Networks' last words don't include 'canceled'

The Baltimore Sun

"Pulled Indefinitely." "Off the Schedule." "Permanent Hiatus."

These could easily be titles for a new slate of fall sitcoms and dramas. Instead they are the most common euphemisms employed by networks when they talk about the dying elephant in the screening room - the uncomfortable truth that somebody's favorite television show is being canceled.

It's a sad fact of life and prime-time television, where a show can last a few episodes (like last season's crime drama Smith) or 11 seasons (like the comedy Cheers), that everything must eventually end. But when darkness comes in Hollywood, don't expect a plainly worded news bulletin about it.

For a number of reasons, mostly involving the entertainment industry's legendary egos and pride, few networks actually use the C-word - an imprecision that gets interesting in the cases of ABC's "presumed to be canceled" According to Jim and CBS' "uncanceled" Jericho. And in most cases, the broadcast companies say little or nothing at all when one of their own passes on to television heaven - or hell - leaving viewers to figure out why, for example, The Wedding Bells have stopped chiming.

"I remember one network executive saying that shows are never canceled; they simply aren't renewed," said Tim Brooks, a TV historian and an executive vice president of research at Lifetime Networks.

The next couple of months mark the high season for shows that will soon be disappearing into the black hole of cancellation. Some fall and midseason shows that were originally put "on hiatus" - a potentially fatal categorization that is distinct from its more lethal cousin "permanent" - are now no more.

Like NBC's Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. After emerging from the mysterious "hiatus" netherworld, the once greatly hyped drama was "burned off" in recent weeks, just as many other lame-duck shows will be this summer - traditionally the time of lowest viewership. Its final original episode ran last week, the last of a four-part arc in which a hostage crisis in Afghanistan affects the show-within-the-show.

Meanwhile, the summer witnesses the rollout of riskier projects. These newcomers, which could not claw their way onto the fall or midseason schedule, typically flare out before Labor Day. Such experiments can occasionally produce a mega-hit, as Fox did in June 2002 when it quietly trotted out a show called American Idol.

Even apart from public proclamations, network executives behind the scenes usually shy away from speaking too bluntly about a show's fate. Sometimes the creative team gets a call with the bad news. Sometimes it doesn't.

"They'll never say it's been canceled," said a veteran Hollywood comedy writer and executive producer who, like many industry professionals interviewed for this article, asked not to be identified.

Seth McFarlane, the creator and executive producer of Family Guy, which returned to the Fox schedule three years after it was canceled, speculates that Hollywood's increasing corporatization makes it even more difficult for executives to exercise decisive action and thus to use decisive language.

Management seems to live in fear of making a mistake, and its ever-burgeoning layers tend to discourage strong opinions, he said. "There's an old joke about two network executives. One says, 'What did you think of the [TV] pilot?'" said McFarlane. "And the other one says, 'I don't know. I'm the only one that has seen it.'"

Sometimes, those reed-thin hopes of rescue actually materialize, as in the cases of ABC's According to Jim and CBS' post-apocalyptic drama Jericho. With Jericho, it wasn't until mid-May that fans discovered their show was getting blown off the fall schedule. CBS President Nina Tassler briefly explained at the time that the show had "lost its engine" and wasn't "performing."

Because of the fan outpouring, CBS resurrected the show and ordered at least seven more original episodes, which will "return" in midseason. But the overwhelming majority of shows aren't so lucky.

"I see them on the Island of Hiatus out there somewhere," said Brooks jokingly. "They're out there, just waiting, waiting, waiting for the boat that never comes. You talk about lost."

Martin Miller writes for the Los Angeles Times.

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