NBC has been desperate ever since Friends left the air and they lost their highly coveted Must See TV Thursday night. But now they’ve found a hit with Southland. ABC’s luck seems to run in cycles of good and bad – good during Millionaire’s fad, then bad when it had nothing to tout on its schedule except Alias, suddenly good with the advent of megahits Lost, Desperate Housewives, and Grey’s all in the same season, and now suddenly bad again with some veteran shows struggling and new shows barely making a dent.

ABC, from circa 1983-1985, right after Tony Thomopoulos pulled a Zucker and destroyed the network and they kicked him upstairs and brought in a guy even dumber to handle prime time — Lewis Erlicht. Shows that were successful were cancelled for no reason (“Too Close for Comfort,” “Hail to the Chief”), one of the few hits they’d end up growing during the period was dead on arrival and almost died thanks to terrible scheduling (“Who’s the Boss?”), one of the two prestige shows they put on had its audience driven away by nonstop network interference before getting abruptly axed in the middle of a season (“Call to Glory”), every hit on another network was shamefully cloned and ripped off (“Foul-Ups, Bleeps and Blunders”), all topped off with a half dozen expensive, interchangeable “Dynasty” wannabes that no one wanted (“Glitter,” “Paper Dolls”). Oh, and they passed on “The Cosby Show.”

Capital Cities finally had enough in ’85 and kicked both of them out the door, and Brandon Stoddard eventually cleaned up some (not all) of the mess.

And NBC? Were a trainwreck for most of the early ’90s. And not even good enough to be considered a trainwreck during the Fred Silverman years (’78-’80). Ironically, all of ABC’s problems started when Silverman left that network.

ABC reduced the orders on all of their new in-house shows this season before they even aired, but, yeah, “Cupid” was, as I understand it, the only one to have its order reduced more than once. (13 to 8, then 8 to 7.) The second time, ABC basically just went in and shut down production on it, with a script still left in shoot. Now with this latest news, it’s pretty much telling us, “Yes, we hate Cupid, and we’ve already canned it.” They premiered it in such an inappropriate month, anyway. It should have launched Valentine’s Day week. McPherson’s track record is atrocious — but he brings a lot of it on himself.

Not to stir up this topic again, but it does still appear that ABC is considering bringing back one of its 3 new dramas (or I should say its 1 of 2 between Castle and the Unusuals). If the Unusuals does even worse on Tuesday, then Castle is the only candidate left and that will only be back if a) it does not drop any further at all in the ratings, and b) if ABC doesn’t like enough of their fall pilots and has a slot open. Even then, I’d be shocked if it got anything more than a half season order.

and the unusuals in my opinion have better chances tha cupid.

now abc agrees with me.

i hope at least the unusuals bring above 8 millions viewers. and at least a 2.0 i the demo.

I really think ABC should keep The Unusuals, Castle, and Better Off Ted and can Cupid and In the Motherhood. Castle is actually a really fun show which has found its sea legs in the latest episodes and really gotten good and the cast has so much chemistry together. I wish ABC would move it back behind DWTS instead of wasting such a plum timeslot putting the horrible-looking Saget sitcom after it.

Tho…I would give up all three shows to get chuck another few seasons.

NBC? Nope. This is the worst.

However it may be NBC that has the new procedual hit with Southland.

lol, true

I’d guess they just want to see if it does any better with a Dancing lead-in and they can’t really shift the Monday schedule to test the waters on that at this point. I don’t think its going to make much difference. Of course if it does do fractionally better on Tuesday I wonder if they’ll just drop Cupid in after Lost in two-weeks and keep The Unusuals on Tuesday.

On the plus side Unusuals fans are going to have a tough time arguing that ABC didn’t at least try to make it work before cancelling it now.

(but then again what do I know I also like Cupid)

ABC needs to move it to 8pm like FOX has done with Bones and LTM to get it away from CBS procedurals.

In the important 18-49 demographic, Lost scored a 3.9 this week, while the Tuesday DWTS results show got a 3.4

In addition, The Unusuals was only able to scrape together a 1.9 against a repeat of Law & Order, and what I’m told is the lowest-rated original CSI:NY. I think that even if SVU and WAT are repeats, Unusuals will be lucky to crack a 2.0

But Dancing With The Stars is a stronger lead in, especially with WAT/L&O:SVU in reruns this coming week. I think if it can do a million or two better than what Cupid’s getting in that slot, they may keep it around, just cuz they’re desperate not to have 300 empty slots going into next season.

I agree 100%. it looks like ABC is looking for a succesful cop show, and I guarentee a few new cop shows will be introduced next year, if the unusuals and castle dont work out.

That they think The Unusuals could survive is surprising, given the ratings so far. Or are they just trying to gauge how much of a show killer the post-Lost slot is?