Next week’s episode of Cupid is being bumped for The Unusuals, which will air twice next week. The simple rundown:
The episode of The Unusuals originally scheduled for April 22 at 10pm, moves to April 21 at 10pm. The episode of The Unusuals that was supposed to air on April 29, will now air on April 22. The episiode of Cupid originally scheduled to air on April 21, will air on April 28.
It’s hard to know exactly what to make of this, but the simplest tea leaf reading suggests they want to try to give The Unsuals a little more exposure right now at the expense of Cupid.
So will Cupid run two in one week after The Unusuals ends? Or will they quietly remove it from the schedule altogether before the 28th?
it might work on Tuesdays
Cupid definitely (for now) has an episode on 4/28 (and that week The Unusuals will run in its normal slot on 4/29). I didn’t see any information for what happens after…
ABC must be desperate for some kind of cop show to succeed.
this is ABC’s way of saying good bye cupid. however, for the unusuals, i dont know yet, I cant imagine it doing any better, so to be honest ABC probably won’t renew any of its new shows.
That Cupid is dead isn’t a surprise – didn’t ABC reduce their episode order a couple times before the series even aired?
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?
Jared,
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.
I don’t think this will matter much in terms of Unusuals ratings. And for the “it’s getting hurt going opposite two procedurals” crowd (who may have a point), it’s simply trading CSI:NY/L&O for Without A Trace/L&O:SVU. With a weaker lead-in I’m guessing it will do worse.
ABC is desperate. Not going to work.
>I don’t think this will matter much in terms of Unusuals ratings. And for the “it’s getting hurt >going opposite two procedurals” crowd (who may have a point), it’s simply trading CSI:NY/L&O >for Without A Trace/L&O:SVU. With a weaker lead-in I’m guessing it will do worse.
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.
faraday, I’m assuming you are talking about total viewers, which is not the metric that the health of shows is judged by.
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
I’m glad ABC moved it but its still the wrong timeslot. The reason why The Unusuals didn’t do good on Wednesdays was b/c it went against CBS procedurals and its still going against CBS procedurals and now its Trace and SVU. Its going to get killed there.
ABC needs to move it to 8pm like FOX has done with Bones and LTM to get it away from CBS procedurals.
probably cause Lost has a clip show next week giving a low ratings lead-in so and they want to give Unusuals a chance
ihatework: good call.
Ratings aside I think The Unusuals is a very good show. I think it is a different show than all the other cop shows out there and it has some very interesting characters with mysterious backgrounds. Maybe some of the alphabet execs feel the same way and are trying to give the show an opportunity to reach a larger audience before they have to decide its fate.
(but then again what do I know I also like Cupid)
So it comes down between Castle and The Unusuals. Cupid is dead.
But its still going to air an original episode out of the Lost clip show though…
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.
Cool, I agree. But I think Unusuals is dead too. And I think Castle is 90% dead.
Mark me down for all three shows dead. Regardless of these gyrations.
Alex,
“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.”
lol, true
I have to agree with ABC wanted to have a procedural hit. However CBS is too many procedurals and they are all going strong. Even if a few might be discontinued. NBC also does well with SVU and that may not help. ABC does not have many choices to place The Unusuals.
However it may be NBC that has the new procedual hit with Southland.
Perhaps ABC is hoping that the Unusuals can do well enough to have reason to bring it back next fall, when it can put in a 10 o’clock slot where it won’t have to compete with any Law and Orders or Southland. Of course since CBS had a procedural in every 10 PM slot this year, that doesn’t really help ABC’s situation either.
Well given that there’s only about four five hours on CBS that isn’t procedural content this year I think trying to avoid a CBS procedural is a losing battle.
The Unusuals seems to be ABC’s attempt at NYPD Blue. The exterior street scene camera work, the quirky mix of humor and drama. But it’s not well written or executed. I thought it was a mess.
Can anybody with an elephantine memory recall when ABC and NBC both seemed so desperate? ( Though an interesting article somewhere pointed out that against the other three, NBC has its widest leads ever in every other category but prime time, which in the age of basic cable etc is less and less relevant anyway.Ie, Sunday morning news, Today -v – competition, evening news, and Leno beat Letterman by an alltime record 30+ % last week. My numbers are from memoory and may be off a little.)
I’m young, but I remember when ABC was horribly desperate after the Who Want’s To Be A Millionaire crash.
NBC? Nope. This is the worst.
Prior to Cosby NBC was in trouble. Trouble looked very different then, but they were in trouble nonetheless.
This is either ABC trying to help the Unsuals or just trying to burn episodes
I watch all three shows and enjoy them. I wish for castle to succeed the most because I really love Nathan Fillion and I think he should get a show that succeeds. I really loved firefly
Tho…I would give up all three shows to get chuck another few seasons.
Am I the only one boiling mad that instead of giving the brilliant Pushing Daisies another shot this season, ABC chose to pick up a show that it already picked up and cancelled several seasons ago? Really, ABC? Cupid over Pushing Daisies when PD was THE most acclaimed new show last season?
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.
