It has been a little quiet on “Deathwatch 1999-2000,” this year’s vigil for canceled series. For the last few months, networks seemed to be content to stand pat with the shows they have, or put those series on hiatus and replace them with midseason entries.
That, however, was until last week, when NBC announced it was canceling “Freaks and Geeks.”
The critically acclaimed drama about high school teens in the ’80s drew small Nielsen numbers, and NBC certainly didn’t help matters by placing it on Saturdays when the show’s core audience was hanging out, then moving it to Mondays, only to preempt it frequently.
It was scheduled to air last Monday, but NBC pulled it again, this time for an edition of “Dateline.”
“If there’s anything that’s really painful, it’s the return of another hour of `Dateline.’ What show could be more evil? That show exploits tragedy for ratings,” executive producer Judd Apatow told the New York Daily News, apparently not banking on a future with NBC.
The network did agree to allow “Freaks and Geeks,” which still has six unaired episodes left, to be shopped to MTV, Fox and the WB. NBC has shown just 12 installments.
In other “Deathwatch” noise, CBS is canceling “Cosby” after this season following four years of decent, if not spectacular, ratings. The show’s finale is slated for April 28, but Bill Cosby still has an agreement to create more shows for CBS, which credits his show for sparking the ratings resurgence that helped it become the top-rated network.
“I will forever be in Bill Cosby’s debt,” says CBS Television chief Leslie Moonves.
And in news that surprised few who know history, UPN says “Star Trek: Voyager” will ride into the final frontier after next season. It will be “Voyager’s” seventh season on the air, which is the typical shelf life for a “Star Trek” series.
Producer Rick Berman, however, is working on a new “Trek” concept that might replace “Voyager.”
– Ratings boog-a-loo: The Oscars telecast increased its numbers slightly over last year, thanks to about 79 million people who watched some part of Sunday night’s four hours-plus broadcast on ABC.
(The network was charging between $1 million and $1.5 million for a 30-second commercial, so it could probably have run into Monday afternoon for all ABC cared.)
Meanwhile, last week’s premiere for UPN’s edgy cop drama “The Beat” drew about 3 million viewers, increasing the network’s 8 p.m. Tuesday viewership by more than 40 percent.
And ABC’s new comedy “Then Came You” grabbed about 11 million people with its premiere at 7:30 p.m. March 22. It was the network’s largest audience for a regular show in that time slot since the beginning of the season.
– Fox files: The Fox Family Channel has stuck a deal for exclusive repeats of the WB’s “7th Heaven” beginning in the fall of 2002. That means the WB will have to stop airing reruns of the warm family drama whenever it has a hole in its schedule.
But before we see “Heaven,” we’ll have to be content with “Providence.” Fox Family will present repeats of the hit NBC family series’ first season in August. It then will show episodes from the second season starting next year. Fox has already made a deal to air reruns of CBS’ “Early Edition.”
– Web Regis: Check out www.abc.com to play “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire” while the show is on the air. The network’s site allows viewers to answer the same questions as on-air contestants in real time. It also lets players who are logged on compete against each other.
Meanwhile, “Millionaire’s” 800 number is asking hopefuls what their gender is, according to the Los Angeles Times, in an apparent effort to make the contestant pool more diversified.
We’re all a little crazy: In doing research for his new ABC drama “Wonderland,” Peter Berg made a discovery:
“In clinical terms, I’m not insane,” says Berg, who played wire-tight surgeon Billy Kronk for four years on CBS’ “Chicago Hope.”
“We all like to think we’re insane, but there’s a real difference between a healthy neurosis and legitimate schizophrenia. I’m healthy, I’m functioning, I’m not schizophrenic.”
Berg, 37, spent eight months at New York’s Bellevue Hospital learning how psychiatrists operate for “Wonderland,” a new drama set in the psychiatric ward of a New York medical facility. It premieres at 9 p.m. Thursday on WLS-Ch. 7.
It’s not unusual for an actor to study intensely for a role, but Berg, a New York native who has been acting since 1985, did research for “Wonderland” as a producer, not as a performer.
Berg is the executive producer, creator and a writer for the series. He got the idea for it while watching a documentary about a psychiatric hospital in Massachusetts.
“I think the show will provide the opportunity to dispel lots of rumors and lots of misconceptions and stereotypes about the way the psychiatric community lives and exists, both patients and staff,” says Berg.
Since Berg was inspired to create the series based on a documentary, he decided to shoot it as if it, too, were a documentary. With its hand-held cameras and quick-cut edits, you might label the show “NYPD Blue” in a psych ward.
As for the series being set in a New York City hospital instead of a New York City police station, for example, Berg naturally felt he had some experience in the hospital genre that he could draw on.
“I had a good sense of that world, and I wanted to find a unique way into it,” he says. “I thought that a psychiatric hospital would be so radically different from a traditional medical drama that it wouldn’t feel like the same old thing.”Television
