Cancellation

[I Ching]

I know that Dark Shadows last aired on April 2, 1971.  Anyone know the dates of the following:

--when decision was made to cancel the series?
--when the actors/crew were informed of the decision?
--when the public announcement was made?

Thanks.

[Gerard]

I don't know when the public announcement was made, but I heard about it from a fellow junior-high-school DS fan about a month-or-less before it happened.

Gerard

[David]

To this day, I'm utterly convinced that the sloppily written 1840
story, a story that began well, was a deliberate move by Curtis to sabotage/end a show he had grown tired of.

David

[IluvBarnabas]

I don't know if it was 1840 (brilliant storyline all the way IMO despite a few "huh?s" here and there) that did the show in or not....I always assumed it was due to low ratings but others on the forum have insisted that this was not so.

Some say it was the Leviathan storyline that the show began to downslide, others say it was 1970 PT, the retread of Turn of the Screw with Gerard and Daphne, 1840, 1841 PT. Except 1970PT I really enjoyed all these stories as well.

I would love to know what really led to DS' cancellation. I hate to think that Curtis would do anything to deliberately sabotage something he created even if he did make some bad creative decisions along the way. Maybe he did grow tired of the show, but I don't think he would deliberately send it down the tubes.

[Gerard]

From reading the memoirs of cast and staff members, I'm discerning that they were all just tired and wanted to move on.  It obviously was very hard work, harder than on any other soap.  After all they were doing stories that considered topics a bit more intense than a happless housewife trying to figure out if her husband is having an affair, or someone taking three years of lying in a hospital bed dying of a terminal disease.  You don't need a lot of creative writing, detailed costumes, complicated special effects or grandiose sets to do that.

Gerard

[David]

The Leviathins, based on HP Lovecraft, was a legitimate effort to try something new.
1970 PT was done to get the cast off the show to film HODS.
Both were honest mistakes.

Though summer 1970 was a poor man's Quentin & Beth, it was still watchable, and
1995 was a brilliant, scary as hell thrill ride.

But 1840 didn't bother concluding the Tad/Carrie story that was set up in 1970~which could have been concluded through dialogue even though David Henesy had left the show.

The 1840 [spoiler]deaths of Edith, Angelique & Roxanne,[/spoiler] with no explanation as to how these deaths affected future time storylines was inexcusably sloppy.
So sloppy that I'm afraid they do show a lack of caring on the part of Curtis & company.
Ditto Barnabas' return to 1971, with no explanation offered as to what happened to his "phantom body",still in an I Ching trance, in 1970.

Nothing came together, nothing made sense, nothing was concluded properly, at the end of 1840.
And it's painfully obvious how little DC, Sam & Gordon cared at this point.

I do not begrudge their desire to move on.
But show a little respect for your audience and end your story before doing so.

David

[Mysterious Benefactor]

The ratings did indeed plunge during the Leviathans storyline. Many fans at the time it originally aired absolutely hated it, and they were quite vocal (as several of their letters which have been shared here on the forum show). However, the ratings rebounded during 1970PT and beyond. Although they never again reached the heights they had risen to during the 1897 storyline, which was the ratings high point of the show, they were still quite respectable and certainly nowhere near any type of level that would have gotten any show canceled due to "low ratings." And for all the complaining some may do about the 1841PT storyline, it's always interesting to point out that as that storyline played out, the ratings for DS continued to get higher and higher...

[David]

In 1969, during 1897, DS got an average 8.4 rating.
One year later, it was 7.3
When it ended in April 1971, it was 5.3

David

 

[Mysterious Benefactor]

Those are yearly averages, David. However, ratings rarely remain static - they ebb and flow from week to week - and the ratings for 1841PT actually grew over time. Pierson has mentioned as much at several Fests, and I believe it's even noted in a few of the PomPress books.

[David]

I've never fully trusted the ratings system, anyway, MB.
I think they always undercount!

The 8.4 rating, according to AC Neilsen, means that 8 million, six hundred thousand people  watched DS on an average 1969 day.

Yet TV Guide, Time, Newsweek, The New York Times all reported 20 million DS viewers.
Plus, as a 51 year old, I recall the height of DS mania very well. It was as big as Beatlemania 5 years prior.

There was such a massive, national DS frenzy from 1968 until the HODS release, who knows how many people watched?
20 million might still be an under~count!

But the sad truth remains: at the end, Dan, Sam & Gordon didn't care enough to end their story properly.
And considering how brilliant DS was during 1795, the Quentin/Beth haunting, 1897 & 1995,
that's a real shame.


