FOX Strips 'Skin' from Schedule
LOS ANGELES - For weeks, FOX used every opportunity during the network's high-rated playoff broadcasts to relentlessly plug the new Jerry Bruckheimer drama "Skin." On Tuesday (Nov. 4), "Skin" fell victim to too much hype and not enough viewers, becoming the first new drama of the season to earn an outright cancellation. "Skin" only aired three times, launching on Monday, Oct. 21, in the midst of the World Series. On that night, which also saw a less-than-impressive premiere for "The Next Joe Millionaire," "Skin" attracted 6.3 million viewers. It was down to fewer than 5.1 million viewers in its second airing and fewer than 4.1 million by its final airing on Monday (Nov. 3). Originally, FOX intended to reair the early episodes of "Skin" in an effort to build an audience over time, a strategy that paid off with late-summer hit "The O.C." The network abandoned that plan after only a week, opting to encore the season premiere of "24" instead last week. For the next three Mondays, FOX will show a second original episode of "The Next Joe Millionaire" at 9 p.m. Those episodes were supposed to run on Tuesdays during sweeps as a lead-in to "24," but after last week's dismal showing, the Tuesday 8 p.m. slot will be filled with a variety of repeats for the rest of the month. In the place of Thursday night's scheduled 9 p.m. reairing of "Skin," FOX will encore "The O.C." This, coincidentally, was where FOX had hoped to move the series for the fall, before moving it to Wednesday nights. To say that FOX's schedule is pretty liquid at this point would be an understatement. Following the sweeps period, FOX will have a number of empty places in the schedule. The network has midseason replacements like "Wonderfalls" and "Still Life" waiting in the wings. With "Luis" already pushing up daisies, this gives FOX the unfortunate distinction of being the first network to cancel both a new comedy and a new drama. The network also has several other underperforming new offerings which could soon be tempting the FOX reapers. |
For a show named Skin, they didn't show much of it. It was plain awful. And Laura Leighton's character bore no semblance to Sydney at all.