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Seen the Last of "Last Comic"?
The fate of its season finale was up in the air Thursday, with NBC at one point appearing to have downsized the event--the crowning of the competition's latest stand-up champ--into a blurb to air between episodes of another series.
Early Thursday, at least one of Last Comic's still-standing comics had been informed he wouldn't be needed to tape a new episode next week. The network's own Website said the results of viewing voting would be would be revealed Tuesday in the midst of back-to-back-to-back episodes of Father of the Pride.
Later, that announcement was removed from the site (with NBC committing only to announcing the winners sometime next Tuesday). Even those associated with the show said they were in the dark as to how to exactly the final results would be disseminated.
To be sure, ratings for Last Comic Standing, officially known this fall as Last Comic Standing 3, have been poor.
For the TV week ended Sunday, the punchline-packed Last Comic Standing ranked 74th, playing to a relatively sparse house of 5.5 million, according to Nielsen Media Research.
The Jay Mohr-hosted Last Comic Standing had been a modest hit for NBC over the past two summers. The show's third edition, reuniting stand-ups from the previous seasons, marked the first time the concept had been tested against fall competition.
On this past week's installment, Dave Mordal, John Heffron, Alonzo Bodden and Rich Vos survived the latest round of cuts, and offered their final please-vote-for-me performances.
There is no mystery, meanwhile, about the fate of The Next Great Champ. It's goner--at least as far as Fox is concerned.
The reality-slash-boxing show has been asked to pack its gear and head off for the dingy gym known as Fox Sports Net, the Fox sister cable network.
Champ, featuring boxer Oscar de la Hoya and a cast of pugilistic hopefuls, is the highest-profile bust of the season to date. Fox went to the mat for the series when producers of NBC's upcoming The Contender, another boxing-themed reality show, sought to knock out the rival on a legal technicality.
While The Next Great Champ won in court, it lost in the ratings. Last week, it ranked in 90th place, with a punchless 4.4 million viewers.
"The Next Great Champ is a compelling, well-produced series," Gail Berman, Fox Broadcasting entertainment president said in a statement. "Unfortunately, despite its loyal core audience, the underlying boxing theme of the series has proved too narrow for us."
Fox Sports Net, which lives to narrow-cast (darts, anyone?), will begin airing Champ on Sunday, with a marathon of the show's first four episodes. Previously unaired installments--there's about seven--will be unearthed weekly on Sunday nights, starting Oct. 17.
Though The Next Great Champ took it on the chin, NBC still has high hopes for The Contender, a joint effort by Survivor's Mark Burnett, DreamWorks' Jeffrey Katzenberg and Rocky's Sylvester Stallone. The network this week confirmed January as that show's premiere month.
Fox, meanwhile, will have baseball, at least through October, to help fill the hole left by the departing Champ in the 9-10 p.m. Tuesday hour. NBC is awarding Last Comic Standing's 8-9 p.m. Tuesday slot to The Biggest Loser, a reality show about overweight people and the scales that torment them, debuting Oct. 19.
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