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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.
