rsanders27, you forget: Forever Knight had limited popularity because it had a very limited potential viewership, and those limits were set by network and local program directors. It wasn't exactly sabotage, but they sure didn't try to give the show a big audience. Forever Knight was also syndicated from the very beginning, and the overwhelming majority of U.S. broadcast stations that showed it put it in a very late-night time slot (11 pm or later). I recall watching it at 11:30 pm or midnight Saturday nights in Chicago, on the local CBS station. Forever Knight had that late time slot because back then (it premiered in 1989), most stations considered the show too racy to run during prime time and network time was taken up with network shows. And the show got zero promotion. This meant Forever Knight was *never* going to have a big audience, so blame the CBS and local program directors for a foregone conclusion, not the fans. Sony's stupidly coy machinations later on didn't help, either. And when Forever Knight did go into reruns, it wasn't until years later on SciFi Channel (usually as daytime programming), so that limited the audience as well.
Compare that to eight straight years of week-night prime time and heavy hype on the WB for Buffy/Angel, plus syndication, plus seemingly neverending reruns on TNT (even now!), and the difference in the potential audience is HUGE. Not to mention obvious. The Buffyverse fan base is bigger because A LOT more people got to see those shows in the first place, they were heavily marketed, and we've been inundated with reruns ever since, which just increases the audience. You can barely avoid the reruns. Sheesh, I wish they'd stop, already.
Forever Knight was simply ahead of its time. Had it appeared less than a decade later, say 1995 or so, it probably wouldn't have been shunted to late nights but would have had the opportunity for a much larger prime time audience. Or, had it found a home on cable, it might have carved out a niche for itself there. We'll never know. As it is, the availability of the DVD set ironically gives the show a better opportunity to gather a following now than it could ever have had back then.
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mickeykost
15 years ago
rsanders27, you forget: Forever Knight had limited popularity because it had a very limited potential viewership, and those limits were set by network and local program directors. It wasn't exactly sabotage, but they sure didn't try to give the show a big audience. Forever Knight was also syndicated from the very beginning, and the overwhelming majority of U.S. broadcast stations that showed it put it in a very late-night time slot (11 pm or later). I recall watching it at 11:30 pm or midnight Saturday nights in Chicago, on the local CBS station. Forever Knight had that late time slot because back then (it premiered in 1989),
The Rick Springfield movie was 1989. As a television show, it premiered in May, 1992 on a Monday and Tuesday (Part 1 and Part 2) and ran on Tuesday nights on CBS (I used to tape the Crimetime After Primetime show on Monday nights, for the short FK ad for the next night). Second and third seasons, it would run late night on various stations for syndication, usually a weekend night.
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