Fanlore:Featured Article Archives/2022: Week 14
Beauty and the Beast Fans and TPTB
Fans of the 1987-1990 television series, Beauty and the Beast (TV) enjoyed a high level of interaction with, and access to, the series' showrunners, producers, and actors - a relationship (and familiarity) that had many benefits as well as many drawbacks.
Some of the fan-TPTB interactions took the form of TPTB calling fans on the phone, attending cons, sending cards and letters to some fans' homes and to fan publications, offering fans tidbits of insider information, and agreeing to fans' requests for interviews. Fans attended theatrical events and met the actors backstage, toured the show set, and sent showrunners and actors their fanworks. TPTB were very involved in encouraging fans to promote the show to the press and CBS in letters, phone calls and other venues.
In the beginning, fans' comments and reactions about the show and its creators had been almost universally appreciative, and they were extremely generous in their praise. But as the show struggled in the ratings, fans began to become wary about the show's future. The 1988 writers' strike and ensuing disruption made for choppy waters, and the show's poor reception in dismissive, clueless mainstream reviews made fans angry. Fans were also receiving increasingly contradictory messages from TPTB regarding the show's direction in terms of plot and characterization, changes that came to a head in the third season, causing the fandom to implode.