What's up with CBS ditching ...
Question: What's up with CBS ditching
Smith so quickly? I hardly watch anything on CBS thanks to their overabundance of crime shows, but
Smith really interested me, and I was curious to see where they would take it. I thought the ratings were OK for a new serialized show. (Wasn't it doing about as well as
Boston Legal in that time slot?) Do you think maybe CBS didn't like the creative direction of the episodes we haven't seen yet?
Answer: You're onto something. The surprisingly fast fade of
Smith is partly due to ratings that slipped each week (the trend wasn't positive), and partly due to
Smith airing on a terrifically successful network that doesn't have as much patience for underperformers as others we might name (NBC, Fox, the CW). But when the ax falls this quickly, you also have to assume that the network execs know where the show is going and see little room for improvement, creatively and in the ratings. That was the explanation when ABC yanked
Emily's Reasons Why Not after just one episode last winter. It failed to open, and the network didn't have confidence in where it was going.
