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NBC Series Braces for an End That Now Seems Inevitable

Mar 15, 2013  •  Post A Comment

After a vote of “no confidence” by the network that leaves the series banished to Saturday nights, the showrunner of the struggling NBC show “Smash” is opening up.

TVLine.com reports that Josh Safran says he was “saddened” by the decision that places the show on Saturdays starting April 6.

The report quotes Safran saying: “I didn’t see it coming, being relegated to Saturday. We’re all aware the show is not successful, but I guess I had hoped we would see what happened when ‘The Voice’ came back [or] maybe they’d move us to a better time slot. But I understand from the network’s point of view. We hit a number and we stuck there.”

TVLine adds: “The number the show hit when it returned for Season 2 last month was a 1.1 demo rating [in viewers 18-49]. … It slipped further in Week 2, stabilized in Week 3, and most recently ticked up a hair to 2.9 million viewers and a 0.9 rating. But as Safran points out, going up a tenth of a point ‘is not really going up.’”

The story notes: “If there’s a silver lining here for fans, it’s that all of this season’s remaining 11 episodes will air (the next three on Tuesdays at 10/9c and the final 8 on Saturdays at 9/8c). And, according to Safran, Episode 17 ‘was constructed as a series finale.’”

Safran adds: “I don’t want [viewers] to think they are going to be left hanging, because they won’t be. The season has a beginning, middle and an end. … [And] it just gets better and better.”

3 Comments

  1. That’s really a shame. It was an excellent show.

  2. Agreed. I like it a lot. Great music and just the right amount of drama

  3. NBC should have tried airing this show on Thursdays– right after American Idol airs on Fox (for the Katherine Phee fans, who remember her from American Idol). Also there were no recent mention in NBC promos about the cast of Smash.
    NBC needs to do a better job marketing their shows to the viewing audience. Most people were unaware the show was even airing on Tuesday nights (for the past month), espically after a very poor lead-in audience from NBC’s sitcoms on Tuesday night.

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