Bryce Zabel reveals Dark Skies—NBC’s canceled alien epic—struggled with a 10-share rating and poor Saturday night placement despite strong international success, like a 21-share in Britain. Sony could fund a second season if another U.S. network (e.g., USA Network or UPN) steps in, but legal hurdles remain. Zabel defends the show’s originality against Puppet Masters comparisons and ties unaired episodes to historical events like the Beatles’ Ed Sullivan appearance and Nixon’s Watergate. Fans are urged to pressure networks via snail mail or email (BZTV@AOL.com), with Bell directing them to Zabel’s open letter, Stroke of Midnight, for revival strategies. Networks’ declining shares may yet open doors for niche sci-fi like this. [Automatically generated summary]
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Art, what happened to dark skies?
Well, there's nothing like getting it from the guy who produced dark skies, Bryce Abel.
So at midnight, we will call Bryce Abel.
And we'll talk to him about what's going on with dark skies, whether it's gone, in a hiatus, moving, what's going on.
So the rest of the story, as Paul would say, at midnight tonight with regard to dark skies.
Otherwise, it's going to be an open line session tonight.
Well, NBC says there will be, and I take them at their word right now.
They've had us scheduled to air the final two episodes for a month and a half now, and they will supposedly air on May 24th and May 31st, but I'll believe it when I see it.
I hope they do air them, though, because especially that May 31st episode is about one of the most outrageous episodes of television I've ever seen put out on a nationwide network.
We didn't connect with enough people to make it on the number one network.
Now, I guess the real heart of the matter, though, is why didn't we?
And I think you could argue there that NBC didn't do us any favors after we got on the air.
I don't want to get into, I don't want to feel like I'm just doing sour grapes here, but we did get one of the best promotional send-offs any network's ever given any show.
But then once we got on, we found ourselves pretty much abandoned out there.
I think you probably remember, I think we talked about it last October.
We were on for a couple of episodes, and suddenly we were off for three weeks.
And so even at the beginning of the season, we were reassuring people we weren't canceled.
Well, we had, I think, four big blocks of preemptions, this latest one being the fifth, and each one being two to three weeks.
This latest one, by the way, is nine weeks, but I think that's because they already gave up on us.
But that's certainly got to be some kind of a record.
Although, in fairness, you have to understand that any network has to preempt sometimes, because if you look at it, if you try to put an episode a week on, well, I can't make them that fast.
So obviously something has to go on.
But usually what will happen is they'll either repeat your show or they'll try very hard to let people know that you're not off the schedule and that you'll be coming back and there are ways to reassure people.
At the very least, I'd say they were more than acceptable.
They were strong.
And then, of course, the thing is, Dark Skies is a challenging kind of series.
A lot of series, let's take an example, not the trash of this series, but just as an example, you take a look at either Dr. Quinn, which was our competition, or any number of shows like that.
Every week, you know, it'll be a different kind of story.
And if you missed one week, it won't matter because it's all very much modular, one episode or another.
And you take a look at Dark Skies, and what we're telling is kind of an Epic story, Gone with the Wind with Aliens.
And I think some of the people may have thought if they missed an episode or two, that maybe they couldn't catch up.
I don't happen to think that was true, but I think people might have thought that.
And then, of course, when you're preempted for three weeks, people think they missed something, even though they didn't, and then they feel like they shouldn't.
Well, in this environment, because let's face it, what have the networks done historically but had a very hair trigger on these things and pulled shows off?
I mean, there's one legendary show, I don't remember what it was, but it got canceled between, well, somebody was flying in an airplane from the East Coast to the West Coast.
So, you know, they take you off pretty quickly these days.
And you go and scramble for those the next day and pray that you got a 12 share because that's at least somewhat healthy and 14 would be better and 10 is in trouble and we were getting tens.
And in Great Britain, for example, where they basically put a show on and leave it on, and we have, I believe, Monday night at 9 o'clock is our time slot in Great Britain.
Last I heard, we had a 21 share, which would make you a total hit in the United States.
And even in Great Britain, our numbers are as strong as the ER numbers are in Great Britain.
I am glad, in fact, that NBC went first, and if they were going to cancel us, I'm glad they've got it out of the way because it's a new environment than it used to be.
It used to be that if you were one of the shows on one of the big three networks and they canceled you, that was the end of the line.
