“My! People come and go so quickly here,” Dorothy observed in “The Wizard of Oz.” Same can be said for TV shows. While the networks have demonstrated little patience for nurturing slow starters in recent years, this season the losers seem to be piling up at a record pace.
CBS caged “Love Monkey” after just three episodes (technically, it’s on “hiatus,” but we aren’t holding our breath). The Tom Cavanaugh dramedy fell to 6.2 million viewers in its last appearance – a huge number for a smaller network but not enough to compete on the Big Four.
NBC axed “The Book of Daniel,” giving in to low numbers and pressure from conservative religious groups that protested the show and threatened advertiser boycotts because of the depictions of Jesus and an Episcopalian priest.
The most fleeting freshman series was “Emily’s Reasons Why Not,” which ABC yanked after just one episode.
“Emily’s Reasons” disappeared after courting viewers heavily in on-air spots. Stephen McPherson, ABC’s entertainment chief, said that promotion money was spent “before we even saw a script, unfortunately, given the way production schedules work.” Despite the best efforts of producers, network and studio, he said, the series “never got on track.”
When it did not attract a decent audience out of the gate, he said, there was no time to nurture the show against strong competition (including Fox’s “24” premiere). McPherson had to measure his patience against how much he believed in the show’s creative potential. “We felt like, unfortunately, it was not going to get better. We needed to make a quick change. And we saw life in ‘The Bachelor.”‘
Although the comedy, starring Heather Graham as Emily, tested well, “testing is a pretty dysfunctional tool,” he said. Examples abound. “Seinfeld” was one of the worst-testing NBC pilots ever. ABC’s “Desperate Housewives” did terribly with men.
“You look at testing, and you have to take it with a grain of salt,” McPherson said.
You look at the latest primetime schedule, and you take it with a shaker-ful.