Forgot to say that I don’t think ABC is so much desperate for a cop show as it is for a solid procedural-type show that’s not Grey’s. Procedurals are the widest-reaching most mainstream hits networks have and the cop formula is the easiest formula to make into a procedural. That plus the fact that it’s the only network without such a show right now (save for the non-relevant CW) can’t make the network execs happy (CBS has The Mentalist, NBC has Law and Order and now Southland, even Fox is in the club with Bones). That’s the type of success they’re trying to replicate but they’re too impatient and want every single show to be Lost or Grey’s Anatomy, which hardly ever happens. Sometimes a show just needs a chance to be found and grow, another reason why they should leave the quality shows and wait to see if they can find the audiences (again, let Castle and Unusuals continue). Otherwise, many times they’ll just replace those shows with something that’ll get even worse ratings.
The Unusuals was a total tranwreck IMHO. Some really good cast memebers, but the writing and execution were unwatchably bad. Nothing fit together – it was a Frankenmonster that had no chance of coming to life. I never want to see it again. Cupid, OTOH, was a rather gentle appealing show. The leads have style and chemistry. Yes, it is FLUFFY, but at least it’s well done fluff (which is ebtter than a lot of shows out there right now). Keep Cupid, eliminate Unusuals – immediately.
I think is a good move but maybe to late… let’s see…
~I already have say this a while ago…. because i always think that lost is not a good lead-in show.
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 hope this is for the better!
Having watched both Cupid and The Unusuals, I think Cupid is a better choice for the post-Lost timeslot. Like the above poster said, it is a fluffy gentle show with simple stories. In many ways, Cupid is the opposite of Lost. The stories are straighforward and every episode has a guaranteed resolution with the couple-of-the-week. I think it will be a good way to decompress after watching Lost unlike The Unusuals which was just too busy.
Well, this definitely seems to be the final nail for Cupid. It also seems like a final chance for the Unusuals. It will have DWTS as a lead-in, if it can see an uptick then I guess it can be at least partially blamed on few LOST viewers sticking around. Plus since LOST is a special and not an actual new episode, in a sense it will be standing on its own more on Wednesday, so if it does not drop from this weeks ratings, it might be enough for ABC to order 13 eps for next season.
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.
After reading the article about ABC president Steve MacPherson in the NY Post it doesn’t surprise me that they are scrambling to make The Unusuals a go. The article said that he (McacPherson) is under a lot of pressure because ABC hasn’t had a big hit in a couple of years. They had a hit show in the making with Life on Mars, the show that The Unusuals supplanted on Wednesday nights at 10. The quality is not comparable between the shows; LOM offered incredible writing with a stellar cast whereas The Unusuals just is bland and often I found myself thinking hey I’ve seen or heard this somewhere before! ABC missed the mark with LOM and now has to have some kind of success with The Unusuals, very doubtful it will happen though.
“That Cupid is dead isn’t a surprise – didn’t ABC reduce their episode order a couple times before the series even aired?”
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.
this might actually work and let me explain why. On tuesday, the only other things on at 10 are repeats of the Mentalist and Law and Order so yea it has a big chance of working out!
“Can anybody with an elephantine memory recall when ABC and NBC both seemed so desperate?”
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.
Why doesn’t ABC learn that CBS and NBC bled all the life out of cops shows. Between CSI, NCIS, L&O people are getting sick of them. ABC needs to stick to what they know…..Dramadies! Desperate Housewives, and Grey’s Anatomy (all be it Grey’s is more drama than comedy) I’m actually shocked that there hasn’t been a spin off of Desperate Housewives yet, but I’m willing to bet that Terry Hatcher won’t stop being a fame whore and will be the first one to sign up for that! But now I’m getting off topic.
My guess that ABC would rather keep The Unusuals instead of Cupid has nothing to do with me preferring The Unusuals – I’ve never watched either of them. It’s more an educated guess of what ABC will do; Cupid already got a chance the first time around so this time, my guess is that ABC would be more likely to call it quits on that than The Unusuals. That, plus the fact that I see a LOT more Unusuals promos than I do Cupid.
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.
It seemslike ABC has confidence in The Unusuals. That seems rather unusual.
Cupid was DOA, there was NEVER an ad for the show starting.
It’s that time of year, when the nets are testing shows in different timeslots to prepare their fall schedules. NBC is testing MEDIUM for three weeks at 9 PM on Mondays (5/4, 5/11, and 5/18). On 5/4, MEDIUM will air a two-hour episode, but on both 5/11 and 5/18, two new MEDIUM episodes will air, one at 9, and one at 10 (for a total of 6 new episodes over 3 weeks). The season finale airs on June 1st at 10 PM, giving MEDIUM a total of 19 episodes this season.
The problem with Cupid is that it is a bad show. Period. Unfocused, lame and never really worked out what it wanted to be. No one will miss it. ABC should have known better.
We were very disappointed this evening when Cupid didn’t air. Finally something other than a crime show or reality show. Good clean entertainment that takes your mind away from the worries of the day. If people want crime then watch the news! Give us some relief – ABC Give us Cupid on Tuesday nights!
I actually really like Cupid. I would be very upset if they stop airing it!
Thank you, lamoma. Reading through these posts I was feeling more and more disheartened. I was beginning to think I’m the only one who feels this way about Cupid. I’m so sick of all the shitty crime shows with their stupid quips and corny lines. And don’t even get me started on reality tv….
I stumbled upon Cupid unknowingly and was ridiculously grateful. I’ll keep my fingers crossed for it’s survival….
I find it irritating I tuned in to watch cupid and it wasn’t there on the 21st assuming it was off for good, I did not look for it on the 28th did it run? I was starting to find some humor in it and was giving it a chance. not a fan of ABC . my attention has moved on.
is Cupid alive or not?