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| Robert Knepper is none too happy about this move |
The woes for the mid-season genre entries continue. The CW
has announced that new series
Cult will be getting kicked to Friday nights at the 9 PM EST hour beginning on March 8th. That's after the show has posted a consecutive 0.3 rating in the 18-49 demographic its first two weeks on the air. That score barely counts as a ripple in the Nielsens and had this show on unsure footing from the start even though it airs on the fifth place broadcast network. The CW has apparently decided to burn off the episodes produced for
Cult's first season on Fridays and will almost certainly cancel the show at the end of the season. Of course getting cast to Fridays hasn't
necessarily been the kiss of death for shows of late, with
Grimm doing quite well on on that night for NBC and
Fringe sticking around for a couple of years there as well. But with a poor lead-in from struggling
Nikita, the network execs at The CW can't be under any illusion that
Cult will perform any better on its new night. I was hoping, with the show getting some pretty positive buzz (because it's actually quite good), that the network might give it a more of a chance by rescheduling it after one of their better rated shows. It definitely couldn't do much worse than
Beauty and the Beast in the post
Vampire Diaries slot which has been losing over half of its lead-in's audience for most of the season. But apparently The CW is not going to put much effort into trying to keep
Cult alive, despite the fact that it looks like a promising show and has received more accolades thus far than
Beauty and the Beast. At least
Cult will get to air out its full season, though, which is more than I believe we can expect from ABC's
Zero Hour or FOX's
Touch. And speaking of that latter show, NBC has announced
that they have cast series star Kiefer Sutherland in theier crime-drama pilot
The Black List, indicating that he probably doesn't have much faith in his current show. Expect an announcement any day
Touch and
Zero Hour, likely that they will be getting yanked from the schedule.
And with
Cult almost certainly on the way out, it has to make you wonder if there is now a Robert Knepper curse on genre shows akin to the Summer Glau curse. He joined
Heroes in its fourth season and the show got axed,
Stargate:Universe in its second and it went under, and now
Cult looks to get the boot. What happens if we team up Knepper and Glau in the same series . . .
Why Were They Cancelled?
The Plight of Science Fiction and Fantasy Television in the Face of the Unforgiving Nielsens and Networks
Ever wondered why your favorite science fiction and/or fantasy show disappeared from the television schedule, never to deliver anymore new episodes? The reason why, most likely, is that it was cancelled because its ratings were low. And this book looks at those many cancelled sci fi/fantasy shows as well as the Neilsen ratings and television networks that dictate their fates.
Available now for only $2.99 on Kindle from Amazon.com.
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