ABC, Don't Break My Heart Again

I've had a long love-hate relationship with ABC. It has without a doubt created some of the best, most superb pieces of television in the last decade or so, but it tends to squander some of it's greatest treasures. ABC series that ended well before they should have include, just to name a few, My So-Called Life, Relativity, Cupid, and Once and Again. They have truly broken my heart with some of their cancellations and have a bad, but well deserved reputation of pulling the plug too early on some of their more exceptional shows (and keep around others too long like Who Wants to Be a Millionaire).

The best new show of this TV season, and just one of the best shows on television now in general, is the ABC show The Nine, and ABC has recently benched it until further notice. I hope this isn't the all too familiar territory of canceling their better shows too early.

While some may say, ABC is different now with critically acclaimed shows like Desperate Housewives, Grey's Anatomy, and Lost, that really isn't the case. Desperate Housewives and Lost both started as ratings blockbusters. And for every Grey's Anatomy that ABC kept when the ratings were good not great there is an Eyes (a clever, critically acclaimed show also starring The Nine's Tim Daly) that has been canceled.

There is some concern that The Nine loses half of the lead-in audience from Lost, but the two shows are very different and wouldn't really draw on the same audience if looking for a similar show. The Nine is a drama, not an action packed show as ABC sort of billed it as even though the link of the group of people stems from a scary hostage situation at a bank. There are better shows that The Nine could be paired with, but besides that, ABC might just try advertising The Nine in its own right as a show to watch, not just a show that follows Lost, after all, Lost's audience has freefalled somewhat from last season to this one.

ABC might be upset about The Nine losing Lost's audience, but they have no one to blame but themselves. The Nine was a show they barely promoted, certainly not much at all besides commercials on ABC. In fact, the most you saw or read about The Nine was courtesy of it being on just about every critic's Must See TV list of the season. They have not used Bailey's (Scott Wolf) fame from Party of Five to help draw attention to the show. Any interview I have seen or read with Kim Raver centered more on whether or not she was returning to 24 to reprise her role as Audrey in the sixth season. It's hard to draw attention and an audience to a show that you don't promote.

Let's hope ABC learns from it's mistakes and sticks with the excellent freshman show it has in The Nine. This is a show that has a devoted core audience but has the potential to break out into a bigger hit and one that will have Emmy buzz because the writing and acting are superb. ABC says it will be coming back later this season, let's hope they aren't lying this time around.