Is an at-risk NBC drama a candidate for the kind of viral social-media campaign that worked to save "Chuck," another NBC program?

Probably not, writes the Los Angeles Times‘ Mary McNamara.

The show in question is "Prime Suspect," which was recently pulled from the NBC lineup. The story notes that NBC "intentionally courted fans of the original ‘Prime Suspect,’ which aired a decade ago on PBS; you do the social media math," McNamara writes.

Another issue is that people who tune in to 10 p.m. police dramas "are usually not looking to start a pop cultural movement; they just want to watch something decent after the kids are in bed and the dishes are done," she adds.

Fans of the show wrote to McNamara about NBC’s "weird self-defeating penchant for putting together sophisticated shows and then pulling the plug when their numbers don’t immediately measure up to their more mass-market brethren," she writes. "Yanking good shows in their infancy isn’t just bad for those shows and their fans, it’s bad for all future shows in the same time slot. "