Buffy Summers said:
it would be illogical for them to nix an established show (Angel) for a new one (Dark Shadows) if that was all they were looking for.
I agree. It is illogical. Canceling Angel in the first place is illogical.
Quoted from the "City of Angel website:ANGEL outperformed "The West Wing," "King of Queens" and "Becker" in the time period to rank #3 among persons 12-34 (2.0/5) and men 12-34 (2.1/6). The series defeated both CBS and NBC in women 12-34 (1.9/5) and female teens (1.8/5). ANGEL also posted year-to-year gains in all 12-34 and teen demos as well as among adults 18-34 (up +6%) and men 18-34 (up +27%). WHY CANCEL??????
Five unusual things have happened in the last year, regarding this issue.
1. Jordan Levin has taken over as CEO of Warner Brothers.
2. Warner Brothers has been pressuring ME to make changes in the Angel format.
3. Warner Bros. decided to bring out another vampire series next season (Dark Shadows). They hid this information from Joss until the last minute. He discovered it from the media, and was quite surprised.
4. TNT bought the rerun rights to Angel.
5. Warner Brothers cancelled Angel.
Now allow me to put all five of these things together for you, to explain how the conspiracy theory goes - Dark Shadows has everything to do with Angel being canceled.
Jordan Levin has been rising in the ranks of the WB for the last ten years. He has made his reputation with a hands on approach to creative content. Ideally executives don't do this in a creative business. They deal exclusively with business decisions.
You can see Levin's MO most clearly with the Series Charmed. The suckup who runs Charmed has admitted to Levin's increasing involvement over the last 3 years. Is there anyone who's been watching Charmed, who can't see Charmed has been dumming down over the last 3 years.
Levin's reputation is he can get the younger, mainstream audience. Apparently dumming down scripts is how he's decided to do it.
Now along comes Joss Whedon. I'd be willing to bet Levin has been watching the Buffy/Angel franchise from the fringes over the last 10 years, anxious to get his greasy fingers in there, and mess with the creative content. Up until now though Joss has been protected by higher ups in the WB organization.
Levin gets in as CEO, and one of the first things he does is he hesitates on signing Angel for a Season 5, even though the numbers measured against similar series would seem to demand Angel be signed.
He puts pressure on ME, telling them he will sign Angel, if they make changes to the format. ME reluctantly complies.
About the time of the 100th episode Levin came out with a comment suggesting he and Joss would be talking about the future direction of Angel.
At about the same time WB announces it has plans for another vampire series put out by a well known production team.
Shortly after this Levin announces he is canceling Angel.
Now assuming this is all part of a connected strategy, we would have to assume Levin has a problem. What if another network snatches up Angel, and runs it opposite WB's vampire show. Does anyone doubt Angel would kill it.
Here's the solution to that. TNT buys the rerun rights. Another network is reluctant to buy an existing series, unless they own the rerun rights.
TNT and Warner Bros are sister networks. They are both owned by the same conglomerate. It's not unreasonable to assume Levin has at least used his connections to check into the TNT's willingness to pick up Angel, and if so would they program it against Dark Shadows. He may even have used his influence to organize the purchase of Angel's rerun rights by TNT.
OK...now I admit this is all just a conspiracy theory, but until it's shown to be implausible based on superior logic, I'm going to say "Boycott Dark Shadows".