First the rumors. The biggest is that Push, Nevada should become the first show cancelled this season. The ax is rumored to fall later Thursday or Friday. Most of the creative staff of Life with Bonnie has been fired and the producers have been given another chance at fixing the show before its pulled. Others rumored to be nearing their limit are That Was Then and MDs.
All this and were still three weeks from sweeps.
While getting 13 million viewers for a new show might sound good in isolation, you have to look at how the shows compare against everyone else. For the week of Sept. 30 Oct. 6, CSI: Miami pulled in 20 million viewers, Still Standing pulled in over 18, and even a rotten show like Good Morning Miami pulled over 16 million.
And 8 Simple Rules Disneys big ticket, premier, ubermarketed tent pole show* still trailed behind the likes of Judging Amy, JAG, Without a Trace, Yes, Dear and The Guardian; none of those shows are exactly the hot topic at the water cooler the morning after. Thats not exactly the smashing start Eisner had demanded from ABC. Nor were they expecting Amazing Race 3 to pull well over twice the audience of their other breakout show of Push.
Overall ABC only had one show in the Top 20, which was Monday Night Football. Its highest rated series was My Wife and Kids at #23 with roughly 13.7 million viewers. For comparison, NBC had 10 of the top twenty shows and CBS had 9. NBCs top rated show was Friends who found 29 million people with nothing better to do. And the top rate for CBS was CSI with 29.5 million. On the other end Foxs best show was an NFL postgame show #48 with 10 million viewers; WB had 7th Heaven at #60 with 8.5 million and UPN ends up as a punchline to a lot of inside Hollywood jokes by having WWE Smackdown #81 with 6 million children desperately in need of adult supervision.
Eisner has been going around the last couple weeks telling everyone that it take several years to pull ABC out of its hole. A lot of people are calling that optimistic.
The real numbers wont be out until later in November when viewing patterns are more established. Its too late to write ABCs season off at the moment, but it time to say there is no one hit will turn things around that people were hoping for.
* a tent pole show is one that pulls in such tremendous ratings that it pulls all the shows that fall it up too. The current example is Friends that pulls all the shows on Thursday nights to much higher ratings than would otherwise receive. Its generally considered that a network needs one or two of those to be profitable.