RollingStones 50 Worst Decisions in TV History

[The axe murderer]

The 50 Worst Decisions in TV History

Reality TV disasters, boneheaded cancelations, cable news calamities, and more

www.rollingstone.com

Some of the entries

40

Ren and Stimpy’s Adult Party Cartoon is Allowed to Happen​

ADULTSWIM
In hindsight, the original Ren & Stimpy was a very odd fit for Nickelodeon. This was the channel of Maya the Bee and Pinwheel, where many viewers are barely out of diapers. And then suddenly this deranged show about a demented dog and cat appeared in 1991. It took place in a bizarre world of sentient farts, serial-killer horses, and a superhero named Powdered Toast Man. Ren often collapsed into psychotic, violent rages, and Stimpy had an odd fixation on boogers and body hair. Because it was on Nickelodeon, a lot of the more subversive humor was under the surface, especially when it came to sexual matters. (What exactly was their relationship?) In 2003, the good people at Spike TV commissioned new episodes of the show from series creator John Kricfalusi. It was aimed at young adults who grew up on the show, meaning that the subtext was totally stripped away. In this version of the show, Ren and Stimpy actually had sex. Stimpy even becomes pregnant at one point, ultimately giving birth to a baby made out of feces. The whole thing was even more grotesque than it sounds, and it wasn’t even remotely funny. Six episodes were made. Spike canceled it after a mere three. In 2018, Kricfalusi himself was canceled after Buzzfeed revealed he groomed and sexually harassed teenage girls in the Nineties. There have been reports about a Ren & Stimpy revival on Comedy Central, but Kricfalusi will have no involvement. For many, many reasons, that’s for the best.

MTV Gives Up and Becomes The ‘Ridiculousness’ Channel​

MTV
In the classic 2006 Mike Judge movie Idiocracy, an average guy wakes up from suspended animation 500 years into the future and finds that he’s the smartest guy on the planet. The most popular show on television is Ow My Balls!, which is nothing more than quick clips of morons getting pummeled in the nuts by angry dogs, blocks of wood, and even a giant wrecking ball. Turns out that Judge was about 495 years off, because Ridiculousness, which is basically just Ow My Balls! under a different name, premiered on MTV in 2011. To be fair, the real-life people on the show don’t always get hit in the balls. They sometimes get popped with various means of destruction in their face, back, or side. It makes America’s Funniest Home Videos look like Masterpiece Theatre. In some ways, the show is a metaphor for MTV throwing up its hands and giving up on the idea of making watchable TV at all. The network hasn’t had a genuine new hit since the days of Jersey Shore, mainly because its target audience of 18-24-year-olds spends all day either playing video games or scrolling through TikTok and Instagram, and doesn’t need TV at all. So, MTV basically just runs Ridiculousness reruns on a loop 24/7. There are occasional pauses for blocks of Catfish or even a new episode of The Challenge (which is still the best reality show on television), but most days it’s just 48 consecutive episodes of Ridiculousness. We know it’s tough out there in cable land, but surely anything is better than surrendering to an infinite loop of Ridiculousness. MTV, it’s not too late to fix this. Make a new season of Road Rules. Air these great new episodes of Beavis and Butt-head that are on Paramount+. Hell, you could even do something totally insane and out of the box and start playing music videos again! Anything is better than what’s happening right now.

 

[The axe murderer]

NBC Cancels ‘Baywatch’ After One Season​

EVERETT COLLECTION
It’s impossible to pinpoint exactly how much money Baywatch generated throughout its 11-season run, but it’s definitely in the hundreds of millions of dollars. It’s quite possibly north of a billion dollars when you factor in merch and broadcasts all across the planet. A great deal of that money could have gone to NBC, but it canceled the show in 1989 after just a single season due to low ratings and horrific reviews. David Hasselhoff knew the show had a winning formula and managed to secure a syndication deal for the it. Pamela Anderson joined in the third season, ratings skyrocketed, and it was soon broadcast in more than 140 countries. NBC came within an inch of canceling Seinfeld the same year, even though it took the network nearly a year after the pilot to air the last episode. But at least NBC held onto it. It wasn’t as smart when it came to Baywatch.

