THE TV COLUMN : Yet another show killed after a solitary episode
Posted on Tuesday, April 22, 2008
Another sad disservice to the viewing public was performed by a major broadcasting network recently.
The bad judgment and whims of the CBS programmers mean that America shall never thrill to see the spectacle of Danny Bonaduce riding a unicycle.
Secret Talents of the Stars debuted, managed 4. 6 million viewers, and was canceled.
That means 4. 6 million more viewers have been trained to ignore new programs when they premiere. The same thing happened when Fox canned The Return of Jezebel James after two weeks. NBC’s Quarterlife lasted one episode. If you blinked, you missed Fox’s Anchorwoman.
If you take 4. 6 million viewers here and 3. 5 million there, add 5. 2 million over there, pretty soon you have enough millions of viewers to matter. They’re trained not to bother checking out a new program.
How bad is the judgment of the network programmers that they can’t see a show stinks ? If it is so bad, why put it on the air ? Do they hope to air it and suddenly discover that they have America’s next huge sleeper hit on their hands ? I think not.
Secret Talents of the Stars was a cheap filler program intended to plug a hole during the writers’ strike. If left alone, maybe word would have gotten out and 28 million would have tuned in to see former pro wrestler Ric Flare dance salsa.
I would have loved to have seen Joe Frazier (kids, ask your grandparents ) sing R&B, and Clint Black do stand-up comedy. Gee — Mr. Sulu was going to sing country.
Marla Maples, one of the seven or nine ex-wives of Donald Trump, was going to do gymnastics. And pixieish waif Olympic skater Sasha Cohen planned to twist herself into a pretzel as a contortionist. That would have been worth the price of admission right there.
As a public service, we publish a photo of Cohen practicing. That’s spooky freaky, isn’t it ? The human body is not meant to do such things.
All of that will now sit gathering dust on some storage shelf at CBS. We can only hope that in their wisdom the network moguls will put the entire series in a boxed DVD set with added commentary and outtakes and a behind-the-scenes feature, The Making of Secret Talents of the Stars.
I’ve often wanted to know how they made those “Making of” features. Maybe they could have a The Making of The Making of Secret Talents of the Stars featurette. Shark attack. The good news for fans of James Woods is that CBS plans to air new episodes of Shark at 9 p. m. Tuesdays beginning April 29. It’ll air after reruns of The Unit. The Unit is still on the renewal bubble, so don’t ask whether I have special insider knowledge. Bravo makes plans. You may have read that Project Runway was planning to jump ship from Bravo to Lifetime. Lawsuits were whispered. Lawyers drooled.
It appears now that Bravo will air one more season of Project Runway before that transpires. That’s good for Bravo because the network is on a roll and a frequent destination for hip and happening viewers.
The cable network, which should reach 90 million households this year, recently revealed its programming plans.
There will be 11 returning series. They are Flipping Out; Kathy Griffin: My Life on the D List; Million Dollar Listing; The Millionaire Matchmaker; Project Runway; The Real Housewives of New York City; The Real Housewives of Orange County; Shear Genius; Tim Gunn’s Guide to Style; Top Chef and Top Design.
The network has some funky new shows in development.
Celebrity stylist Rachel Zoe, her husband and minions will have a series.
Date My Ex will have some real housewives doing something silly.
Real Housewives of New Jersey takes the franchise to the Garden State. This can’t end well.
There are a number of other shows in development, but we’ll wait until they’re closer to fruition before we get into them. CBS summer plans. Remember a few columns ago when I warned you this summer was going to be reality-show heavy ? The evidence is beginning to unfold.
CBS has announced its summer premieres and I don’t see the next smash hit among them, but I could be wrong. Dancing With the Stars looks just as stupid on paper as Secret Talents of the Stars.
There also will be a couple of new dramas, but don’t be surprised if the network airs them once, yanks them, and puts reruns in their place.
There will be three weekly airings of Big Brother 10 starting on July 13. Regis Philbin hosts Million Dollar Password, which kicks in June 1 with such stars as Rachael Ray, Neil Patrick Harris and Monique Coleman.
Greatest American Dog starts July 10. Pets and owners compete to find the nation’s best trained. I assume that’s trained dogs, not trained owners. Jingles, the latest from Mark Burnett, begins July 27. Ordinary, average, work-a-day stiffs like you and me will vie to create advertising jingles for fame and fortune. The long-planned drama Swingtown swings in on June 5. It’s a series about the social and sexual revolutions that took place in suburbia in the wild and swinging ’ 70 s. Oddly, I don’t recall those days. Perhaps I was in the wrong suburb. July 11 will bring Flashpoint, yet another cop drama. We can never have enough cop dramas on TV. The TV column appears Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday. E-mail:
mstorey@arkansasonline. com
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