If you want to save Flash Forward, move it to Wednesday night. Why on Earth they put it on opposite Survivor is beyond me.

Is it just me or is the main actor's head too small for his body? It just doesn't seem proportional to the rest of his body.

MORE BACK HANDED ABC BASHING IF YOU READ THE ENTIRE PEICE. WHY??? STOP THIS ADGENDA!!!!!!!!!!!

It just isn't that great of a show, really, so that's why people are tuning out. The characters are behaving in ways that aren't realistic, at times contradicting themselves even in the same episode!

No one wants to get sucked into another 'Lost' black hole. Questions go in but nothing comes out.

This article isn't really a bashing of ABC. It's a serious account of their actions regarding sci-fi/fantasy shows. The major networks live and die by the Nielsen ratings. Fox has done the same, CBS has done the same, and NBC (the parent company of SyFy) does the same. What's funny is that if this show was on SyFy or some other cable channel, with 9 million viewers, it'd be considered a great success.

The show had a strong beginning, but then when south in a big way. The characters are just not believable. the story line becomes more convoluted with each episode.
The biggest event in human history is given to the LA FBi to investigate. That it's no other group. Even the the German govt bows down to the FBi.
A massive conspiracy stcetching from the President to terrist cells to World famous physiscts goes completly unoticed.
No one notices all the dead birds except for one nazi (who must 16 when he commited his crimes)
A kangaroo appears and ko one mentions it again.
No one questions if the flash forwards are tur or acurate.
A lone FBi agent going over the countless hours of video tape from the blackout finds the one person who was not effected by it. it's the equivalent of hitting the mega millions lotto twenty times in a row.
the show is just not put together well

I forget if I've read anywhere, but are Hulu.com and other online sources being counted by Nielsen? Because I NEVER watch commercial television even though I have a DVR.

Anyone know?

I've intensely disliked FF from the very beginning. All concept, no character.

Too many storylines/characters to keep track of. Who is she and how is she related to whats-his-face?? Where did he come from and who's he involved with? Ahhh . . . just stick with 2 or 3 main characters and let the others fade into the background. Too much time spent meandering on side stories that don't help resolve the driving storyline.

It's not failing. ABC is. More people will watch if they move it to CBS!

I personally don't watch ABC shows any more because they are canceled after a bad week in the ratings. No point in getting invested in a show that won't be around next season!!

Advertisers beware!!!

ABC churns out really awful TV, that's why people hate them so much. Everything is soooo serious, soooo important, soooo overdramatic that when they crack a joke it feels out of place. Do you know people who are this intense all of the time? I watch FF on Hulu at work because I want to know what happens next, but not because I actually care enough to not watch FOX or NBC.

"A complicating factor, of course, is the show's Thursday-night competition: CBS' Survivor dominates at 8 o'clock."

Only morons watch 'reality TV,' and the country is full of 'em.

In order to capture the masses, networks have to dumb-down their programming to the intellect and attention-span consistent with 10-year-olds. That type of programming will tend to shy away from any insightful science fiction which requires some modicum of intellect and patience. Sorry kids, there aren't explosions every 10 minutes to keep your attention!!

ABC: Flashforward, V, and Eastwick is, is and was lousy shows. Totally unoriginal. Why don't you do a lame remake of Roots? Or Happy Days? After all if those were clearly two of your best presentations.

Hey skyfly, You closed the comment section on the Twi versus Trek challenge! Here is my Opin:

TRU BLOOD kicks Twilights Butt! Star Trek? well that is a Forty year argument in of itself!

The problem with the show is the same problem they had with "Daybreak" (or what ever that groundhog day show was called)
You watch the first episode and there is really no reason to watch again until the last episode.

Even though they did throw a monkey wrench into the works this last week. But what is the point of the show if the the flash forwards don't happen?

The solution of death I thought of in the 2nd episode... except my solution was to start killing other people I would have not have killed myself...

Mephisto,

My gosh, I never noticed, but Joseph Fiennes' head does seem disturbingly small.

Here is how to save it: Pair with with V and Lost come January on Mondays or Tuesday. Go V, FF, then Lost. Ratings win for all three.

