Eastwick Canceled by ABC; Low Ratings to Blame

ABC Decided to Cancel Eastwick on the Same Day They Ordered More Episodes of The Forgotten

Ryan Christopher DeVault, Yahoo! Contributor Network
Nov 10, 2009 "Share your voice on Yahoo! websites. Start Here."

ABC canceled Eastwick this week, apparently due to low ratings. ABC's decision to cancel Eastwick is not going to sit well with fans of the show, especially with the news that The Forgotten was picked up for more episodes, despite also struggling to retain viewers. Eastwick has been canceled after airing only seven episodes of its fall run, and that means that the show won't be back in the spring. There had been rumors floating around that Eastwick might get canceled, but the official word just came down from ABC that the show was indeed going to be canceled. It's still possible that another network could pick it up, but probably not very likely.

Eastwick is of course the television version of The Witches of Eastwick, which was originally a novel and made it to a movie that starred Jack Nicholson and Michelle Pfeiffer back in 1987. The novel written by John Updike provided much more source material than was revealed in the movie, and the hope was that a television audience would fall in love with the characters. It seemed like that would indeed be the case at least in the first week, because Eastwick was able to pull in just under nine million viewers for the season premiere. If they had been able to hold those ratings numbers or improve upon them, the show probably would still be safe.

In recent weeks, the ratings for Eastwick have struggled a bit, and the lead that ABC has had in the hour over Jay Leno has dwindled quite a bit. It seems that both ABC and CBS really want to make sure that they win the 10 P.M. slot every night over The Jay Leno Show, and it looked like Eastwick might give up that lead if they kept it on the air. The numbers were still good enough to beat Leno, but when the total viewers fell to around four million per episode it seems that ABC was ready to jump ship on Eastwick. It's also possible that ABC had other plans ready for the spring on the network, especially with Lost coming back for its final season.

The decision to cancel Eastwick isn't going to sit well with the die-hard fans, and it means that the run of Eastwick will end with 13 episodes. ABC hasn't made it clear if they will run all of the episodes or not, but until we hear otherwise, assume that Eastwick will be on for the next few weeks before they run out of new episodes to show. This also marks the end of another Lindsay Price show, as she has had trouble keeping steady work with the fickle world of television.

Sources:

ABC Cancels Eastwick

Eastwick IMDB Page

Published by Ryan Christopher DeVault - Featured Contributor in Sports

Born in Seattle, Washington, I am a 31 year old college graduate working in the field of Education and Research. I am also a professional freelance writer and news content provider. I can be reached at... View profile

Eastwick Canceled by ABC; Low Ratings to Blame

ABC Decided to Cancel Eastwick on the Same Day They Ordered More Episodes of The Forgotten

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