Why are new TV Shows ending their series with cliffhangers?

[roadman65]

When TV shows all used to have happy endings for its last episodes are now ending their shows runs with cliffhangers.

When MASH ended its 11 year run, it had a nice episode that had the war end and all of its characters get what they all wished.  Each one went home and got back to the lives they had to leave behind to serve their country. 

When the sitcom Cheers ended its long run it ended happily.  The Odd Couple back in the 70s had Felix get remarried to his ex wife.  Other shows as well had it where all good came to its characters.

Now we live in a time where cliffhangers are introduced into series finales. Shows like Whos The Boss (Tony Danza and Alyssa Milano) and Quantum Leap ended their shows where we had to guess what happened next.  Then Fraiser had a twist in its ending where main character Fraiser was en route to a whole new carreer in San Fransisco as a broadcaster only to find him on a plane to Chicago (revealed in the ending when the Captain of the plane he was on welcomed him to Chicago) that was where his girlfriend whom he just broke up with was living. 

Quantum Leap was a show (for those who do not know its story) that aired on NBC from 1989 to 1994.  It was about a man who created a time travel project that let him leap around his own lifetime into the lives of other people and using a computer he created called Ziggy to figure out a wrong that happened in those lives that this man would make better.  Basically to "Put right what once went wrong."  Sam Beckett was the scientist who spearheaded this venture that got botched up when he made his first travel into the past leaping into the aura of an US Air Force pilot named Tom Stratton.  The show had Sam each week leap around into men, women, and even a chimpanzee to change history for the better with a guide from his own time named Al who only Sam seen or heard in the form of a hologram while he was surrounded by the aura of the person he leaped into.  He was basically trapped in the past as the retrieval mechanism to bring him home failed to work.  Everyone was led to believe that God, Fate, Time, or whatever took control over his experiment and had Sam just leap to do right in history as he would always leap after his changing the lives of others.

It ended with many questions at the end of its fifth season where he for the first time leaped into his own self instead of someone else the very day he was born in a small mining town of Pennsylvania.  He met people who looked familiar to him, but were not and also met a mysterious bartender named Al and a man who died in 1933 who was among the people of the town until this man vanished where no one except Sam remembered he was there among them after his strange departure.  We all waited for 5 years to see Sam Beckett go home after many episodes of him risking his life to be other people only to make humanity a better place only to see wording on a black screen in the final scene say "Dr. Sam Beckett never returned home."  The biggest unanswered question was how was it that Sam himself was actually leaping himself through time after the bartender told him that.  Al the bartender told Sam that no one was controlling his leaps other than himself by asking him a question of why he created project Quantum Leap and did he do what he wanted to.  The answer was yes!  However, we all witnessed for 5 years that Sam was indeed trapped in the past and that he was leaped by something that even his coworkers in the future could not figure out what was happening.  Being that he had no access to his own machine in the future, he could no activate this machine in the end of each episode to leap him again!  Plus he was leaped on at various moments where it was shown he did not cause it to happen.

Many more shows are going away from happy endings to something more bizzare.  What is up with this?  Just like no more ending theme songs on shows to only have the credits blipped by you on your screen while scenes from upcomming shows are being shown instead.

[formulanone]

Leave things open to interpretation, another season, or spin-offs, I suppose.

I think people secretly like obscure endings, because it gives you something to talk about for hours later.

[NE2]

I know exactly why. It's because

[Stephane Dumas]

Some series got even a "forced cliffhanger" because tv network executives decided to cancel the show. Case in point with the live-action "The Incredible Hulk" who was cancelled abruptly with no reasons. However it got a sort of closure with the 3 tv-movies reunion.

WKRP have some average ratings (thanks to be moved on different schedule) was cancelled in 1982 but thanks to summer reruns, the show gained some popularity over the years.

The producer of "The Fugitive" got some hints then the series will be cancelled and decided to close with a big finale.

Gilligan's Island was abruptly cancelled too thanks to some pressure groups.
http://mercurie.blogspot.com/2010/02/how-gunsmoke-gunned-down-gilligans.html  and I could mention the abrupt cancellation of Beverly Hillbillies, Green Acres in 1971 called the "Rural purge". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rural_purge

I could mention other vintage series who ended in cliffhanger or a unresolved case.
-Man in a Suitcase
-The Invaders
-UFO
-Space 1999
-Lost in Space
-Time Tunnel
-Land of the Giants

[roadman65]

Some series got even a "forced cliffhanger" because tv network executives decided to cancel the show. Case in point with the live-action "The Incredible Hulk" who was cancelled abruptly with no reasons. However it got a sort of closure with the 3 tv-movies reunion.

