After his most recent arrest for assault, Alec Baldwin got some really bad news. His talk show has been moved to Saturday night. For those of you who aren’t aware of it, television stations consider Saturday night as a throwaway.
Your show moving to Saturday night is like a prisoner being moved to death row. You know your next move will be your last. Baldwin’s ratings were in the CNN range and it’s cancellation was inevitable, so the move may not have been associated with the criminal charges against him after he attacked another driver over a parking spot.
The Hollywood Reporter reported the following:
The network has pulled its remaining episodes of the pretaped talk show from its home on Sundays at 10 p.m., effective Nov. 18. Unaired new episodes of the series, hosted by Baldwin, will resume airing on in its new time slot on Saturdays, starting Dec. 8 at 10 p.m. Production on all the remaining episodes has already been completed.
The news follows Baldwin’s arrest following a parking lot altercation in New York and dismal viewership for his ABC talker. The series, which aired a backdoor pilot of sorts in March following the Oscars, kicked off its season in October to a lackluster 2 million same-day viewers. Its Nov. 4 broadcast dipped to less than 1.5 million total viewers.
You know what kind of shows get moved to Saturday? Shows that are preparing to die. Saturday night is a throwaway slot for television. It’s for shows that nobody cares about and ones networks have given up on. Think to yourself of great shows that aired during that time. I can guarantee you’re drawing a blank right now.
“Normally, I would not comment on something as egregiously misstated as today’s story. However, the assertion that I punched anyone over a parking spot is false,” Alec wrote. “I wanted to go on the record stating as much. I realize that it has become a sport to tag people was many negative charges and defaming allegations as possible for the purposes of clickbait entertainment.”
He continued, “Fortunately, no matter how reverberating the echos, it doesn’t make the statements true.”