Well, we really don't have anyone to blame but ourselves. The Hollywood Reporter is ringing the death knell for Anchorwoman, pulled by Fox after only two episodes and one week after, well, nobody watched it.
The reality show even had a little controversy pushing it along, with journalists decrying the premise of a model becoming a TV journalist. Apparently that did more to harm the grand journalistic profession than Jayson Blair, Judith Miller, Star Jones, or the fact that people won't watch Katie Couric because she's a woman. Right.
The show had about 2.7 million viewers on its debut night, beaten handily by a game show I have seriously never heard of, CBS's Power of Ten. A re-run of America's Next Top Model, with 2.1 million viewers, barely came in behind Anchorwoman. Now if Tyra Banks were the model becoming a TV journalist, maybe we would have a different story on our hands.
The remaining six episodes of Anchorwoman will be aired on Fox's website as well as on MySpace; the slot will be filled by reruns of Til Death, until fall mercifully begins and rescues the networks from continuing to get the crap beaten out of them by cable. This summer's slew of non-starter reality shows and their swift cancellations is more evidence that cable can no longer tread water in the shallow end when all the big shows go on vacation. People are finally wising up that even watching Richard Branson dump water on Stephen Colbert on YouTube (so fake, by the way!) is better than some of the stuff the networks want us to see.
