[originally posted at Daimnation!]
The Fox network is going to show remaining episodes of its cancelled reality shows on the internet:
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.
People look at me funny when I say this, but My Big Fat Obnoxious Boss was an absolutely brilliant spoof of the business world, The Apprentice and the reality genre itself. (On The Apprentice, the leader of the losing team is eligible for firing. On Obnoxious Boss, the team leader remains immune, since in the "real" business world the underlings usually take the fall.) I would have expected that one to be pay-per-view instead of Playing it Straight (which, needless to say, I avoided).
Even the lowest-rated show on network television still attracts millions of viewers, so this might be a great idea to recover some of the money lost in developing a failed series. If Drew Carey's Green Screen Show doesn't return from "hiatus", I'd certainly pay a few bucks to watch the remaining episodes.
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Article comments
1 - Aaman
Few will pay for these - especially when they appear on torrent sites in a couple of days after being posted on Fox