Remember this, eventually all shows — amazing, good, bad or indifferent — get canceled.
The Simpsons, beloved, iconic and sacred as it has been, will be canceled someday. So, it’s not really shocking to me that DC Daily — a show many readers here probably haven’t even heard about (it’s very niche) — is being canceled next month.
After more than 400 episodes, which never were quite completely “daily” (they skipped days due to a wide variety of reasons), the last episode of DC Daily has officially been announced to be aired Friday, July 3, 2020.
Some background is necessary.
I’ve been a DC Universe paid subscriber for over six months now. While I enjoyed watching DC Daily show from time to time, I wasn’t a huge must tune in daily fan. Let’s call me a “sometimes watch and enjoyed fan”. Stripped down, it was a polished DC advertorial/commercial vehicle in a semi talk show vs. podcast format. Think a wee bit of Joe Rogan’s video podcast meets several DC comics superfans over-excited about anything and everything DC-oriented.
A winning formula for the many fans who would kill for more spotlight on their favorite DC superheroes, but perhaps just too niche to gain any kind of significant mainstream audience.
Of all the original shows on DC Universe streaming service, DC Daily is the least expensive to produce. Evidently, however, the news program simply could not overcome the unexpected production challenges that have arisen as a result of the ongoing Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. Still, DC Universe appears to be affording the show’s hosts a farewell tour, of sorts, allowing them a chance to bid viewers farewell before DC Daily comes to an end next month.
DC Daily Canceled at DC Universe | CBR
I think the biggest problem with DC Daily was not enough cynicism to play against the massive optimism. Nothing DC did was ever bad – which, frankly, is unrealistic and untrue. I get it, a fan show, why would you ever promote and pay for a daily show that criticized your own products and services? Ok, they did criticize some things, but it was very much outweighed by the overwhelming, over-heaping portions of positive press on, well, everything DC.
To be interesting, some amount of conflict is necessary. It’s just human nature that if everything is always positive in a quasi news/entertainment show, that’s not very entertaining. It’s boring watching something without any controversy or conflict. Sorry, it just is.
Too much conflict is also tiring. Jerry Springer? Wasn’t a big fan. That’s what I mean by too much conflict.
I’m not trying to kick the show on its way out, no, I liked DC Daily and watched it from time to time, but honestly got more interesting, useful, entertaining unfiltered news from reading a wide variety of bloggers and news outlets and, yes, even DCU’s own messageboard than from watching DC Daily.
What DC Daily did give me was the uber fan perspective on comic book characters. Sometimes that origin and backstory info was blurted out so quickly that I became lost and had to search around and learn more. So, there will be value lost in DC Daily being canceled.
Speaking of the DC Universe messageboards — and forgive this sidebar — their tech support really need to do something about the architecture. You see this broken error message way too often. Somebody, get with the sysadmin and figure out the traffic bottleneck with scripts running wild crashing the board.
Just about every other time I visit DC Universe this fail to load message comes up at least once. It’s gotten so bad that I’ve stopped visiting the forums very often. Too bad, too, because their community often has very good discussions and, even though it likes to lean with a group that is extremely pro-DC on everything (just like DC Daily) it has enough cynicism to keep it somewhat grounded.
Back to DC Daily.
As someone in the DC community pointed out, the YouTube DC Daily had trouble amassing over 10,000 views on YouTube for episodes. That doesn’t show enough wide interest to suggest the eyeballs on the show itself were worth how much it was costing to produce. Given, as the article quoted stated, it was the lowest cost production, but you have to pay the hosts something, the editors, etc. Also, factor in the pandemic and it essentially became a work from home show with grainy, laptop video talking heads show. There are tens of thousands of shows like that already on YouTube.
Anyway, I think my comments on the DCU official messageboard shown in the image at the very top of the post state my affection for the DC Daily show, perhaps better than this post, which tends to have a more realistic look at the business side of keeping a show like that running. It doesn’t make very good financial sense sometimes to keep shows that many of us — even those who watch here and there — a show running.
Just too many other movies and TV shows vying for our attention and interest.
Movies, Movies, Movies 