One of the problems rating shows like these is that a lot of folks find it more understandable if they DVR a few weeks worth of shows and watch them all at once.

Sure, the advertisers hate it, but the alternative is going back to shows with little continuity and losing many viewers to cable.

"You watch the first episode and there is really no reason to watch again until the last episode. "

Impatient, much?

Great premise, great premiere. But the subsequent episodes are dull, slooooowly dragging along with only one or two moments of plot advancement. This show should have kept the pace of the premiere--like 24 did in season 1. 24 used to do more in one hour than other shows did in 10 hours. FlashForward has a built in Deadline in the story--people should be moving with that knowledge. Basically, this show gives the feeling of a lot of clutter, a lot of chaff, a lot of clues, and no sense that the writers have even figured out yet where they will arrive in April, much less that all the loose threads and clues will be tied together.

The BEST thing ABC could do announce that there will be no Season 2, so the writers would put together a tight story. There is no law that says every show should air season after season until it gets so dull the audience drifts away and it gets cancelled. Tell a great, tight, single season story! It seems clear that the writers are tossing out a thousand clues and threads, intending to leave things hanging in hopes of a second season.

I get bored to death during the current episodes, and usually end up doing chores and half listening until it gets to a single new relevant bit of information.

This show needs to move so fast that we feel like we can't keep up, that we can't believe an hour has already gone by. Go watch season 1 of 24.

"and at least some fans seem to be losing patience with the complex show's sometimes meandering story lines."

Gimmie a break. It's only aired 7 times. Hardly enough time to "meander". This whole country has ADD. If it's too complex for you, watch Dancing with the Stars.

The funny thing is, the postings over on the "V" story have people saying that V is too rushed and things are happening to fast.

What a joke.

@Gigashadow: well, duh! some shows can move too slowly, some can move too fast, some can move just right. V did too much in the first episode: informing us there might be a mole in the FBI, and then 3 minutes later revealing Yes there IS, and it was HER PARTNER ALL ALONG, AAAAAAAAAND he is V!! Lame sloppy writing. Too much, too fast, too close together.

FlashForward is the opposite: lots of padding, filler, with little substance.

There can be something between those extremes, but yes, those extremes can exist.

7 times is 7 hours. And it is slowing further, getting duller. So the trend is the wrong direction.

No one complained that s1 of 24 was too fast or too slow--it was an E-Ticket Thrill Ride, and everyone was glad to be on board.

Everyone's all like "Great premise, great premise."

It's NOT a great premise. This open-ended TV series is based on a story with a well-defined and definitive ending. How anyone thought something like this idea could be adapted into a season-after-season TV show is beyond me. This was miniseries or movie material and THAT'S IT. If the big reveal at the end of season 1 is not what caused the event (something in the story that pretty much wrapped things up), then this show is just another Prison Break- great idea, poor execution in an attempt to drive TV ratings.

dannyP
It's a 40 minute show padded out with ads. For under 5 hours of TV, I think quite a lot happened.

@dannyP

Something tells me you're one of those D-bags that likes to complain about everything and thinks his opinion is always right.

24 season one was 8 years ago. Something tells me you'd complain about every other season of 24.

Something tells you wrong, but the fact that you consider you know so much about me based on a post here says a lot more about you than it does me.

But, of course, you must be right, only you, and the "whole country has ADD" And you very maturely flung "D-bag" to make your position more credible and clever.

I used season 1 of 24 as an example because, at the time, no one really expected a second season given the premise: a single season telling a single, complete story of a single day. If FF did something similar, the story telling would be tighter, with so much happening no one would want to miss an episode, almost a real-time progression to next April.

And the fact that ABC dumped Guggenheim suggests they see similar issues: so once we get past the episodes he touched, it might change for the better.

But you keep hurling insults at anyone who doesn't agree with you. Lemme know how that works out for you.

Is it just me or does the TV season now consist entirely of people getting anxiety about the immenient cancellation of every freaking show?
Seriously,I'm aware that all news organizations want to keep people in a state of perennial anxiety so that they'll keep tuning in but Wire used to be better than that..
And I also wish that Wire didn't seem to be rooting for the cancellation of every genre show that isn't on SYFY. Again, Wire used to be better than that.
Personally, I hope FLash Forward goes on for a long time...

