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Fate of NBC’s ‘Smash’ Still Isn’t Sealed, According to Producer

Mar 18, 2013  •  Post A Comment

With NBC shifting the struggling drama "Smash" to Saturdays, the consensus among television observers has been that the move marks the beginning of the end for the show. But executive producer Neil Meron said he believes the show’s future "is still up in the air," according to The Hollywood Reporter’s Live Feed.

The NBC musical drama won the award Saturday for outstanding television drama from gay-rights organization GLAAD, providing some good news in a season marked by dwindling ratings and the banishment to Saturday nights.

"The future is still up in the air,” Meron told the publication at the awards show. “We’re very disappointed that not many more people are watching it because we think it’s a very ambitious show and we think that people should watch it. … We just want to get more word out."

Meron said he thinks one reason for the show’s decline is that its subject, musical theater, doesn’t hold wide appeal. "We were looking at a niche part of the entertainment business," he said.

3 Comments

  1. Smash is one of the very best shows that NBC has on the air. If only the network would quit jerking it around (and thereby jerking the viewers around too) it would probably do better. By that I mean, changing airing nights, running 2 or 3 episodes then skipping a few months etc. But this isn’t just the problem with this show, it’s part of the problem with the whole network.

  2. SMASH is a mess. It’s not the subject matter, musical theatre, as posited by executive producer Neil Meron. It’s the chopped nature of the show and the whinification of Katherine McPhee’s character. It’s as if the new show runners are trying to cram as much as possible in an hour. Don’t tart up the musical numbers with wind machines and “star” lighting. Let them be as they are. We don’t have to see Ivy’s travails with Sean Hayes every week. We do need to see a complete arc from week to week about Bombshell’s book and administrative problems. They’ve forgotten or ignored the CORE of the show. BOMBSHELL. Love Hit List, love Ivy’s new job and Derek’s “derrick” and I absolutely love Anjelica Huston. Oh and with the move to Saturday nights – EMBRACE IT. Saturday night is date night – people go to the SHOW. So let’s make a date to watch SMASH the musical on all of my screens at the same time. But FIX it first.

  3. Scott and Talking TV are both right. The inconsistent day and time for the show has made it impossible to watch unless you have a sophisticated DVR that can keep track of all of the changes for you. This also forces the show to be watched on DVR rather than real time as you never know when it is on with an original episode. The changes in this latest run for a few weeks to these fantasy numbers has really taken away from the basic nature of the show – which was to tell the story of how a Broadway show is developed.
    What they have done to Smash is one of the best examples of how NBC has destroyed its network by doing the same with many good shows.

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