Well, MOP, that is all well and good, but I was more wondering how a crappy, stupid show like Hercules and Xena and Young Hercules could ever attract a fan base.
I wondered back in the day too, but you know what? if there are people who care about crap like BIG BOTHER and AMERICAN IDOL and cretins like Paris Hilton - there will be a market for for anything and everything under the sun.
Frankly, and I mean no offense with this, but I lump FIREFLY in the same heap as HERCULES. A lot of people I respect liked the show and I respect their right to love it for the things I clearly couldn't appreciate.
Of course, I know people who'd belittle my appreciaton of shows like OZ or DEADWOOD or DEXTER or THE SIMPSONS or THE GOODIES. To each their own. If people liked HERCULES - and clearly more people did in its peak (mid nineties) than FIREFLY (of a recent vintage). People aslo like Britney Spears and ridicule Etta James. To each their own.
Now, I know this was supposed to be silly entertainment pandering to the lowest common denominator which, I guess, would be people on crack.
Nah. Crackheads are too busy trying to score than to watch ole Jerkules! I think it was kid-driven. Kids and women into that long haired Kevin Sorbo thing. They buy lots of crap. Advertisers then pay for and time on the show and the show makes aprofit above syndication fees. The show lives on. It is the nature of the ugly beast known as the television business.
I think maybe part of the problem was that most of the people into FIREFLY might be part of a demographic into conserving things and keeping their consumption in check. They don't consume crap just to buy more, so maybe that worked against its advertisers being happy in sponsoring the show?
Had browncoats (which I understand is the nomenclature for FIREFLY fans, so I've been told) wrote to sponsors instead of the network, FIREFLY would have had more clout to try and stay alive. Buy crap and crap gets kept on television. Don't but the crap that sponsors the crap and it gets replaced by other crap. Maybe some of that crap might be good.
Firefly had a good story, good acting, good writing and good special effects.
I respect that opinion but I don't share it. I feel the opposite, as i'm sure you know. Still, as HERCULES' popularity illustrates - it's not about quality so much as sponsors getting dough from investing in adverts. had FIREFLY made FOX money (by advertisers making money to buy ads at top dollar) that it would have lived on. Its quality was secondary. It helps, it's valued, but as I'm sure you're well aware (again: see HERCULES) if it isn't brignign in money and it's burning through it then it's going to get the axe.
I think you could successfully argue that FOX didn't want it to scucceed. I'd agree with that.
Having watched enough tv shows to last a life time, I think it is fair to say that most of the shows aired are fairly predictable, same old story rehashed, crappy writing most of the times and wooden acting.
Indeed, And familiarity breeds contempt on people who like to think wit htheir entertainment, and when it's all the same old slop then it's hard to get the food for thought that comes with the glitz. You felt FIREFLY provided that. Many other people did too, but the numbers were too small to make a difference. They almost did. A movie was made out of it, but the box office losses were so high that it killed any chance of FIREFLY existing in another medium - one where it could be more mature and adventurous than the tight confines of conformity-laden over-the-air, North American, commercial broadcast televison.
Still, they didn't improve their chiense into realistic pidgeon-speak.... 
Question is: had the network aired the Firefly episodes in the right order, at the right time of day, would it still be running?
I doubt it'd still be running. However, I think it would ahve lasted longer and given the fans more to enjoy. Maybe - just maybe - it could ahve then been handed over to something like the Sci-Fi Channel, who have saved a few dead shows and givne them a second life. I doubt it, though, given how expensive FIREFLY was to produce.
I also suspect its creator - that BUFFY guy - wasn't interested in keeping it alive. He wanted to move onto making movies again - and he did. I believe he was going to do the WONDER WOMAN movie, but that might be in turnaround now.
or, as is my theory, are the majority of the television audience so used to not having to think about the shows they are watching that a sci-fi western with a somewhat convoluted storyline would simply be too much?
STAR TREK was that way. There's the new BATTESTAR GALACTICA, too, so I think that's not the case.
It's fringe entertainment.
Bob factory worker with an 8th grade education can wrap up his disbelief for action and adventure and intrigue, but there's a point where he might not go. Science Fiction as a genre is not populist. Elements of it are (as STAR TREK and STAR WARS and E. T. and BUFFY and the X FILES can attest), but not all of it. Maybe FIREFLY was made for a niceh audience but they underestimated just how small the audience was in terms of keeping up its production values (see the domestic box office of SERENITY as an exampel to that point.
Note that I am not being pompous nor belittling anyone who watches crappy show, since I am both a fan on MacGyver and the old Star Trek show, both of which could be argued to be a bit on the iffy side, but that it merely seems to me that the success of television shows seem to be increase as the quality decreases.
I agree with all of your points. I think a big factor in this is the cable explosion. It's still growing. 100 channels for basic cable. 100 choices. LOTS of product is needed. Not all of it can or will be good. Some shows won't have the budget. Many won't have the talent. broadcast shows face serious issues of censorship. Pay CABLE offers the freedom, but fewer shows per season. More money is invested per-show on the production end (minus star's salaries, since Networks tend to go way overboard with them, though THE SOPRANOS definitely ahs bucked that trend - well
it did. That show ended recently).
Anyway, more choices, more diversification, less volume for a core audience to be there to support a show, since it splinters loyalties.
This also explains why there's an over abundance of "reality" shows being produced. They're cheap, are Wal-mart like (no unions for the writers or participants on those shows, so an actor's or writer's strike won't hault production like a narrative show) and can be burned off quickly if they bomb.
Of course, repeats and syndication will be limited based on their shelf life. The film and television industries rarely think that far ahead anymore.
I thnk you might find that while there are fewer great shows being made, the ones that we find great (FIREFLY, being an example of one of yours) are that much more rewarding because of hte scarcity of shows of similar quality.
DVD is also changing the medium. Some shows, like FAMILY GUY and FUTURAMA were brought back from the dead based on DVD sales alone. The same coudl easily be true for live action shows one day.
What are other shows you hold in a high regard like FIREFLY?
I'm not big on sci-fi, but I've been impressed with the last three years of DR. WHO, myself.