And it's changed because now there aren't just three networks.
There's all kinds of different places.
And in fact, the networks are routinely taking shows that get canceled from one network and putting them on theirs.
NBC did it to several shows itself last year.
So what we're planning to do, the fans are acting in concert to tell the other networks that since NBC was foolish enough to cancel the show, that if they're smart enough to pick it up and put it on their schedule, that they will follow the show to the other guys' network.
That will be, you know, I don't want to say last resort because that implies it's a thing you don't want to do.
But that is certainly a resort, but it's the one that we'll probably get into if all else fails.
Because right now, Hollywood is kind of doing the dance where all the poo-bahs and pundits gather in New York to announce the schedules.
And I guess all the agents and studio executives come to wine and dine each other.
And since that's happening and all the networks are announcing their schedules, I think the idea is to get the word out right now to those people and try to get on somebody else's schedule.
And now, if that fails, syndication is a natural force.
And I'll tell you why.
If you have a show that doesn't have any international appeal and your network pulls the plug on you, that's the end of the line.
It's not the end of the line when you have international success because we are making money per episode to make these Dark Skies episodes because people want to watch it in other countries.
So all Sony, which is the producer of Dark Skies, needs to do is to find somebody else here in the United States who will pay some amount of money to put Dark Skies on their schedule.
And that money plus the foreign money equals a series for a second season.
I'll tell you what, let me just give you just a tiny bit of background.
You'll see what you can do.
When I started checking my email box a few weeks ago, I found it overflowing.
Not probably as much as yours does, but maybe because I was harder to find.
But there were all kinds of fans saying that I should do something to help save the show.
And of course, my response is an executive producer can't save a show.
Only the fans can really do that.
And I wanted to talk to people and tell them what they could do, but I didn't have time to answer everybody individually.
So I composed kind of an open letter to the fans and sent it off to these people.
Well, before long, this open letter has been posted on anywhere from eight to a dozen websites internationally where people, and it's got the addresses in it where you can write and the names of the people who you should write to and their phone numbers and their email addresses.
So it's really news you can use.
And more than that, this open letter ended up becoming kind of an electronic chain letter.
One guy sent it to 10,000 people on his list.
And it's chasing around the world right now.
And I have a feeling that there are a lot of network executives that are getting a lot of letters.
And what we've been urging people to do is to send snail mail as opposed to email because you can always delete email, and you can't dump it on somebody's desk.
If you show the commitment to buy a 32-cent stamp and to write a letter, that will raise their consciousness Because they have to deal with that letter.
They have to figure out who's going to read it, how to answer it.
And when they're getting hundreds or thousands of them, that really can make a big difference.
So, the answer to your question: what can people do?
Is they can either try to find that letter with the addresses, which is posted on a number of websites.
One of them right now that comes to mind is the 60 Greatest Conspiracies website.
But you know what?
If we could get it on your website, then people could download it from there.
And I would think that then it's really boiled down to the addresses now.
There are certain key players that need to get snail mail, real letters, in the very near future to raise their consciousness that there are people out there that actually wanted to see the show and would like to see it on their network next year.
And once that happens, Sony goes out to those various people and says, we'll make you a deal.
I'd love to be on at 10 o'clock on a Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday night.
Because people tend to...
People tend to be home because they have to work the next day on those nights.
Sunday is the highest viewing night because people are getting ready for the week.
Saturday is the worst because let's face it, if you've got a life, on Saturday night, you're trying to either go out to dinner, meet friends, go to parties, see a movie, anything but sit home and watch your TV, or at least watch regular television programming.
So it's just, it's really climbing a hill to try to succeed on Saturday night.
And to be honest with you, I feel pretty good about our numbers.
Considering the inappropriateness of the time slot for our show and the night that it was on, on our worst nights, we had 8 million people watching us, and that's a lot of people.
You know, yesterday I flew back from a sci-fi convention next to J. Michael Straczynski, who's the executive producer of Babylon 5, which is syndicated.
And I asked him how many people actually watch his show in a given week.
And considering it's in all the different time slots, they think around 15 million people might watch it.
There is that happening, and some of it was planned as well from a creative point of view.
In fact, I'll give you one little tease about the May 31st episode.
Not everybody gets out alive.
And so some of the cast members, or a cast member of a lead is not going to make it through that episode.
