The Scream-Into-A-Pillow Thread

[Amake]

I'll just import that speech from the original board:

Firefly was cancelled because it was too successful. It's not that the studio is stupid, you just have to understand what their job actually is. A good show makes money, you'd think that's all they care about. But in order to reliably bring in money in the long term, a production company has to prove to its investors - and this is important - that they know what the audience wants.

Firefly breaks a lot of norms and defies genres. By virtue of being different from the average show, it becomes politically important that it does not succeed. If such an unorthodox show can bring in a lot of money, it shows that there's a lot of untapped potential in the viewing market. It means the producers can't point at a formula and say, this will work, this is what people are going to watch the most. This makes investors very nervous. They don't want to hear that no one actually knows how to make the most successful TV, that the audience can't be relied on buying a specific product.

Here's some further reading:
http://thehathorlegacy.com/women-vie...eed-not-apply/