NBC Logs Off 'Quarterlife'

Zap2It.com | February 28, 2008

The cast of 'Quarterlife'

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Show pulled after dismal premiere ratings

NBC has pulled the plug on its Internet-to-TV experiment "Quarterlife" -- a decision that apparently won't bother its creator too much.

After a premiere that pulled in historically low ratings on Tuesday, the series from "My So-Called Life" creators Marshall Herskovitz and Ed Zwick has been pulled from the 9 p.m. Sunday timeslot where it was scheduled to air for the next several weeks. "Deal or No Deal" and a "Law & Order" rerun will fill the hour for the next two weeks.

"Quarterlife" drew a CW-esque 3.1 million viewers in its debut at 10 p.m. Tuesday -- the worst in-season performance in the 10 p.m. hour by an NBC show in at least 17 years. The show, which has been airing in eight-minute chunks online since November, also got pummeled in the adults 18-49 demographic, where it managed only a 1.3 rating.

This despite a fair amount of hype about the show, which was scrutinized for its online to on-air transition and because it was produced by Herskovitz and Zwick, who reworked a pilot that ABC rejected a few seasons back into the web series.

Herskovitz was, not surprisingly, optimistic about the show's prospects before the premiere. "What we're doing -- which started out to be an Internet-only show and now has this television component -- is part of some, I think, hybrid process that will continue for the next few years," he told reporters earlier this month.

Following the premiere, though, Herskovitz apparently changed his mind. "It never should have been a network show. It's too specific," he told a Harvard Business School conference Wednesday, according to The Hollywood Reporter. "From the first three minutes" of watching the show on TV, he added, "I knew it wasn't right."