History
As NBC's answer to the successful series Survivor, the show was initially a hit for the network in the summer of 2001, and built strong ratings for the next couple of seasons, but as the years passed, the ratings declined. In 2006, Fear Factor faced tough competition with the TV ratings champion, Fox's talent series American Idol on Tuesday nights, and the ratings declined further. Despite much publicity concerning an improved format and better stunts for Season Six, NBC put the struggling program on hiatus for the remainder of the season to make room for the sitcom Joey, which was removed from the NBC lineup a few weeks later. NBC then canceled the episodes of Fear Factor in May. The network began airing the remainder of the season on June 13, 2006, with the remaining episodes to be aired throughout the summer. In 2004, Fear Factor became the first network reality show to be syndicated. Over its six seasons, Fear Factor earned NBC a reported $600 million in advertising revenue. Currently only the first season has been released on DVD, but in early 2009, plans were made to release a box set containing the entire series on DVD. The project was put on hold for an unknown reason in March 2010. On June 5, 2010, it was announced that the project was canceled because of the low sales of the first season DVD.
With Chiller airing reruns of the show every Saturday night, the ratings on Chiller led to Comcast informing Entertainment Weekly in a May 31, 2011 report that Fear Factor would be revived for a new season. Eight episodes were ordered, with two of them being two-hour episodes and Rogan returning to the hosting duties. The revival was shot in high-definition, and owing to concerns over the then-ongoing NFL Lockout and the loss of NBC Sunday Night Football episodes, TV Guide reported in early July the show could be ready as early as September as lockout replacement programming. (NBC eventually lost one episode, the season premiere Hall of Fame Game, because of the lockout that ended in late July) The program began airing December 12, 2011, with the final episode airing July 16, 2012. On May 13, 2012, NBC announced that the episodes of Fear Factor were canceled. as of July 2012, "Fear Factor" is officially cancelled. Reruns now currently air on Chiller Network
Read more about this topic: Fear Factor
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“I believe that in the history of art and of thought there has always been at every living moment of culture a “will to renewal.” This is not the prerogative of the last decade only. All history is nothing but a succession of “crises”Mof rupture, repudiation and resistance.... When there is no “crisis,” there is stagnation, petrification and death. All thought, all art is aggressive.”
—Eugène Ionesco (b. 1912)
“Considered in its entirety, psychoanalysis won’t do. It’s an end product, moreover, like a dinosaur or a zeppelin; no better theory can ever be erected on its ruins, which will remain for ever one of the saddest and strangest of all landmarks in the history of twentieth-century thought.”
—Peter B. Medawar (1915–1987)
“No matter how vital experience might be while you lived it, no sooner was it ended and dead than it became as lifeless as the piles of dry dust in a school history book.”
—Ellen Glasgow (1874–1945)