'Bionic' Backstage Shuffle Continues

Zap2It.com | October 25, 2007

Michelle Ryan of 'Bionic Woman'

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'Sopranos' veteran Jason Cahill joins NBC series

The revolving door of producers on NBC's "Bionic Woman" is spinning again.

The latest addition to the show is former "Sopranos" scribe Jason Cahill. He'll take over as showrunner for the first-year series, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

Cahill is stepping in for Jason Katims, who executive produces another NBC show, "Friday Night Lights." He has been working as a consultant on "Bionic" for the past month or so, overseeing the writing on the show.

"Bionic Woman," a remake of the 1970s series, has gone through a number of behind-the-scenes shakeups in its brief life. Laeta Kalogridis, the credited writer on the pilot, left the show soon after that and was replaced by Jason Smilovic, who remains on board. Glen Morgan and Michael Dinner, who directed the pilot, have also departed, and Katims' gig was always understood to be temporary. Only exec producer David Eick ("Battlestar Galactica") has been with the show from the beginning.

Cahill won a Writers Guild Award in 2000 for writing the first-season "Sopranos" episode "Meadowlands." He's also worked on "ER" and "Profiler."

"Bionic Woman," which stars Michelle Ryan as the title character, has been scuffling a little in its competitive Wednesday timeslot. It's averaging a decent 11.6 million viewers per week, but its numbers have been falling little by little each week since the premiere.