And that was planned.
Then, of course, you're right.
If this goes on too long, we might lose some people.
But I'll tell you something.
Even though I think that we had a terrific cast, I believe that this isn't like the John Larriquette show, where if you lose John Lariquette, you're out of business.
Dark Skies is about a concept.
It's about an epic struggle.
And as such, I think we can weather almost any cast affection that we would have.
I mean, I'm just willing to be a little more broad-minded about it because I got stung pretty badly at the beginning of the season.
It seemed like every critic in the country wanted to imply that somehow X-Files had copyrighted UFOs and government conspiracy, and that somehow I was infringing their copyright by doing a show in the same area.
And so my feeling is, you know, just because they made Bonanza didn't mean that they couldn't make another Western.
And just because Hill Street existed doesn't mean that you can't have NYPD Blue.
So just because there's X-Files certainly didn't mean there couldn't be dark skies, and there's probably room for invasion.
I didn't happen to think it was as Intellectually interesting as our show, and I didn't find it as interesting.
But on the other hand, you know, it's a big television dial.
If you're going 20 shares in Great Britain, what's the possibility of, in effect, turning around and producing it in Great Britain, having talks over there?
All right, I think then I got it, and I got it over to Keith, and it probably, before we're off the air at the top of the hour, it will be the open letter from you will be on our website.
You know, I have to tell you, my learning curve on all this internet stuff has really gone up immensely, although I still haven't quite figured out whether one sends a text file or a text with a line breaks file.
I'm working on it.
I have to tell you, by the way, Art, I just got Netscape.
I don't know if that's good or bad, but you were the first bookmark on my computer here.
I mean, since I talked to you, I don't remember if you remember what I talked about, but I asked you about one of the main characters, J.T. Walsh, and you told me how long he was on, so I suspect he will not be one of the people.
Anyway, second question, what about Sci-Fi Channel?
And in fact, USA, which is the parent company of the Sci-Fi Channel, was very interested in Dark Skies from the beginning.
And we had a meeting a couple of months ago with them about them purchasing Dark Skies as their first original TV series.
And the only problem with that right now is I understand that there's kind of a lawsuit going on as to whether they're in business with Paramount or Universe.
It's very complicated.
I don't quite understand it, but the checkbooks aren't out.
And the other problem is the Sci-Fi Channel doesn't have a lot of money for their original programming.
So a deal needs to be struck.
But people are talking about it.
In fact, you'll notice that the SyFy channel address is one of the ones we're putting out because I think a couple of thousand letters sitting on their desks may cause them to get their checkbooks out and write ones.
unidentified
Well, I think the people that watch the channel are right up the alley of the people that we're watching yours.
And in fact, I hope no matter what happens, to sell the first season of Dark Skies to the Sci-Fi Channel so that people can actually watch it in chronology and enjoy it.
unidentified
Alrighty, and my last, absolute last question to you?
I mean, the only problem I have with taping it is just that in effect, someone who watches a tape that someone else made is part of the problem and that NBC was not measuring them.
And so they feel like those people weren't represented.
One of the things that I was encouraging people to do if they taped it is to take that little black tab out of the tape, the record tab, and mail it to these people and say, hey, you know, just because I'm watching it, a lot of other people are watching it too.
Anyways, from Mr. Bryce, I was wondering if you could maybe let us know how the general course of the show, the direction might have gone had it continued maybe in general.
Well, in fact, that is not a simple question because when Brent Friedman, the co-creator with myself and I set out the whole scenario, we had basically a five-year plan that started with basically Roswell and picked up the story in our pilot in the 60s with the idea being that we would catch up with real time on the eve of the millennium.
And I realize that if they did not play these last two episodes, and I have been able to make that last program, I might have been on the last one on NBC.
In fact, Art, I have to tell you that one of the great shames of the series for me is that because of your schedule and so forth, we weren't able to continue in the Paley role for you because, in fact, Paley, as a member of the Majestic 12 board, turned out to, I think, be in four episodes, and he certainly is in the last episode.
First things first, for those of us who have email but not web access, is it possible to get this document via email or is there an address to get it with a self-addressed stamped envelope?
Secondly, in no way am I trying to be accusatory, but I did notice some similarities between the way the hive aliens control humans and that used by Robert Heinlein in the Puppet Masters.
