serial killers

I am mildly surprised that Fox rushed (or should I go for the pun and type "raced"?) to cancel "Drive" already. It's annoying particularly when you consider that a couple more episodes have been taped and have not yet aired. I read they may run on Fridays in May.

ABC said it would make unaired episodes of the canceled "Daybreak" available on its website. NBC was supposed to run the full story arc of "Kidnapped" on Saturdays after it was canceled and bumped from its mid-week time slot. I remember shortly after "Daybreak" was pulled from TV, viewers complained that the new episodes were not materializing online. I see now that they're there. "Kidnapped," on the other hand, I don't see a hint of it on the NBC website, and I don't think all those episodes aired on Saturdays either.

It sort of feels like the networks don't feel any loyalty whatsoever to their viewers, particularly when you compare the value of a few million viewers to the monetary worth of ad time. If "House" reruns rate higher on Mondays at 8 p.m. than "Drive," then nevermind the people who are actually watching the show, and the actors and writers and producers and crew who put their time into the show. The people whose good graces you want to stay in, and who will always earn your loyalty, are the advertisers. So what if you alienate viewers who feel betrayed? So what if you earn a reputation for bailing out on shows that deserved a greater chance, be it "Dark Angel" after two seasons (which I suppose is quite a run, relatively speaking) or the poster child of ill-used shows that were MUCH better than Fox deserved, "Firefly," which only made 11 episodes (not all of which aired, of course). Shows of varying degrees of quality, but with storylines that require several episodes to reveal their mysteries, are tossed with no regard for the good faith of their viewers. See "Vanished," "Reunion" and now "Drive" on Fox alone.

The thing is, advertisers don't want to buy ad time during shows that have fewer viewers. And some viewers declare personal boycotts of networks who continue to mistreat them and the shows they like. If Fox will cancel shows A and B without giving them time to find an audience (while holding onto junk; see some of the sitcom schedule), why should I bother to watch any new drama that network puts on? Especially when it's a serial, which means it's more likely than not to end unresolved?

What should networks do, then, in the case of serial shows? Maybe they should continue online or in comic books ("Dark Angel," while not a serial like "Lost" or this season's defunct "The Nine," ended way up in the air and felt perfect for the comic book treatment). What do you think? Why don't networks at least run unaired episodes on Saturdays at 8 p.m. or something?