“Smith,” “Kidnapped” Vanishing
The fall TV season has claimed its first victims.
The goners are Smith, the CBS crook series, and Kidnapped, the NBC thriller.
Smith, which aired Tuesdays at 10 p.m., is off the schedule “until further notice,” CBS said Friday. In a further sign the network is quite serious, it no longer features the show in its Website navigation bar.
In the short run, Smith’s time slot will be filled by reruns of the network’s law-and-order shows.
Kidnapped, which aired Wednesdays at 10 p.m., is being dumped in the Saturday-night landfill starting Oct. 21. The NBC announcement, also made Friday, ominously referred to the show’s “remaining original broadcasts,” apparently saying without saying that the network won’t soon be asking for any more episodes beyond the ones already bought and paid for.
Kidnapped’s former weeknight time slot will be taken over, as of next week, by Dateline NBC.
Smith and Kidnapped have both suffered the malady that afflicts nearly all doomed series: Viewer-deficiency syndrome.
Smith has been a non-factor on Tuesdays, running third in its hour behind NBC’s Law & Order: SVU and ABC’s Boston Legal. With 9.7 million viewers last week, it was CBS’ least-watched drama series.
With just 6.3 million viewers, Kidnapped, meanwhile, was last week’s least-watched drama series, period, among the big four networks.
Smith stars Ray Liotta as a master criminal and family man who promises to go straight after pulling off one last series of jobs. Kidnapped stars Timothy Hutton and Dana Delany as the panicked parents of an abducted 15-year-old boy. With their shows’ respective ends near, perhaps both sets of TV families can now get on with their lives.
Overall, the fall season has been short on freshman standouts.
ABC has gotten good starts out of Ugly Betty and Brothers & Sisters, but neither is a breakout performer, a la Desperate Housewives. NBC’s high on Heroes, while CBS’ hottest new hit is the cold-blooded Shark, but, again, neither is a Top 10 show.
In other TV tidbits:
Round three of the Grey’s Anatomy-CSI bout went to Grey’s Anatomy, which was watched by 22.8 million on Thursday night, compared to 21.5 million for its forensic foe, per Nielsen Media Research stats. The win gives Grey’s the series edge, 2-1.
Ugly Betty’s bid to return to the Top 10 in next week’s rankings will fall short thanks, in part, to Survivor: Cook Islands, which bested the new comedy in the 8 p.m. Thursday hour, 15.8 million viewers to 14.3 million.
Categories