Thanks to everyone who sent in suggested fan “excuses” for their favorite shows.
Here are 5 randomized bingo cards for you to download and play at home! Click on each to get a full sized version to print. Here are all 5 together in .pdf file form.
Update: Making the typo corrections was a lot easier than I expected, so completely new (and corrected) versions are below. Note that because of the way they’re generated, they’re completely new, so if you don’t mind typos you now can have 10 bingo cards. Here are the original 5 (with typos) in a .pdf file.
You can also make your own bingo cards here. Enjoy!
Got mine.
http://dosomethingelse.tumblr.com/post/228091949/my-fan-excuse-bingo-card
LOL. A bit tempted to draft a “Network Halloween Massacre: Eastwick, Three Rivers and Dollhouse Canceled” post just to see how quickly all five cards could be filled up.
I nominate J.R. as bingo card designer!
I’m going to be grammar nazi: First card, first row, fourth column–Its night is too competitive… no apostrophy
I’ll be playing next week when the latest Renew/Cancel index comes out!
The middle should be ‘Firefly!’ or ‘Joss Whedon!’
I love how tongue-in-cheek this is, guys. Glad to see you can find humor in what you do
Got mine all ready to go!
Thanks, Robert. Here’s a blank one, to save some time:
http://dosomethingelse.tumblr.com/post/228105288/
great fun…thanks
“It’s to procedural” should be “It’s too procedural”
Ah ahahahahahaahhahaahahaa!
That’s great.
“It is to serialized” should be “It is too serialized.”
Great stuff!
I tried to make one but I didn’t have the patience.
I sure hope you plan to correct those typos.
“Reaity crap.”
“It’s night is too competitive”
“It’s lead-in is dragging it down.”
“People are expected it to get canceled.”
“It’s to procedural.”
Awesome to see some of my comments in there! Priceless cards, guys!
Ha ha, too funny. But you should add “Pre-empted by sports too often” or “Didn’t stand a chance against {insert sporting event}.” Also, “Organizing a mail-in campaign. Send nuts/tabasco sauce/plastic fangs to…”
Agree about the typos; so distracting to language nerds.
I’ll be playing when the next big show gets cancelled (Dollhouse).
Think of them as having authentic fan typos!
But I may fix them given time later.
In that case, you spelled Neilson wrong
It helps that the show has fans. I didn’t get very far with Trauma.
These are AWESOME!
BTW, I’m so glad that the other grammar nuts got here first. I don’t want to feel like I’m the only one who is obsessive about apostrophe use!
These are hysterical! I just made my own versions, to swap in some excuses I preferred and get rid of the typos. I’m going to go to a forum I just saw where people are complaining that Trauma got cancelled and see how long it takes me to get a Bingo.
This is why I love this site.
That is FABULOUS! I’m a bit surprised no one suggested “Network interference killed the creative vision.” Perhaps blaming network execs or saying the network wanted it to fail gets at the same point in a roundabout way. The rest are all very, very familiar.
I noticed the same things as the grammar Nazis above (I think MichyGeary caught most of them). The apostrophe and to/too mistakes are a bit distracting. But you did spell Nielsen correctly.
A great laugh. Thanks for sharing!
Update: 5 new re-randomized cards now available, with fewer typos!
Internet connection with DSL and local phone package — $79.
26″ HDTV television with DVD — $400.
Middling computer system with keyboard, mouse, monitor, speakers, and a few extras — $499.
Chips, popcorn, 2-Liter bottle Coca-cola, and a bag of fun-sized Halloween special Snickers bars — $12.
TVBTN Bingo! Cards for a night of entertainment — Priceless.
Nice work! Love it
Oooh! How many bingos will we be able to get tomorrow, when we see just how much better a House repeat does compared to Dollhouse?
I’m now waiting for someone to wander onto this site into a long, wild discussion about a show that has been canceled and ask “What are all these ‘Bingo!” posts about.
cammy, that was actually one of the great Andy Barker quotes: “This show was weak as water from the second episode on. Everything that was unique and creative was crushed in favor of standard, traditional and obvious sitcom nonsense.”
