Winners and Losers of Fall Season

By Rick Bird

Fox’s “Head Cases” has earned the dubious distinction of being the first TV series to be canceled in the new fall season.

The show starred Chris O’Donnell as an attorney who had a nervous breakdown, then partnered with another emotionally disturbed lawyer. It was partly played for laughs, but apparently few viewers found jokes about such subjects worthy. It got an anemic 3 million viewers and Fox yanked it after two airings.

Fox is replacing it with reality programming, which follows the recent network formula for show cancellations. (It’s a trend that almost makes one want to root for even bad new scripted shows to succeed).

“Nanny 911″ goes into the 9 p.m. Wednesday slot for a couple weeks, followed by baseball playoffs, then “Trading Spouses.”

Other early ratings returns from the new season:

“UPN’s “Everybody Hates Chris” achieved the highest numbers ever for a UPN show not about wrestling in its debut last Thursday, with 7.8 million viewers. It barely beat out NBC’s “Joey,” a feat that many thought not possible given UPN affiliates do not have the nationwide market penetration that NBC stations have. The “Chris” win over “Joey” throws another nail into the coffin of the once proud NBC Thursday night lineup, which the network once coined “must- see” TV.

And there is more bad news for NBC. The “ER” debut had one of its smallest audiences in memory for an original episode at 14.4 million viewers. “The Apprentice,” last Thursday, had fewer than 10 million viewers — the first time it failed to crack double digits for an original episode.

“The Apprentice: Martha Stewart,” which debuted last Wednesday, had just 7 million viewers, an anemic number considering the hype over the prime-time, rehabbed Martha. Maybe she “just doesn’t fit in.”

CBS was endlessly promoting this weekend that its new procedural crime drama, “Criminal Minds,” is the season’s “new hit drama.” Yes, it did get 19.6 million viewers at 10 p.m. Thursday (the usual “Without a Trace” slot) following the debut of “CSI,” which got a whopping 29 million viewers. In one sense, CBS should be worried that 10 million viewers thought so little of the show that they tuned out.

Let’s see what “Criminal Minds” does when it goes to its regular 9 p.m. Wednesday time slot this week, competing against ABC’s Emmy- winning “Lost,” and NBC’s Pentagon action-adventure tale “E Ring.”

If you can proclaim any show a true “new hit drama” after one week, it would be ABC’s “Invasion,” about a spooky “presence” that takes over a small Florida town after a hurricane hits. The debut last Wednesday, following “Lost,” drew 16 million viewers, even more than the some 15 million who watched “Lost” — coming off it’s Emmy win as best drama.

“Invasion” even beat out the return of the venerable “Law & Order.” It will be intriguing to see if episode two of the sci-fi serial can match its slick, powerfully-filmed pilot and see how it performs against the debut of the retooled, “brighter” looking “CSI:NY.”