F Starz!

Trying to think of what my favorite live-action 30-minute sitcoms were, but the list sorta peters out after Arrested Development, NewsRadio, and Seinfeld.

I loved Sports Night but it's got a lotta Sorkin being Sorkin that doesn't hold up as well on repeated viewings, and I feel like it's too early to judge current shows. I also think The Simpsons could and should be included on this list.

Oh, definitely agree on both points. I had to rewind when I first watched it because I figured it out when I did and was howling the rest of the way through. And the moment of revelation was great too... "'They just want money'... wait a minute... 'blond hair, blue eyes'... hey, doesn't 'My Struggle' mean... oh, ****."

The bummer about Party Down's cancellation is that I think it could have worked with a rotating cast and crew, and with the super-meta level that the show parallels the real-life fortune of its actors (since, more or less, they'd all be working on Party Down until they got their "big break").

QFT!

Completely agree with this! The Henry segue is so easy based on where the current storyline is (he gets the job on the indie movie) - it's perfectly organic to the series to replace him with yet another dead beat out of work actor or writer.

And I don't have the numbers (yeah obviously the linear view of the finale is going to draw really low numbers, Starz is only in like 19 million homes compared to a universe of 114.8M TV homes, and I believe it airs on Friday nights), but it felt like the series was gaining some critical mass, doesn't it?

******ed Starz programmers - what are they going to replace it with? If they're not just completely cutting budget, let's keep our eyes out for their next half-hour series - it is sure to be much worse than Party Down on every level.

-Al

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J9SKnMHRbiw

Stumbled across this on Youtube.

The characters all watch True Blood, obv.

1. Arrested Development
2. Cheers
3. Scrubs
4. CYE
5. Friends

Sucks it got cancelled, but not surprising. Would've liked one more season where they knew it was the last though.

I remember reading in the early spring somewhere that the Starz miniseries The Pillars of the Earth with Ian McShane went insanely over budget. Wonder if it had anything to do with it.

wonder if netflix helps or hurts Starz? not sure what kinda contract they have.

There has to be a network smart enough to pick up the show, although I guess it only makes sense for premium channels (HBO/Cinemax/Showtime).

If HBO had this show and paired it with one of their other successes on Sunday night, this show would get a pretty decent following (maybe similar to Flight of the Conchords).

if party down had started on HBO it would have slayed i think. whichever suit greenlights hung and passes on party down should be dropped off in tijuana.

+1000, I wouldnt be shocked to see HBO or SHO pick this up. They both loved the Pilot when they were pitching the idea they just decided not to because they didnt think theyre fan base was the type for the show, but if they loved it and now that they see its a quality show and should be able to get a backing they might, who knows.

SHO did pick it up... and canceled it.

fml, this was my new favorite show too.

I just heard about Party Down getting canceled, I'm a sad panda. I had heard that Adam Scott was going on to do The Office, which I do enjoy, then I read that he was going on Parks and Recreation, which I've watched once or twice and and didn't really like.

Party Down had a great cast, great guest spots, great writing... sigh

I hope Martin Starr gets a new show


and Ken Marino as well...

Edit: was just searching around and I had never heard of this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Childrens%27_Hospital
looks like a pretty good cast, anyone watched it?

Reedit: webisode 1 of Childrens' Hospital is on youtube, figured fans of Party Down might be interested http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hs5Qb...eature=related

Its a pretty good cast, it has Megan Mullaly(Lidia from PD) as well. They are really short episodes but pretty good stuff. Adult Swim picked it up and and will be airing the first 10 starting July 11th, then new epsiodes in August.

Edit to say that Adam Scott will not be on The Office at all and you should catch up on S2 of PNR. Its very very good.

I like Party Down a lot, but the last season of Parks and Rec way better than PD and if you enjoyed Scott on this I imagine he'll be fantastic on P&R.

damn I have stayed out of this thread because I just starting watching. Just finished the episode with "The Gutte". Brilliant imo. My favorite episode thus far. I had never even heard of this show until like 2 weeks ago because of this forum. Starz sucks.

Can't believe it is getting canceled. That makes me sad.

Anyone watch Children's Hospital last night? It featured Ken Marino, Megan Mulally, Nick Offerman, and alot of other funny people. It was only 15 minutes but it was pretty funny.

Here's the AV Club's write up:
http://www.avclub.com/articles/child...ospital,42862/

Just getting into this show, love it so far. Great to hear it's cancelled.

To be fair, it seems that viewers of this show are highly skewed to the downloading demographic. How many people in this thread actually watched it on Starz?

The show basically didn't have ratings because it was available in so many other formats. There was never going to be a viewership driven case for keeping it around.

George Soros should fund it imo.

The finale also aired 2 weeks ahead of the actual "finale", if that makes any sense. By the time the advertised finale was on Starz, a lot of viewers had already seen the episode.

Is that true? I didn't realize that was the case. That's surprising and pretty interesting (and of course very unusual windowing, to pre-release vs. the main linear air on Starz). But I doubt this had anything to do with Party Down being canceled.

First, as Dids pointed out, it's not entirely about viewership at this stage in the game for Starz. It's alot more about finding a building block to gain credibility as a premium cable network that airs quality scripted series (the HBO playbook) - that being said, the total viewership still matters because that directly impacts the economics on both 1) their Starz deals with cable operators, and 2) their Netflix deal (the better asset they have, the more they can go back to the negotiating table for).

I would guess that Starz has a pretty solid deal w/r/t the economics with Netflix (ie what they were getting paid per sub) - so I don't think they cared all that much if someone watched on Netflix vs. Starz. In fact, it's completely possible that a Netflix viewer for Party Down is worth more to Starz Ent. than a Starz cable viewer is.

Also, when you consider that Starz is a cable network that is in only 22M homes, Netflix has 14M subs or so with about half actively streaming... while there's probably decent overlap between Starz and Netflix homes, there is probably, overall, increased reach with the Netflix deal, hence likely increased viewership of their programming.

So the fact that Starz was on other platforms wasn't an issue I think (this wouldn't be true for cable networks or broadcast networks that have much larger footprints, and cannibalization is a much larger concern).

As a point of reference - HBO is in about 33M homes in a total universe of 115M homes - and HBO Sunday night scripted series can beat the broadcast networks in ratings - that's of course Starz' ultimate goal with a scripted block.

-Al