NBC
1 vs. 100 – Who knew that America wouldn’t embrace a Bob Saget-hosted game show with confusing rules and too-easy questions? Oh, that’s right. America.
Amnesia – Same as above, only with Dennis Miller. Also the questions are all about the contestant, making it completely impossible to play along at home. Is anything more masturbatory than going on a game show where they talk about you for an hour?
Bionic Woman – Is it possible to make a show about a hot cyborg boring? Yes, it very much is. I saw this damn thing through to the bitter end, firmly believing that at some point it would get good. I was wrong. At least I still have Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles to meet my quota of “shows about robots that aren’t really good but I continue to watch anyway”.
Clash of the Choirs – Oh, it’s not like anybody thought this was more than a one-week special event anyway, right?
Journeyman – A poorly-executed time-travel drama that even people who watch anything with science-fiction elements didn’t care about. It had a good cast, but the premise was poorly-thought out and was basically just lame.
Las Vegas – Wow. I feel like his show has been on forever. I think it started out on the Dumont Network, actually. I will miss it, if only for the cleavage.
My Dad is Better than Your Dad – OK, this was just bad. A game show about enabling spoiled brats. Watching this would make you sad about America’s youth. Luckily, you didn’t watch it.
Phenomenon – Did they find the next great mentalist? (Quick, name the last great mentalist!) Who cares, because Criss Angell was a judge, and I paid too much for my TV to let somebody get butthole all over the screen.
Quarterlife – Cancelled after one episode. This web series about self-absorbed young people flopped instantly, hopefully convincing networks that self-absorbed young people are the most boring people ever. Also, production values for an Internet production look like crap on a bigger screen.
The Singing Bee – When you’re the second-best Karaoke game show on the air, well, that just ain’t good enough.
Scrubs – Technically, it’s been picked up by ABC for next season, so it’s not actually ending. Still, NBC did cancel it. After sixteen time-slot changes, they actually left several episodes unaired, including the actual finale. The episode they aired as the finale was badly out of sequence, prominently featuring a character who had left earlier in the season. This was never a hit on NBC, but it’s a monster success in syndication. It turns out, NBC may actually have hurt the show by jerking around the timeslot and never promoting it. Imagine my surprise.
Cancellations: 11
The vast majority of cancellations are shows that began this season, which is not unusual. All of FOX’s cancellations were first season shows, and this from the network that airs ‘Til Death and American Dad. Most of what we see on this list are cut-and-run kind of shows where the networks walked away from a flop in a hurry. Clearly, the strike meant that a lot of established shows that have passed their expiration date got a stay of execution. With the compressed development schedule, it’s easier to keep an old bus running than to build a new one.
While The CW is tied for the fewest cancellations, their list does not bode well. Keep in mind, they only have twelve hours of programming on their weekly schedule, and two of those hours are devoted to wrestling. They cancelled two of their longest running shows (Girlfriends and Beauty and the Geek, both of which predate the actual network) and managed to tank their Pussycat Dolls franchise, which was a hit last season. Their upcoming schedule looks like a bunch of Gossip Girl knockoffs, and considering that show has been a ratings failure, that may not be the wisest of moves. Sure, they tell us that traditional methods of measuring ratings don’t work to measure the viewership of this show, but the evidence suggests that any method that involves counting how many people actually watch the show still leaves it in the ratings basement. I’m not at all certain that The CW will survive the season. That’s what you get for canceling Veronica Mars!
Sorry, still a little bitter.
