Mimi Q
<font color=blue>Can't wait to ride it<br><font co
- Joined
- Feb 19, 2000
- Messages
- 5,887
By Joal Ryan
Last spring, Fox decided not enough people were watching Playing It Straight on free TV. Nine months later, it wants to see how many people are willing to watch the canceled reality series as a pay-per-view download.
All eight episodes of Playing It Straight, including the five unaired installments, will be available for $1.99 a pop, or $9.99 for the whole season, at Fox.com starting Monday.
"This is an experiment," Fox spokesman Scott Grogin said Friday. "We're going to see what the response is. There was a fairly vocal fan base for Playing It Straight. This is simply an opportunity to test the system."
In a lesser test of audience endurance, Fox will give away the final five episodes of the failed reality spoof My Big Fat Obnoxious Boss on its Website. Those shows, which may be posted within the next two weeks, will be able to be viewed for free.
Playing It Straight, in which a female college student was asked to sort through 14 men, most of them gay, to find the straight one who would be the love of her prime-time life, aired last March. Fans complained its Friday time slot doomed the show from the start.
My Big Fat Obnoxious Boss, starring William August as a faux Donald Trump out to torment would-be business tycoons who thought they were being put through the paces by a real Donald Trump, bombed in its November debut despite heavy promotion during the World Series. The show averaged 4 million viewers in its five prime-time broadcasts.
As reality shows have faltered this season, Fox, in particular, has gotten creative in figuring out how to extricate itself from bad situations, while serving the viewer who, for example, must know if Jackie the coed found her heterosexual.
Last summer, the network used its Website to post recaps of all the unaired Playing It Straight episodes. (Not-quite spoiler: Jackie's gaydar failed her not. In the finale, she selected Banks, a California software consultant who likes girls, as her go-to guy.)
And last fall, Fox burned off remaining episodes of its KO'd boxing reality series, The Next Great Champ, on one of its sports cable outlets. NBC pulled a similar stunt with the most recent edition of Last Comic Standing, shipping off its season finale to Comedy Central.
Fox did not consider Playing It Straight or My Big Fat Obnoxious Boss for cable runs, Grogin said.
Earlier this week, CBS wrote off The Will, a reality show about kinfolk battling for an Arizona rancher's property, after just one little-watched episode.
There was no word on whether the network planned to announce the The Will winner somewhere, somehow. Or if anyone cared.
Last spring, Fox decided not enough people were watching Playing It Straight on free TV. Nine months later, it wants to see how many people are willing to watch the canceled reality series as a pay-per-view download.
All eight episodes of Playing It Straight, including the five unaired installments, will be available for $1.99 a pop, or $9.99 for the whole season, at Fox.com starting Monday.
"This is an experiment," Fox spokesman Scott Grogin said Friday. "We're going to see what the response is. There was a fairly vocal fan base for Playing It Straight. This is simply an opportunity to test the system."
In a lesser test of audience endurance, Fox will give away the final five episodes of the failed reality spoof My Big Fat Obnoxious Boss on its Website. Those shows, which may be posted within the next two weeks, will be able to be viewed for free.
Playing It Straight, in which a female college student was asked to sort through 14 men, most of them gay, to find the straight one who would be the love of her prime-time life, aired last March. Fans complained its Friday time slot doomed the show from the start.
My Big Fat Obnoxious Boss, starring William August as a faux Donald Trump out to torment would-be business tycoons who thought they were being put through the paces by a real Donald Trump, bombed in its November debut despite heavy promotion during the World Series. The show averaged 4 million viewers in its five prime-time broadcasts.
As reality shows have faltered this season, Fox, in particular, has gotten creative in figuring out how to extricate itself from bad situations, while serving the viewer who, for example, must know if Jackie the coed found her heterosexual.
Last summer, the network used its Website to post recaps of all the unaired Playing It Straight episodes. (Not-quite spoiler: Jackie's gaydar failed her not. In the finale, she selected Banks, a California software consultant who likes girls, as her go-to guy.)
And last fall, Fox burned off remaining episodes of its KO'd boxing reality series, The Next Great Champ, on one of its sports cable outlets. NBC pulled a similar stunt with the most recent edition of Last Comic Standing, shipping off its season finale to Comedy Central.
Fox did not consider Playing It Straight or My Big Fat Obnoxious Boss for cable runs, Grogin said.
Earlier this week, CBS wrote off The Will, a reality show about kinfolk battling for an Arizona rancher's property, after just one little-watched episode.
There was no word on whether the network planned to announce the The Will winner somewhere, somehow. Or if anyone cared.
