Serials are the new fad in US TV. Fox experimented with Fashion House and Desire a few months ago and ABC launched Day Break during Lost's mid-season break.
Now normally I have a rule. I don't get involved in a TV series until AT LEAST the first season is over. That way, if they cancel the show I'm not writhing in mental torment.
For Day Break I decided to make an exception to my rule. ABC ran promos for the show stating (or implying – I don't remember the spots too clearly) that the show would run the full story in 13 weeks – until the return of Lost. I thought this would be great. The story looked interesting. No spoilers, but Digg's character is stuck in a time loop. One day keeps repeating as he works to solve the mystery.
Honestly, I thought it was a great show. Kind of a sci-fi twist on a 24 type show. The cast was good and the story was engaging. Best of all it was a serial, each episode built on the previous (like 24).
Problem is, ABC wasn't getting the ratings it wanted, so they canceled the show after the sixth episode. I didn't even know about this until last week since my trusty dusty Tivo was setup to record Day Break automatically. I thought it had been a few weeks since I had seen an episode and when I checked on it there were no upcoming shows scheduled. After a bit of research I found that the show was canceled in favor of reruns of George Lopez and According to Jim. ABC promised to put the remaining episodes on their website, but there has been some snafu there with music licensing and they haven't appeared there yet either.
I have to say, I'm considering a class action lawsuit for mental anguish. I have invested 6 hours in this show and now I have to wait for them to sell the syndication rights before I can find out how the story ends. That's just mean.
How does this make sense to the network? How can leaving the remaining episodes unaired improve ABC's financial position? Are George Lopez reruns really getting a bigger market share than this show was? Even if it was, was it worth angering 3 million viewers to pull the show? It must have been, but I for one won't be watching any new ABC shows any time soon. I've learned my lesson.