WKRP have some average ratings (thanks to be moved on different schedule) was cancelled in 1982 but thanks to summer reruns, the show gained some popularity over the years.

The producer of "The Fugitive" got some hints then the series will be cancelled and decided to close with a big finale.

Gilligan's Island was abruptly cancelled too thanks to some pressure groups.
http://mercurie.blogspot.com/2010/02/how-gunsmoke-gunned-down-gilligans.html  and I could mention the abrupt cancellation of Beverly Hillbillies, Green Acres in 1971 called the "Rural purge". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rural_purge

I could mention other vintage series who ended in cliffhanger or a unresolved case.
-Man in a Suitcase
-The Invaders
-UFO
-Space 1999
-Lost in Space
-Time Tunnel
-Land of the Giants

Some never got the chance to make a last episode.  Archie Bunkers Place (although All In The Family got to have one) and some got cancelled mid season.

[triplemultiplex]

A thesis of "new shows ending with cliffhangers" uses Who's the Boss, Quantum Leap and Fraiser as examples?  Not sure I would describe shows that wrapped at least 15 years ago as 'new.'

[roadman65]

A thesis of "new shows ending with cliffhangers" uses Who's the Boss, Quantum Leap and Fraiser as examples?  Not sure I would describe shows that wrapped at least 15 years ago as 'new.'

When you have been around as long as I have,  shows like Quantum Leap are still new.  To me old is All In The Family, Brady Bunch.  Plus Fraiser only ended in 04.  That one is still new!

[J N Winkler]

It is an interesting question, but difficult to tackle in a rigorous way without clear metrics.  I have watched Quantum Leap, for example, and I would not classify it as having a cliffhanger finale--rather, it ends on an even note, with no suspense but also no resolution.  To my mind, an ending has to incorporate an element of suspense as well as lack of resolution to be a cliffhanger.

My own suspicion is that the prevalence of cliffhangers has a lot to do with fashions among TV shows as well as the evolution of successful TV series into franchises with DVD sales, tie-in merchandising, continuation movies, spin-off series, etc.  I don't remember there being a huge vogue for cliffhangers until The X-Files came along in the mid-1990's, and even then that series had a reasonably conventional ending--the cliffhangers tended to occur mainly in two-parters and season finales.  The series finale did however leave the door open to a continuation movie (which bombed).  Stargate SG-1 in effect had two series finales in its run (first at the end of the eighth season when the Goa'uld story arc came to an end, and finally at the end of the tenth season when the Ori were defeated), and in both cases they were reasonably convincing wrap-ups, but even so there were two continuation movies as well as the spin-off series (Stargate Atlantis and Stargate Universe).

I think an underlying factor could be the use of VCRs for time-shifting (becoming common around 1985), since that takes the scripting tradeoff between multi-episode story arcs and "spectacles of the week" into a new dimension.  The "spectacle of the week" format can be useful for pulling in new viewers since those viewers don't feel disadvantaged by not having seen the previous episodes, but such viewers are also easily lost.  (Speaking for myself, I am more willing to try to follow series like Prison Break and Supernatural from start to finish, rather than, say, The A-Team or The Rockford Files--not because the latter shows are less entertaining on a per-episode basis, but rather because there is no plot continuity from episode to episode, so I feel I can stop watching at any time.)  Multi-episode story arcs are useful for developing a dedicated fan base that is willing to follow the show from week to week, using novel technologies such as VCR recording to avoid missing broadcast episodes.  The prevalence of VCR recording (as well as VHS and later DVD boxsets for past seasons) makes it easier for network executives and production companies to develop long-running story arcs without worrying about creating unacceptably high barriers of entry for new fans.  If you consider that the age group with the highest susceptibility to becoming fans of a particular TV series is probably located right in the coveted 18-49 demographic, then the financial incentive becomes obvious.

[Hot Rod Hootenanny]

A thesis of "new shows ending with cliffhangers" uses Who's the Boss, Quantum Leap and Fraiser as examples?  Not sure I would describe shows that wrapped at least 15 years ago as 'new.'

When you have been around as long as I have,  shows like Quantum Leap are still new.  To me old is All In The Family, Brady Bunch.  Plus Fraiser only ended in 04.  That one is still new!

Yep, you done got old

[roadman65]

Looks that way.  I now have grey hair almost all over.  It seems when I was 25 was just a few years ago when I moved to Florida.  Now its 22 years later and I wonder where the time went.

[xonhulu]

Looks that way.  I now have grey hair almost all over.  It seems when I was 25 was just a few years ago when I moved to Florida.  Now its 22 years later and I wonder where the time went.

You said it.  I was 25 when I started teaching, and it sure doesn't seem like that was 22 years ago to me.