In a way, Welcome to the Neighborhood was the perfect network TV show, drawing interest from a broad audience. One problem: The broad audience didn't much like it.
Targeted as a cause for concern by a leading gay-rights group, called unfair by a leading conservative Christian group, and branded illegal by a fair-housing group, Neighborhood was canceled by ABC Wednesday.
It never even aired.
The six-part reality show was to debut July 10 in the 9-10 p.m., Sunday time slot dominated last season by Desperate Housewives. The possibility that the series might surface as an abbreviated, edited-down special was floated in Thursday's Daily Variety.
Welcome to the Neighborhood pitted seven "diverse" families in competition for one posh house in an Austin, Texas, planned community known as Circle C Ranch. Three neighborhood families, all white and traditional, were assigned to pass judgment on the prospective new neighbors, some of whom were gay, black and/or Wiccan.
"During the [selection] process," said an ABC press release announcing the series, "relationships become strained, fears are confronted, secrets are revealed, expectations surpassed and the inner-workings of all of the competing families are exposed."
But the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation feared the show's potential cruel streak. The Family Research Council objected to the depiction of one of Circle C's Christian clans. And the National Fair Housing Alliance yelled foul.
"This show violates the spirit and intent of the federal Fair Housing Act," Shanna Smith, president and CEO of the housing group, said in a statement prior to Neighborhood's demise. "In America, residents of neighborhoods or homeowners associations do not get to choose their new neighbors based on their race, color, national origin, religion, sex, disability or the fact that they have children."
Smith all but told Variety her group was ready to fight the show in the courts. And should a new network pick it up, the new network should be warned that the fight could well be revived.
"Our advice is to let it die," Smith said in Variety.
In a statement released to the Hollywood trade papers after the show was shelved, ABC said Neighborhood had something good to say about what it means to be a good neighbor.
"However, the fact that true change only happens over time made the episodic nature of this series challenging," the network said.
To the Hollywood Reporter, a GLAAD spokesman reported having "mixed feelings" about the cancellation. While calling the producers' intentions "admirable," Damon Romine said the reality-show competition ultimately seemed "unnecessarily cruel and insensitive."
Smith, meanwhile, was flat-out "elated," she told the New York Times.
Networks have bowed to special-interest groups before--CBS' demotion of The Reagans to sister cable outlet Showtime was a commonly cited example Thursday--but rarely have they had to bow to such a disparate mix of special-interest groups.
To a civil-rights lawyer interviewed by the Times, Welcome to the Neighborhood was a rare kind of show.
"I wouldn't mind it too much if it were M.A.S.H. or Archie Bunker," John C. Brittain of the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law told the paper. "But this is real."
Not any more it isn't.