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Saunders: 'Studio 60' fades to 'Black'

Published February 19, 2007 at midnight

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The television sun is setting on Aaron Sorkin's Sunset Strip.

The highly promoted Monday night NBC drama, Studio 60 on Sunset Strip, ends its current NBC run tonight. It will be replaced Feb. 26 by a new crime drama series, The Black Donnellys.

The network initially planned to premiere The Black Donnellys on March 5, after the end of the February sweeps.

Plans changed after last Monday night's Studio 60 hour produced its smallest audience of the season - a 2.8 rating in the key 18-to-49 demographic.

To add insult to injury, Studio 60 was beaten in its time period by What About Brian?, an ABC romantic drama that has been limping through the season with audience ratings ranging from poor to terrible.

While NBC knows it's out of contention for a network sweeps victory, programmers hope the insertion of fresh dramatic blood in the 9 p.m. time period will provide a bit of viewer curiosity.

NBC has not announced when or if Studio 60 will return this season.

But its abrupt removal from the schedule indicates the series is not part of the network's plan for next fall.

Studio 60 roared into the NBC lineup last fall, fueled by enthusiastic critics who admired Sorkin's work on the Emmy winning The West Wing and ABC's Sports Night.

As a creative bonus, the talented Tommy Schlamme, who also worked on The West Wing, joined Sorkin as producer-director.

In addition to the gold-plated producers, Studio 60 has a cast of notables, headed by Matthew Perry (Friends) and Bradley Whitford (The West Wing).

From the creative aspect, Studio 60 has been neither a rousing success nor a resounding failure.

Sorkin's famed walking-while-talking scripts have been full of the sardonic, personalized flavor that worked so well on The West Wing and Sports Night.

The series, providing an inside look at a weekly network comedy program, was supposed to appeal to viewers who might be eager for a behind-the-scenes look at a the medium.

But Nielsen's ratings suggest Sorkin has never really connected with his audience.

Why?

Much of the fast-paced (sometimes undecipherable) dialogue about television production was inside baseball. Viewers evidently don't care that much.

And the plot kettle was filled with stories that never bubbled to resolutions, which according to my e-mail, was an irritant.

In an on-the-set press conference last month in Burbank, Calif., Sorkin seemingly was aware Studio 60 was in trouble.

He noted future episodes would have more of a "romantic comedy" flair (Whitford and co-star Amanda Peet stranded on the studio rooftop) and segments of comedy (Timothy Busfield, the TV series director, trying to remove a deadly snake from the studio).

While such segments worked creatively, the scenarios came seemingly too late to attract new viewers and bring back disillusioned ones.

Most in the industry will tag Studio 60 a failure - an accurate description from the audience-ratings perspective.

Despite the obvious problems, I've followed the series regularly, intrigued with Sorkin's stylish dialogue and the characters he and Schlamme created.

Studio 60 certainly isn't perfect television and has not lived up to NBC's expectations, but its style and framework have been different. In the cookie-cutter world of network television, that's always a plus.

Dusty's pick for tonight

Any comedy performance by the late Judy Holliday, right, was solid gold, as witnessed by Solid Gold Cadillac (7, on Turner Classic Movies.)

In her patented dumb-but-oh-so- smart comedy style, Holliday portrays a minor stockholder in a huge corporation who brings the stuffy executives to their financial knees.

The 1956 production is part of the channel's 31 Days Before Oscar programming.

Today's nostalgia

On Feb. 19, 1985, ABC aired the final two hours of a three-night miniseries, Hollywood Wives, based on Jackie Collins' novel. Cast included Angie Dickinson, Candice Bergen, Mary Crosby, Robert Stack, Rod Steiger and Anthony Hopkins. It was the most-watched miniseries of the 1984-85 network season.

News note

For the first time in nearly two years, ABC World News, anchored by Charles Gibson, finished ahead of the NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams in key demographics the week of Feb. 5. The ABC half-hour was slightly ahead in total viewers and the important 25-to-54 demographic.