? Why can't network executives accept that fact?

The television industry is changing. The axioms of the past, such as "appointment television" and "Must-See-TV," no longer imply what they used to, because we now have the ability to not just watch a show during its regularly scheduled time period, but anytime we want. Online even. Downloaded from iTunes. Via On-Demand cable or TV-On-DVD. Even the word "television" itself isn't what it used to be, not with computers, iPods and portable DVD players. If the medium distribution methods are changing, shouldn't the "content" decision-making process change as well? Instead of marketing to the masses, can't there likewise be marketing to a niche segment of the audience?

In the fall of 2006, NBC premiered a new series called Kidnapped, a drama following the kidnapping of the son of a rich businessman. It opened to poor ratings, and was eventually canceled. NBC, however, felt obligated to the fans of the show and still ordered thirteen episodes, allowing the creators and writers to complete the story, albeit in a shorter time span. Those episodes were released online, at the NBC web site, once a week for viewing; a DVD collection of all thirteen episodes then came out this past April, all of which proves that in this day and age, failed television shows do indeed have an afterlife, and can even still make money.

Don't believe me? One final point, then. The Academy Award winner for Best Picture in 2005 (announced in March 2006) was Crash. According to Amazon.com, it was their nineteenth biggest DVD seller last year. Number eleven, however, was Firefly: The Complete Series. Firefly was an excellently crafted, intelligently written and well acted FOX television series canceled, due to poor ratings, after eleven episodes on December 13, 2002. Firefly: The Complete Series was released on DVD on December 9, 2003.

Which means that three years after its premature cancellation, and two years after its initial release on DVD, this "failed" television series sold more copies, at least on Amazon.com, than the newly crowned Academy Award-winning best picture. Enough said.

— Anthony Letizia (anthonyletizia at hotmail dot com)