 

[The axe murderer]

Quibi Burns $1.75 Billion In Eight Months​

DANIEL BOCZARSKI/GETTY IMAGES FOR QUIBI
The internet has decimated attention spans to the point where many people don’t have the patience for videos longer than the quick hits you see on Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube. That’s why Jeffrey Katzenberg felt a subscription streaming platform built around short-form videos roughly 10-minutes in length would be a big hit. He managed to raise an astounding $1.75 billion for Quibi, which launched in April 2020 with a massive library featuring 175 different shows. It’s very hard to imagine worse timing. This was the first full month of Covid lockdowns. People had endless time on their hands and they were hungry for long-form content they could watch on TV, not short-form content built for their phones. Quibi sputtered along until December before it pulled the plug and sold off its catalog to Roku for less than $100 million. Quibi might as well have taken a billion dollars and thrown it into a bonfire.

 

[The axe murderer]

HBO, TNT, Showtime, FX Turn Down ‘Breaking Bad’​

DOUG HYUN/AMC
When Vince Gilligan wrote the pilot for Breaking Bad, he initially pitched it to TNT. “They say, ‘If we bought this, we’d be fired,'” Gilligan recalled. “‘We cannot put this on TNT, it’s meth, it can’t be meth, it’s reprehensible.'” He then went over to HBO. “The woman we [were] pitching to [at HBO] could not have been less interested,” he said. “Not even in my story, but about whether I actually lived or died.” Showtime turned it down because the premise felt too similar to Weeds, but FX actually did agree to buy it. The deal didn’t last long since it felt it had too many other dark shows about antiheroes. “Look, it was a wonderful script,” FX President John Landgraf said several years later. “If I had known Vince Gilligan was going to be one of the best showrunners in television, and Breaking Bad was going to be literally one of the very best shows in television, I would have picked it up despite the concept. But the truth of the matter is, anybody who does what I do for a living, who’s honest, will tell you that you’re making decisions based on too-little information all the time, and you make good ones and you make bad ones.”

 

[The axe murderer]

Fox Passes on the ‘Sopranos’​

HBO
Here’s a list of television shows that Fox decided to bring onto its airwaves in 1999: the Jay Mohr Hollywood satire Action (canceled after eight episodes), the shameless Who Wants to Be a Millionaire knockoff Greed (canceled before it could even give out the grand prize), and the Chris Carter-produced science fiction show Harsh Realm, about humans trapped in a virtual simulation (canceled after nine episodes). Here’s the name of a show they rejected after reading a script for the pilot: The Sopranos. This gave HBO the opportunity to pick up the show, creating an entirely new era of television where networks like Fox became hopelessly passé. The shift of quality programming from broadcast TV to cable and eventually streaming would have likely happened anyway, and The Sopranos probably wouldn’t have worked on Fox, but it was still an enormous mistake for the network to turn down arguably the greatest show in the history of television. (CBS was willing to take a chance on David Chase’s ambitious project, but it wanted to ditch the psychiatry angle.)

 

[Erratic415]

Cop Rock did give us this masterpiece

 

[The axe murderer]

Cop Rock did give us this masterpiece

I have never heard this before. What is going on here

 

[MenacingMonk]

Fox Passes on the ‘Sopranos’​

HBO
Here’s a list of television shows that Fox decided to bring onto its airwaves in 1999: the Jay Mohr Hollywood satire Action (canceled after eight episodes), the shameless Who Wants to Be a Millionaire knockoff Greed (canceled before it could even give out the grand prize), and the Chris Carter-produced science fiction show Harsh Realm, about humans trapped in a virtual simulation (canceled after nine episodes). Here’s the name of a show they rejected after reading a script for the pilot: The Sopranos. This gave HBO the opportunity to pick up the show, creating an entirely new era of television where networks like Fox became hopelessly passé. The shift of quality programming from broadcast TV to cable and eventually streaming would have likely happened anyway, and The Sopranos probably wouldn’t have worked on Fox, but it was still an enormous mistake for the network to turn down arguably the greatest show in the history of television. (CBS was willing to take a chance on David Chase’s ambitious project, but it wanted to ditch the psychiatry angle.)