Oh-and regarding the Neilsens-why are they now suddenly being taken as the be-all and end-all online when DVR and online streaming is making them less and less relevant? And why in the world is anybody taking TV By the Numbers-which is just a bunch of people guessing-seriously?
Are people that scared of the change that the decline of the Neilsen system represents?

I watched the first episode and thought it was just ok. I watched the second and half way through I realised that it was, in fact, tremendously dull. 40 minutes of boring characters and then three minutes of "wow, isn't that weird! Don't you want to watch next week to see what happens?!"
Well, no, I don't. I need more than a couple of weird bits to hold my interest. A compelling story with believable characters would help.

Flashforward is currently the single best show on TV. If this show were to end, it would be tragic.

I agree with some of the comments that the premise and the premier was good. But then it just started to slowly get more and more boring. It continues to pack in to many storylines in a show, it doesn't have to. We have longer memories than that - concentrate on two or three and skip a week. And instead of the main FBI, create a task force or whatever (like X-Files) to investigate the events and connections, etc. Making it so unbelievable is stale to watch. Think outside of the box! SciFi fans are loyal if you give them something good.

Let's see, one flash for the entire planet then try to build a story line around it. Come on, we've already seen someone change their future by plummeting to their death maybe that deserves another flash to update the time line and maybe it resets all the main characters time lines. Also more anomalies,, we saw the kangaroo twice but why? By the way I loved the reference to the 4400 and this week the reference to...oh shoot.. another show (sorry I don't remember which one).

FF has sucked worse every week. The premise is so bold; think of how the world would change after something like that, but they do nothing with it. All i get are boring stories that slog along and foreign actors with bad American accents that distract me from what little of interest in the story there is.

Put this pig out of it's misery.

To Scott regarding your inability to grasp the concept that TV netwoks exist to make money, and the programs they air exist solely as bait to get you to watch the ads they air. They spend money to buy or create programming, and charge advertisers to run their ads during those programs.

What they charge advertisers (ad rates) are set by Neilson ratings; the higher the ratings, the more they can charge. It's called "cost per point". Networks and the shows they run live and die by Neilsons, as those are the barometer the advertising community uses to decide how to place their ad dollars.

Recently, writers on this site have begun to breathless extoll the fact that DVR and HULU viewing somehow raise a show's ratings, when in fact, they hurt them. The fact is, advertisers hate DVR and HULU viewing, because the ads they pay so much for are skipped over (DVR), or deleted (HULU). Same as viewing on the network's websites.

The only thing that matters is live viewing. If they were smart, every fan site of every show would extoll fans of those shows to watch them live, as that's the only viewing that matters when it comes to decisions about the life or death of a show.

Non-live viewing is an especially big challenge to the sci-fi genre, as the fans of that genre tend to me more tech-savvy than average, and have a higher proclivity for recording a show so it can be rewound and/or watched multiple times.

The bottom line is, if you want to support a show, watch it live, even if you're recording it.

Great possibilities.
I'm waiting for the writers to thicken the plot.

Looks like seangripes totally understands why dvr and online viewing do not mean anything. Advertisers foot the bill and will not pay for what is not being viewed.

Maybe the reason shows have such great initial success and then quickly taper off is the result of the long story arc itself. Each episode leads to the conclusion (and in the case of FF we know it is 4/29/2010). Is the show good enough to watch every week to find out the why's of the FF, or should people wait until 4/29/2010 to catch to see if the flash forwards come true?

Series television like 24 keep us riveted as we do not know what is going to happen next. We think we know that Jack Bauer is going to save the day, but we sure as hell do not know how, who is going to die, and what is the aftermath.

Unfortunately for FF, we have a good idea where the show is going to lead us- we have seen the story line in advance. I liked the summer run of Defying Gravity and it was yanked early- which may be another reason viewers don't want to get emotionally involved with a long story arc as it may never be developed to completion.

I, for one, CANNOT WAIT for every Thurs nite
Why *idiots* cling to Survivor as comeptition is BEYOND me. THAT and Dancing with the Stars!

I really love this show and I'm really sad it's not going to be on until March. Actually, I'm pissed.