Skip to main content

Blood Red Rather Than (Ron) Burgundy: FOX Guts and Kills "Anchorwoman"

Ouch. It's got to sting like hell when a network yanks your series off the air after only one airing. Even more so when that cancellation occurs, not during the regular TV season, but during the typically viewer-light zone of late August.

However, that's just what happened to FOX's hybrid comedy Anchorwoman less than a day after the disastrous series premiere. FOX has confirmed that it has canceled the series, a docusoap/semi-scripted comedy in which former WWE diva (or something like that) Lauren Jones moves to a small Texas town to take over as an untrained anchorwoman on the evening news of a local station.

There aren't too many failed series that can claim credit to actually receiving cancelation notices less than 24 hours after their launches, putting Anchorwoman in a select club also populated by ABC's recent comedy fiasco Emily's Reasons Why Not, from last season.

So what's filling in for the Lauren Jones-led comedy on Wednesday nights at 8 pm? Back-to-back repeats of fellow FOX laugher 'Til Death, of course. And, yes, Anchorwoman did perform just that dismally (1.0/3 share in A18-49) that FOX would rather air repeats of that tepid comedy than to continue to air Anchorwoman.

For fans of the series (um, there must be at least one or two of you out there), FOX will air the remaining four installments of Anchorwoman on fox.com.

What's On Tonight

8 pm: Miss Teen USA 2007 (NBC; 8-10 pm); Set for Life (ABC); The Animal (FOX)

9 pm: George Lopez/George Lopez (ABC)

10 pm: Law & Order: Criminal Intent (NBC); 20/20 (ABC)

What I'll Be Watching

8 pm: Doctor Who on Sci Fi.

On tonight's episode ("Human Nature"), it's the first part of a two-part storyline in which the Doctor is forced to assume the identity of John Smith, a human schoolteacher, in order to conceal himself from some nasty aliens in 1913 England. But will the Doctor go too far in his disguise? Find out tonight.

Comments

Anonymous said…
Good riddance. I shouldn't be surprised that Fox put this garbage on the air in the first place and during the summer but they seriously need to realize that this stuff is not what people want to see. Hopefully Kevin Reilly's influence will start kicking in soon.
Your title for this post is more funny and original than the show was.
yatesy said…
Human Nature was a "New Adventure" Doctor Who book written by Paul Cornell (who probably wrote the episode). It has to be, IMHO, one of the very best Who books written in the history of the show (and there's a ton of them) but the book actually was the 7th Doc (Sylv McCoy). Paul has a way with getting into the psyche of the Doc, and I am really interested in how he adapts this to the small screen (and this new Doc). In the meantime, pick up the book, its amazing.
Anonymous said…
Sick, wrong, and just plain stupid. I am glad Fox came to their senses for once and realized that Mike Darnell can't be right all the time.

@yatesy - I LOVE Paul Cornell and Human Nature is one of my favorite Who books ever.
Matt said…
Was it really that bad? I wish I had seen it now.

Popular posts from this blog

Have a Burning Question for Team Darlton, Matthew Fox, Evangeline Lilly, or Michael Emerson?

Lost fans: you don't have to make your way to the island via Ajira Airways in order to ask a question of the creative team or the series' stars. Televisionary is taking questions from fans to put to Lost 's executive producers/showrunners Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse and stars Matthew Fox ("Jack Shephard"), Evangeline Lilly ("Kate Austen"), and Michael Emerson ("Benjamin Linus") for a series of on-camera interviews taking place this weekend. If you have a specific question for any of the above producers or actors from Lost , please leave it in the comments section below . I'll be accepting questions until midnight PT tonight and, while I can't promise I'll be able to ask any specific inquiry due to the brevity of these on-camera interviews, I am looking for some insightful and thought-provoking questions to add to the mix. So who knows: your burning question might get asked after all.

What's Done is Done: The Eternal Struggle Between Good and Evil on the Season Finale of "Lost"

Every story begins with thread. It's up to the storyteller to determine just how much they need to parcel out, what pattern they're making, and when to cut it short and tie it off. With last night's penultimate season finale of Lost ("The Incident, Parts One and Two"), written by Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse, we began to see the pattern that Lindelof and Cuse have been designing towards the last five seasons of this serpentine series. And it was only fitting that the two-hour finale, which pushes us on the road to the final season of Lost , should begin with thread, a loom, and a tapestry. Would Jack follow through on his plan to detonate the island and therefore reset their lives aboard Oceanic Flight 815 ? Why did Locke want to kill Jacob? What caused The Incident? What was in the box and just what lies in the shadow of the statue? We got the answers to these in a two-hour season finale that didn't quite pack the same emotional wallop of previous season

In Defense of Downton Abbey (Or, Don't Believe Everything You Read)

The proof of the pudding, as they say, is in the eating. Which means, if I can get on my soapbox for a minute, that in order to judge something, one ought to experience it first hand. One can't know how the pudding has turned out until one actually tastes it. I was asked last week--while I was on vacation with my wife--for an interview by a journalist from The Daily Mail, who got in touch to talk to me about PBS' upcoming launch of ITV's period drama Downton Abbey , which stars Hugh Bonneville, Dame Maggie Smith, Dan Stevens, Elizabeth McGovern, and a host of others. (It launches on Sunday evening as part of PBS' Masterpiece Classic ; my advance review of the first season can be read here , while my interview with Downton Abbey creator Julian Fellowes and stars Dan Stevens and Hugh Bonneville can be read here .) Normally, I would have refused, just based on the fact that I was traveling and wasn't working, but I love Downton Abbey and am so enchanted with the proj