Networks' disappearing acts make viewers vanish

In a perfect world, some of the executives at ABC would take the blame for allowing arguably the most buzzed-about fall show to lose steam and direction and fade into irrelevance.

"FlashForward" had a killer pilot and tons of promotion. It was a big-budget, cinematic thriller with an intriguing premise: Everybody in the world blacks out at the same time for two minutes and 17 seconds. Most of them have visions about the future - some of those horrific or dangerous - and now there's six months to change the future.

That got people talking - and watching. The premiere pulled in 12.4 million viewers, and "FlashForward" appeared to be rocketing toward hitsville. But there was trouble with the show runner and trouble in the direction of the series, which resulted in a lag in viewership. After only 10 episodes, from late September to early December, ABC pulled it off the schedule and said it would be back later. Like, say, March.

That's a long time to go missing, with all kinds of new and popular returning series vying for viewers. On March 18, "FlashForward" returned with a thud: 6.6 million viewers. On Thursday, only 6.2 million showed up - half the premiere's number.

So was it the show, or was it the scheduling? Both, assuredly, but it's never a good idea to yank a show off the air unless you have the home phone number of everybody who watched in the first place. People need reminders. The television industry is not good at reminders.

In fact, it's not very good at getting a clue about a message that viewers have been sending for ages: The shell game and disappearing acts so prevalent in programming are killing you.

Viewers have been very clear about this: Don't move my show. Don't air it as a "sneak preview" on Monday, then switch it to Wednesday for good. Don't change the time, either. And whatever you do, don't pull it off the schedule.

You'd think that would be easy to understand. But some programmers are pig-headed, and others just cling to the insular, old-school methodology and the arrogance that they are puppet masters controlling your viewing habits.

Six million people saying "no" to "FlashForward" should be a good rebuttal to that.

Not to pick on ABC, but the network had another fall buzz show in "V," which was also heavily promoted and bested "FlashForward" with an impressive 14.3 million people watching the premiere. So what did ABC do? It ran four episodes - four! - in November and pulled it off the air.

When is "V" returning? Tuesday - that's four months of forgetting about it. How will it do? Let's just say that if only 7.1 million people come back with it, someone at ABC should take a sick day.

It makes you wonder how long it will take programmers to figure out just how drastically the landscape has changed since they started in the business. More people watch cable than broadcast these days, and the sheer number of choices for a savvy (or even picky) viewer are overwhelming. When you also factor in the lack of good TV listings in newspapers and the time-consuming Internet, it's no wonder people can't be bothered to stay loyal to a show that goes missing.

But that hasn't stopped the disturbing trend of fall and winter "finales." On Thursday, Fox will bring "Bones" and "Fringe" back from their "finales," which occurred Feb. 4. (Not as bad as four months, but still.)

Tell a TV viewer that they are about to watch a "finale," and what do they think? That the season is over.

Broadcast networks are not the only guilty ones. Some cable channels abuse this practice for shows that have roughly half the episodes in a season than a broadcast series. For example, Syfy aired the "mid-season finale" of "Caprica" on Friday after nine episodes (the pilot was two hours). It's coming back in the fall. That's a long wait (Syfy has a history of breaking up seasons). USA started the third season of "Burn Notice" in August and continued it in January. What? TNT does the same thing with many of its shows.

How does this help the viewer? It doesn't. Unless you got that special phone call reminder.