Lucky 7 has won the fall TV lotto to become the first canceled show.
The ABC drama was axed after only two episodes — and 12 days into the broadcast season — which is pretty fast in the era of heavy DVR playback, with networks typically wanting to wait at least three weeks to receive seven days of viewing data from Nielsen.* But Lucky 7 premiered to 4.4 million viewers and a lowly 1.3 adults 18-49 rating last week, making it ABC’s lowest-rated drama premiere in years despite the evening launching with mega-rated Agents of S.H.I..E.L.D. For its second episode on Tuesday night, Lucky 7's adult demo rating plummeted to a 0.7 (not the show’s lucky number, apparently) to rank as broadcast’s lowest-rated show that evening. Scandal repeats will fill its 10 p.m. slot starting next week.
A British TV adaptation that was smacked by critics as silly and sappy, Lucky 7 followed seven down-trodden Queens, N.Y. residents who split a $45 million lottery win, and all the problems and heartaches their windfall causes. If your initial reaction to this concept is, “I’m not sure I really care about the hardships of people who win $45 million bucks,” well, you should have told ABC that last spring. Lucky 7 now joins the ranks of HBO’s Luck and FX’s Lucky, and pretty much assures nobody will tempt the merciless TV gods with the word “luck” in a title for at least another few years.
ABC had an inkling the show wasn’t going to work out based on pre-launch polling and didn’t invest in marketing art for the show. Lucky 7 also came in second in EW’s first cancelled show prediction poll (and was my No. 1 pick).
Here’s the big question: Which show is next? Fox’s Dads won the poll, but it might stick around longer than people think because baseball preemptions are coming to disrupt the schedule anyway, and because of Fox’s strong relationship with executive producer Seth MacFarlane. Other endangered titles: ABC’s Trophy Wife, CBS’ We Are Men, NBC’s Ironside and Welcome to the Family.
*Yes, it takes Nielsen three weeks to reveal how many people watched a show during its first seven days. This doesn’t make sense to anybody, it’s not just you.
Hosted and executive produced by John Walsh, "America's Most Wanted" helped capture more than 1,100 fugitives in the U.S."Most Wanted" premiered on Fox in 1988 That network canceled the show in 2011 and Lifetime picked it upThe show may be shopped around to other networks