HODS & DS' Cancellation

[wes]

  The HODS movie killed everything in sight, including the TV series.

[Raineypark]

The HODS movie killed everything in sight, including the TV series.

I'm sorry....I don't think I've ever heard that theory before.  The movie was responsible for the cancellation of the series?   

[Mysterious Benefactor]

I don't think I've ever heard that theory before.  The movie was responsible for the cancellation of the series?

It's true. 

The short explanation is that hoDS was the first exposure to DS that many parents got (when they took their kids to see it), they were shocked, and they (mistakenly) equated the level of blood/violence in hoDS with the daytime series. Many successfully banded together to get their local ABC affiliates to cancel or at least move DS to a different time period when their kids couldn't watch.

(For example, many Boston area parents groups organized letter writing campaigns to the local newspapers and Boston's Channel 7. However Channel 7 wouldn't cancel DS outright. Instead, they decided to push DS from 4:00 back to 3:30 because grammar school kids used to get out of school at various times between 3:00 and 3:30, so most were barely able to catch any of the show at all.)

If only the VCR had already been widely available back then...

[Raineypark]

The next obvious question would be....did it never occur to Dan Curtis that this might be the end result of the movie he decided to make?  Was he taken by surprise or did he not care?....was he already preparing to move on by that point?

[Nancy]

I remember my parents were horrified when they heard about the blood and violence of the movie and they did indeed equate that with how the series was. The few times they ever saw the show or parts of it, Barnabas bricked up Trask or killed someone. It was not their idea of a healthy show.  Some days I was relagated to watching Speed Racer.  Trixie, Pops, Spridle and Chim Chim did not do it for me.

Nancy

[picard]

I do not think that house of dark shadows was the reason for the show's cancellation. I think the reason was that they were runnning out of material for storylines which is evedent with the leviathian storyline and parallel time 1970 and 1841 storylines. PLus the show was declining in ratings which is the official reason ABC gave for canceling it  but still the show was a considerable ratings grabber from what i have heard. Besides if parents did think that the violence in house of dark shadows was what the tv show represented they probably would have contacted the local  censors long before the movie ever came out or before night of dark shadows.

[Gothick]

The ratings were going up when the cancellation was announced.

As I have said before, it's my opinion that the plug was pulled because DC no longer wanted to do the show (and I personally think others wanted out as well).  I know this will never be proven, but it's really the only thing that makes any sense.  Particularly when you consider that the new movie started shooting roughly one week after the final episode was taped.  That just seems like too much of a coincidence not to have had the involvement of the production team.

G.

[Mysterious Benefactor]

if parents did think that the violence in house of dark shadows was what the tv show represented they probably would have contacted the local  censors long before the movie ever came out

We've gone into this at length several times, so I'll just touch on the highlights this time around, but the release of hoDS was hardly the first time that parent/religious groups had organized actions against DS. A particularly infamous time took place in 1968 soon after Barnabas had walled (The So-called Reverend) Trask up in the Old House basement. And later that same year several stations bowed to parent/religious pressure and rescheduled DS at times during the day when kids weren't able to watch.

I still remember to this day how I sat down to watch the September 9th episode, but shortly after the opening voice-over informed me that Jeff stood "unknowingly on the brink of terror" (Angelique and the whole experiment business), DS abruptly disappeared only to be replaced with Rocky and Bullwinkle!! The Providence, RI ABC affiliate had decided to move DS to 8:30am, on a one-day delay basis. And Boston already wasn't an alternative because the ABC affiliate there didn't even show DS at all (it was being shown on an independent station at 2:30pm, on a week delay basis). So, basically, the only time I got to see DS during what I liked to call The Blackest Days On Earth () was on holidays, during school vaction or if I was out sick.  (About the only good thing about the situatiion was that in one day I could see what had happened a week before as well as what had happended the day before.) And it wasn't until January 13, 1969 that an extremely vocal fan base was finally able to persuade both the Providence and Boston affiliates to run DS at 4pm again...