I’m always a fan of a good television marathon. I scroll through the guide just before each holiday weekend to see what various channels are airing. This past weekend Logo aired a marathon of Buffy The Vampire Slayer so at the beginning of each hour I would check what episode it was and if it was one I liked, I watched.
Throughout the marathon, Logo was very fond of reminding viewers that these were the episodes they voted for in a “fan favorite” survey. So you have a marathon of episodes that people actually took the time to tell the network they wanted to see. Personally I found it ironic that several “to be continued” episodes didn’t receive a similar number of votes so they were aired out of order. Annoying, but that’s not where they disrespected the fans.
According to the marathon, the most requested episode was “Once More With Feeling.” For those of you not familiar with the show, it’s a musical episode where the characters all have songs exposing the deep secrets they had been holding onto that season.
And they butchered it.
I’m not one of those people who knows every line of the show backwards and forwards (I can do that with M*A*S*H but that’s the only one). But even I can tell when you cut a song before it’s supposed o end. Logo took the time to ask fans what episodes they wanted to see and then butchered the one they wanted to see most.
Now I am aware that the original episode was 70 minutes long, and subsequent versions were edited to fit into 60 minutes, but Logo was already cramming the credits over the bottom third of the episode. Top that off with the fact that only had five or so advertisers, so its not like they had to make extra time for them.
If you’re going to ask for your viewers input, don’t give them some chopped up version of what they asked for.