"Samantha Who?" Cancelled

Despite indications last week that Samantha Who? (starring Gilmore Girls’ Melissa McCarthy) would return for a third season, it now looks like the series has been cancelled.

(Copyright © 2008 American Broadcasting Companies, Inc. / Bob D’Amico)

ABC was planning to renew the series, which was yanked prior to all of Season airing, with a reduced budget of $500,000 per episode (achieved by filming with multiple cameras to speed up production).

However, because the network has 10 new series planned for the Fall, 4 of which are comedies, that left Samantha Who? with no ideal timeslot. The network typically heavily promotes it’s biggest and/or newest shows, leaving Samantha Who? with no promotion as well. The lack of good time slot (what dropped the ratings in the series to begin with) and promotion would likely not help the series any. The network and studio therefore decided to cancel the series.

It seems there’s a growing trend at these big tv networks to put their budgets behind creating lots of new shows and heavily promoting them. It’s rare now to see a series get picked up for a second season, let alone a third. As many of the “heavy hitter” series’ can’t last forever, this pattern may someday soon spell for trouble.

There is no indication if the remainder of Season 2 will be aired. So sad. I quite enjoyed this series.