I was going through my RSS feeds when I found this interesting post on Lost Remote. It looks like Studio 60, which has been on life-support for some time, and now it seems that it’s all but canceled. Even now it looks like it’s not even going to live out it’s full first season.
I’m really disappointed to hear this. I was a big West Wing fan, but I didn’t get into the show until many seasons in (through the DVD’s). But early on I fell in love with Aaron Sorkin’s writing. The first four seasons of the West Wing were awesome. The show managed to hold in a bit after Sorkin left, but by the 7th season it was spiraling out of control. When I heard about Studio 60 coming out I was excited to see a Sorkin series “live”, not after-the-fact.
I love Studio 60. It’s definitely got a lot of dialog, but I find the show witty, funny and cleaver. I actually thought they had one of the best depictions of a Christian character in network Hollywood today. I was a little confused and pretty sad to hear that it got low ratings, because all of my friends who watched it also liked it. It may be safe to say that Studio 60 may have been the new best show that nobody watched.
Ultimately I think what killed it was NBC and their promotion of the show. I got pretty annoyed early on when the commercials they ran made Studio 60 look like either a comedy, or a soap opera. It’s gotten progressively worse as the season has gone on, where the only commercial depicts “Who is in love with ….” and “The ending that will have everybody talking…”. Look, the show is simply not sensationalist, and it shouldn’t have been depicted as such. If you want to get shocks and awes, watch Heroes or 24. If you want a prime-time soap opera, watch Desperate Housewives. Don’t make Studio 60 out to be something that it wasn’t.
With stupid sensationalist promos like that, the audience that would have likely been attracted to the show had no incentive to watch it. I was hoping that the grassroots word-of-mouth evangelizing of the show would have been enough to save it, but it looks like NBC has caved. It’s also disappointing because it seems that if the show isn’t an instant success, it’ll get canceled in the same season.
Well bye bye Studio 60, I will definitely miss you.