I was wondering if you had heard from his estate in that regard.
You know, I haven't heard from Heinlein's estate, and certainly I guess the only thing I could say is that when you get into the world of alien invasion and parasitic invaders, there are bound to be certain similarities.
And it isn't so much the process of the alien taking over the human body that I think is defensible.
It's because when you play at the number one network level, they're looking for home runs.
That's the game they play.
So Star Trek wasn't a home run in its run on NBC, and it took time to build to the Phenomenon, it is now, and we weren't a home run on our first season.
And I think, by the way, it's a far, far different world on network television than it was when Star Trek was on.
At least then it was still primarily those three networks.
And now there are so many people competing for the attention of the American viewers, it takes longer than a year for almost any good show to break out.
Even a hit show now like X-Files was not a hit its first season, was moderate in its second, and didn't actually come to be fully respected until its third season.
Through a lot of different, let me put it this way.
Let's analyze the 8 o'clock Saturday time slot.
If you're NBC, you're saying basically, look, we want to hit here.
I can make all the arguments in the world why Dark Skies didn't succeed at 8 o'clock.
And they'd say, well, we agree with you.
It probably wasn't fair what we did, and it probably did need more time to break out, but we're looking for a miracle.
Clearly, we found that you're not our miracle, so we might as well try another one.
So that's one answer.
The other is it is a new world in terms of ownership of shows as well.
Congress a couple of years ago said that the networks could own their own shows, and the networks said as they were getting that privilege, well, of course, we'll still reach out to the community.
We want to maintain diversity, etc.
But in fact, in point of fact, the only show on NBC's Saturday night lineup that was not owned partly or wholly by NBC was Dark Skies.
We've been replaced by a show that is half-owned by NBC.
And that is why, by the way, I think that we stayed in the 8 o'clock time slot.
By the way, it just struck me, we were talking about the Star Trek thing.
In point of fact, though, Star Trek, even though they had very strong fan support, actually went away and was only resurrected as movies 10 years later.
And I think that the Internet, the very power that you've just demonstrated with the Internet here by being able to take something on the fly and pass it on like that, is the very reason why, since the rules have changed, we can save this show a lot faster than a Star Trek was saved.
Well, I would love to, although, and Sony is certainly a producer of motion pictures, so potentially we could do that.
Another idea that has been suggested would be a series of movies in the same way that they maintained the Alien Nation franchise after the series itself was canceled.
And I have said repeatedly that if it comes to it, I'll have to stand on a street corner with a mimeograph machine and tell the story.
Can you explain to me how the Beatles played into that episode of Druck Skies that our affiliate here in Lexington did not pick up or they didn't either?
See, by the way, I'll tell you in a second, that demonstrates one of the things that was also irksome.
Not only was NBC preempting us, but because we were the first show on Saturday night, many local affiliates would have either baseball games, basketball games, or in even cases like the Billy Graham Crusade preempting us.
And we'd be in TV Guide.
People would think that they were going to watch the show, and they'd end up getting a religious crusade or something.
And it was very frustrating to the fans.
The Beatles episode, you mentioned, was called Dark Days Night, and it was, I think, our fourth episode.
And we basically tied the Hive Master Plan in with the Ed Sullivan broadcast and brought in Mind Control.
unidentified
Okay, well, I hope you get renewed somewhere else, and good luck.
Well, I think reasonably we could say that UPN is a very strong possibility because I think Sony could make them a very good offer.
I think USA is a very strong possibility because of the sci-fi channel.
I would single those two out.
But at the same time, I realize it is a boatload of material in that letter.
But it's because I wanted the fans to have all the details.
And I wouldn't rule anybody out because, let's face it, we aren't sitting in those network offices and we don't know how bad their development has been.
And so it's hard to predict whether they're optimistic or pessimistic.
A lot of times, this time of year, networks are just quaking in their boots over the fact that the stuff that they spent millions of dollars producing looks so bad.
So maybe we'll look pretty good in contrast anywhere like CBS or ABC.
Although, I have to say, there were certain episodes that we did, like the Warren Omission, where we talked about the whole Kennedy assassination, Roswell Warren Commission testimony.
And I found myself just shaking my head saying, I can't believe a national network is going to put this on the air, but they did.
We even had Norman Schwartzkopf as a member of Majestic 12 and never heard a peep from anybody about it.