The Cancellation Bear has made a preemptive strike. Deadline reports that ABC has decided to shelve supernatural drama Weird Desk which was picked up for 13 episodes last week without going through the usual development and pilot process. Apparently, it was proving too costly to get the show into production in time for its scheduled launch next summer. The show has a slim chance at resurrection. The network will take another look at it after pilot season.
Supercancelled
Bill, why would they do a cost analysis AFTER the pick up? Aren’t these guys business savvy? Shows are inspired by writers, but producers and network staff should look at numbers.
I would have watched it
Those bastards
The network wanted to kill this show so they had to create it first in order to kill it but they were afraid putting it on a bad day/time (Saturday night @ 3am) with a bad lead in (WWII comedy My Uncle Adolph @ 2:30am) wouldn’t be enough to tank the ratings so they had no choice but to kill it before it even filmed the first scenes … they just didn’t want this to succeed!
ymmv
“Well, isn’t that a pretty picture, Santa rolling down the block in a PANZER! Well kids, I… I certainly hope you have been good this year, cause it looks like Santa just took out the Pearson home. Incoming!” — Scott Calvin (Tim Allen)
this sounded awful anyway.
So when a show gets a pilot produced but it doesnt get picked up, it just doesn’t get picked up. When a show goes straight to series but shoots no episodes, it gets cancelled. Weird but true.
As for Next Caller, it probably would have been cancelled anyway if that makes people feel better. NBC should have burned off the episodes on a Saturday or over the summer or just given the show a midseason run. The last NBC midseason comedy to get renewed is Parks and Recreation which will be the oldest comedy in May once The Office and 30 Rock wraps. 1600 Penn and Save Me only have shot because of the fact that 2 veteran comedies are ending and the other shows GWK/UAN/Whitney/Community dont have a good shot to come back next season.
Another one bites the dust
I suspect the Cancellation Bear got no nourishment from this.
Best cancellation I’ve ever seen.
Lol ABC is the most humoristic network ever !
Evidently the show was killed because it was too close in concept to Joss’s new show S.H.I.E.L.D.
http://blastr.com/2012/12/how-whedons-shield-series.php
A over budget show that would begin airing in the summer when programs usually get lower ratings than those that air in between September and May–no wonder they stopped production.
That was fast.
fast food
WTF I was going to watch that show! I guess I’ll stick with SYFY.
Phew!
There goes source of infinite puns. Like Weird Kitchen Sink spin-off. Apart from weird pun-friendly title, ABC did well to kill weird thing before it was even born.
Heck, I was looking forward to this one, another sci-fi show bites the dust before given a chance.
Fun while it lasted…
All ABC has to do to revive Weird Desk is make John Henson work a second shift, in between lousy jokes on Wipeout…and set the show on the Wipeout set…and get the graphics guy to make slightly worse graphics than they draw on the Wipeout contestants, for Weird Desk…and have celebrities too unrecognizable for Dancing With the Stars in the cast…
…and even a 0.5 demo would be profitable