Despite its popularity, Fox has also come under fire from many quarters, especially from fans of sci-fi/fantasy television. This stems from the perceived premature cancellation of several series which had vocal and active fan bases, but low ratings, like
Firefly,
Wonderfalls and
Fastlane. The cancellations of animated series
Family Guy and
Futurama were also criticized; in the former's case, the program was picked up again in 2005, while the latter series was revived for 2008 on
Comedy Central (who also acquired the rerun rights from
Adult Swim on September 2007). Fox was also heavily criticized on its decision to cancel the critically acclaimed
Arrested Development, which in 2004 gave the network its first comedy Emmy in many years. The show was in discussions to be picked up by
Showtime or ABC, but producers decided not to pursue continuing the series.
The network's justification for canceling these programs has generally been poor ratings. Fans of these programs respond by pointing toward critical praise and dedicated core fan followings, and blame the ratings on inconvenient time slots, poor advertising or illogical broadcasting. For example, the
pilot episode of
Firefly, traditionally aired first as an introduction to characters and storylines, was the last episode aired by Fox. Most other episodes of
Firefly were aired out of production and storyline order. Another often-cited example is the 1990s series
Sliders, which faced similar problems on Fox.
In more recent years, the first two episodes of
Drive were aired on a Sunday, and the third episode was aired the next day against
Dancing with the Stars and
Deal or No Deal. Fox canceled
Drive after only four episodes and the last two complete episodes were shown online. Further inflaming fans, Fox has promised to air remaining episodes of shows and then failed to follow through on these promises.
