On Sunday, NBC aired an epic 2-hour finale for Smash, which wrapped up plenty of storylines and finished out the series. Since plenty of spring programming has already finished out its run, Smash’s biggest competition was Sunday’s airing of the NASCAR Sprint Cup. Proving that NBC was right to cancel the musical drama, Smash only earned a .5 rating, while the Sprint Cup brought in a 1.9.
While Fox had the big race airing from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m., ABC and CBS were both in reruns, which ends up serving to highlight how poorly Smash was doing at the network. Last night’s finale event only brought the aforementioned .5 rating to the table, while ABC and CBS’ reruns averaged a .6 and a .5, respectively. According to THR, the final episode only brought in 2.4 million total viewers.
Part of the dismal finale audience may have to do with the timeslot switch. For the last couple of months, Smash has been airing in the Saturday death slot (after moving from Tuesdays), and a Sunday finale may have thrown some of the people interested in the finale off track. Additionally, this is a holiday weekend, and that may have kept a few viewers away from their TV sets during last night’s finale.
It’s a shame Smash didn’t manage to pull in a large audience for its very last episode. While the long episode did offer a nice stopping point for many of the show’s most beloved characters, there were a few hints at where the story could go had NBC picked up the series for a new season. If you want to indulge in a little bit of fantasy, you can read this story about where Season 2 executive producer Joshua Safran planned to take Season 3.