I think you should do a test run, and make post titled ‘Dollhouse CANCELED.’
Do you have one that says “The psychologist on the focus group panel said the lead character’s micro-reactions are wrong”?
Dig at Nick C there…:-)
This is funny haha but i dont really see them as “excuses” because most of them are generally true about how shows get cancelled.
Great stuff but I still think it’s missing some of the best excuses. Check any thread about Battlestar Galactica.
“The President kept pre-empting it with his Speeches!”
“More people saw it after it became available on DVD”
“A Group threated to do Boycotts of all who Sponsored it.”
“Kanye West interrupted it.”
Oh, I have a new one (well, one I don’t think was mentioned…)
“There are already too many crime/hospital shows on. We need to keep Show X because it’s unique.”
Actually, that could be two.
It’s funny how much time this site spends on making fun of people for liking shows and looking down on people for having hope. If you guys could back up your snark more with accurate predictions this would be a much better site.
And I already know the standard defensive response from you guys. You give it all the time no matter who I have as my ID and call you out on your egotism. What exactly are your guys real jobs that make you such experts on the TV industry??? I would love to know.
AC, did we hurt your feelings predicting one of your favorite shows would be canceled?
If you’d like only sunshine and roses about your shows until you suddenly hear they were canceled there are plenty of sites out there that will feed you exactly that.
Hey, if you don’t like this site, don’t go to it. Simple as that. Not that hard to do. Go find or make your own website.
It’s not their problems that some shows suck ass in viewers.
Do one more card devoted entirely to NBC! You could put in things like “It wasn’t made by the creators of The Office”, “Tina Fey isn’t in it” and “It’s on NBC”.
I think some posters are taking this a bit too seriously, it’s just a bit of fun because the comments are true! Bill and Robert don’t cancel shows with internetty powers but because not enough people watched it and having been on this site for two years, I have read enough comments that match the bingo cards.
Forget the cards, I really want a fan excuse bingo mug or t-shirt! Or would merchandising not be possible since technically many people contributed to making the cards and it would be iffy who the money would go to?
Bill? Rob?
You’re not the first person to ask for merchandise, but the phone lines haven’t been lit up asking for mugs and t-shirts.
Perhaps one day over the slow holiday period Mr. Gorman will be inspired to visit Cafepress.com and create some TVbytheNumbers merchandising. I’ll likely be too busy watching TV
People probably wouldn’t be as enthusiastic about *general* TBTN merchandise, Rob (no offense, I love you guys and this site). But I’d bet they’d jump at the chance to own merchandising with the fan excuse bingo card imprinted on it.
Maybe you could do a poll here to ask if anyone would be interested in buying those?
I read a new one today: “HOLD on a second! Canceling Eastwick is crap because hundreds of random people rated the following shows, and these ratings (1 to 5) are HIGH: Middle 3.7, Cougar Town 4.2, EASTWICK 4.3, Flash Forward 4.7. I’ve seen other ratings people give on zap2it.com and these are high ratings.”
I like the coaster set idea Bill had a while back. And I think t-shirts with mottos like this one would sell.
“Your show’s ratings suck
Your show sucks
You suck”
(Also, don’t use CafePress. Use Zazzle.)
J.R. we don’t deliberately confuse fans with household ratings like some sites! Just kidding, I actually do include them in the weekly broadcast top 25 lists. But with different ratings metrics for different measurements, confusion is inevitable. I don’t see that changing.
Julia, you’ve twisted my words! And made them into a much better t-shirt
Robert, I hate to correct you, but he’s talking about star ratings on zap2it.com, which makes it really funny.
Ahhhhh. that makes more sense. That and stuff like “but it has more mentions than NCIS on Twitter!” need to make the next gen of the cards.
I also love this one from two weeks ago: “All of these ratings are irrelevant because the majority of Conan’s audience doesn’t watch TV.”