David

[michael c]

i guess if i had been a fan at the time i would have been devestated by the show's cancellation.
but as a contemporary viewer i have found the five year cycle to be quite satisfying.i'm really not sure how much more i could have taken...and this is only having watched sequentially from episode one through the summer of 1970.i still have yet to watch the 1840/1841pt storylines.

as for the much maligned leviathan and 1970 parallel time storylines i was quite surprised at how much i actually enjoyed them despite their many(deep)flaws.

where the whole thing began to lose steam for me was during the summer of 1970 episodes.perhaps i was just sort of burned out on it but i couldn't muster up much enthusiasm.

as for the 1840/1841pt storylines i still can't work up any interest in them.from what i've read here they're sort of all over the place.some people like them and some don't but for whatever reason i'm really caring less and less about whether or not i ever watch them.

i'm having more fun rewatching some favorites.

[FireRose]

Well from what I understand. Jonathan Frid was not going to play Barnabas anymore. That was the reason for the 1841 parallel time Bramwell and Catherine storyline so Jonathan Frid could play a different character. That is the only way he would remain on the show.

That being the case it is difficult to wrap up lose ends if one of the major actors didn't want to continue with the show and I think Dan Curtis and the writer's knew that the fans would not except a recast of Barnabas Collins. (I mean alot of fans still have problems with any other actor playing the part of Barnabas Collins in this day and time when it comes to  remaking the show.) And wrapping up the Barnabas storyline without Jonathan Frid on screen. I don't think the fans would have  been satisfied with that either.

Now then...

Was that one of the factor's in the decision to cancel? I can't say for 100% sure, but it probably was one of the decisions that had to be taken into account.

Also when HODS came out.  Didn't the violence of the movie start confusing parents who began to take issue with what was going on with the TV show and because of the confusion their was a backlash against the show that caused alot of stations to start dropping DS from their schedule?

If stations were refusing to continue to carry the show. That had to bring the ratings down quite abit.


FireRose

[Mysterious Benefactor]

Well from what I understand. Jonathan Frid was not going to play Barnabas anymore. That was the reason for the 1841 parallel time Bramwell and Catherine storyline so Jonathan Frid could play a different character. That is the only way he would remain on the show.

It's very true that Frid wanted to play another character. And, frankly, I always thought that was only fair as all of the other major cast members had been able to play several different roles. But it's a misconception that Frid didn't want to play Barnabas - what he didn't want to do was play Barnabas as a vampire anymore. There are actually a few different topics on the forum that clarify that. 

[Brandon Collins]

I've heard it reported many times before that many of the people involved with the show wanted to move on because of the arduous task of completeing an episode everyday. I'm not one to begrudge people for wanting to move on. We all know it was hard work doing this show with everything that was involved. And as I remember it, DC became less involved over time as he branched out to do other things, so his lack of strong guidance might have had something to do with it.

As for the ratings, ratings are only a guestimation, despite what anyone says. The people who produce the Oscars say that the Oscars had like 40 million viewers for this year's telecast, when it actually was likely a much lower average if you count people that tuned in late and those who turned it off at 11 since it lasted into the wee hours of the morning again. So, that being said, the rating average could be somewhere around 35 million or so. There's no way of telling. DS very well could have had 20 million people watching at any given point in time. 8 million could've watched on Monday-Wednesday, and then 4 million on Thursday and Friday, and the average for the week would work out to be 6.4 million viewers--lower than the highest point.

If we're talking about storylines, I can't really truthfully say that any one storyline brought the show down, except for the Leviathans. It's fact that ratings dropped signifcantly during that story because it is a bit out there (what wasn't on DS?) and people didn't really understand what was going on. Personally, I liked the retread of Turn of the Screw with Gerard and Daphne because while the very basic story was the same, everything else was new and different. One of the ghosts actually [spoiler]came to life during this go around[/spoiler] and that was much more interesting than ones that constantly popped up and pointed fingers. Not to mention the fact that Gerard's plan was on a much grander scale, AND we got to watch Collinwood be destroyed. The lead up to this was brilliant, and 1840 itself brought some of my favorite characters:

Gabriel, [spoiler]whose jealousy of Quentin, even in death, would lead him to murder and deciet of his own father in order to get money. Not to mention the secret that he hid for such a long time, which was a huge bomb when revealed.[/spoiler]

Flora, who was delightfully played by Joan Bennett, and perhaps my favorite character of hers, with Judith being right up there too. Flora was so chipper and doodle-brained at times, she was a delight to watch in that role.

Not to mention Gerard whose wheel's were turning at every possible second to get the next step up, and all the other characters who populated this timeline.

[Gothick]

In looking at the ratings between the Fall of 1969 and the Spring of 1971, folks have to take into consideration the fact that several ABC affiliates were either dropping DS from their afternoon schedules or moving it to evening timeslots during this period.

I was thrilled when I discovered during the last month or so that channel 7 in Washington D. C. (I believe) was running it around 11 p.m. every evening.  Before the arrival of the videotapes at the end of the 1980s, this was the only time in my life that I was able to watch some of the episodes twice!  Channel 13 in Baltimore was still running it in the afternoons until the very end.

I don't think D. C. "sabotaged" the show.  I do think he had had enough and the need to go into production with Night of Dark Shadows gave him the perfect excuse to end the series.  I do wish they had had the presence of mind to provide a solution to the Stella Young mystery...

G.