For the best. Would been like this:

 

[ciubaca]

Tries to read article... ambushed by 2000 ads.... fukk rolling stone

 

[The axe murderer]

For the best. Would been like this:

madtv wild

 

[Mission249]

HBO, TNT, Showtime, FX Turn Down ‘Breaking Bad’​

DOUG HYUN/AMC
When Vince Gilligan wrote the pilot for Breaking Bad, he initially pitched it to TNT. “They say, ‘If we bought this, we’d be fired,'” Gilligan recalled. “‘We cannot put this on TNT, it’s meth, it can’t be meth, it’s reprehensible.'” He then went over to HBO. “The woman we [were] pitching to [at HBO] could not have been less interested,” he said. “Not even in my story, but about whether I actually lived or died.” Showtime turned it down because the premise felt too similar to Weeds, but FX actually did agree to buy it. The deal didn’t last long since it felt it had too many other dark shows about antiheroes. “Look, it was a wonderful script,” FX President John Landgraf said several years later. “If I had known Vince Gilligan was going to be one of the best showrunners in television, and Breaking Bad was going to be literally one of the very best shows in television, I would have picked it up despite the concept. But the truth of the matter is, anybody who does what I do for a living, who’s honest, will tell you that you’re making decisions based on too-little information all the time, and you make good ones and you make bad ones.”

TNT had a reasonable reason to turn it down. Showtime had a legit reason. The FX dude seems to have learned from his mistakes.

But HBO fukked up and I hope that person got fired.

 

[Lefty Gunz]

HBO passed on a few shows that went on to be hits

Mad Men
Sons of Anarchy
The Walking Dead

 

[SuburbanPimp]

Good list and concept, but I just hate the way Rolling Stone and Complex put these list up with hella ads and multiple pages jumps.

The Breaking Bad one jumps out but it’s not that crazy that so many passed on it because when I heard the concept it didn’t do much for me and I didn’t watch the first few seasons cause it didn’t sound like a great show, but obviously I was wrong and the description of the show doesn’t really do it justice

 

[Erratic415]

I can’t imagine The Sopranos on regular TV. It had to be on a cable network like HBO or Showtime.

I have never heard this before. What is going on here

The guy who is selling babies on the black market is just singing about it in public and doing little pelvic thrusts.

Cop Rock was also on FOX, I remember Married With Children would clown it when it was on. Steve Bochco actually created the show. He had all these other successful police dramas, but the musical didn’t work.

 

[Whips-n-Chains]

Fox Passes on the ‘Sopranos’​

HBO
Here’s a list of television shows that Fox decided to bring onto its airwaves in 1999: the Jay Mohr Hollywood satire Action (canceled after eight episodes), the shameless Who Wants to Be a Millionaire knockoff Greed (canceled before it could even give out the grand prize), and the Chris Carter-produced science fiction show Harsh Realm, about humans trapped in a virtual simulation (canceled after nine episodes). Here’s the name of a show they rejected after reading a script for the pilot: The Sopranos. This gave HBO the opportunity to pick up the show, creating an entirely new era of television where networks like Fox became hopelessly passé. The shift of quality programming from broadcast TV to cable and eventually streaming would have likely happened anyway, and The Sopranos probably wouldn’t have worked on Fox, but it was still an enormous mistake for the network to turn down arguably the greatest show in the history of television. (CBS was willing to take a chance on David Chase’s ambitious project, but it wanted to ditch the psychiatry angle.)

I’d argue this is potentially the BEST thing to happen to TV ever.

Sopranos on network television would’ve been ass…written around commercial breaks, no swearing, less violence, etc.