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NBC has decided not to air the last two episodes of Saving Hope after all.
The network had previously pushed the final two episodes out of their Thursday night timeslot, scheduling episode 12 to air on Saturday, Sept. 1 and episode 13 to air the following Saturday. But then they rescheduled those, bumping each back one week with the season finale airing on Saturday, Sept. 15. Now the network has decided it’s not going to air them at all, choosing instead to replace them with encore episodes of America’s Got Talent and The Voice.
Michael Shanks, who plays Charlie, the doctor who fell into a coma after a car accident in the first episode and now teeters between life and death, took to his Twitter account to express his displeasure with NBC’s decision, writing, “Wow NBC…way to cheat 3 million people out of a resolution to the story. #Disappointed #HardlySurprised.”
Canada’s CTV will still air the remaining episodes in their regular timeslots and has renewed the show for a second season. NBC will give viewers the opportunity to see the final episodes online, but only after they’ve aired in Canada.
MY TAKE
I am not happy about this at all. If you read my recaps, you know the show basically annoys me on a weekly basis and I find more fault with it than enjoyment most of the time, but I still think the 3 million of us who were turning in each week deserve a chance to see the final episodes without having to wait extra weeks and then find them online. I have to agree with Mr. Shanks though and say that I am not surprised by the decision. I knew NBC had given up on the show when they moved it to Saturday nights, but this just feels mean.
3 million people might not seem like a big deal in the grand scheme of things to NBC, but now those are 3 million people who are not happy with the network and who may decide not to tune into new shows on NBC premiering this month because they’ll just worry the same thing may happen again. I understand how networks operate and that they need advertising dollars to survive and it’s not easy to sell ad space for a show that not many people are watching. But if Saving Hope was pulling better numbers than the reruns that it’s going to be replaced with (2.5 million with a rating demo of 0.5 compared to America’s Got Talent’s 2 million/0.4 on Saturday night), I don’t see the harm in just airing the episodes and showing some goodwill to those of us that did tune in week after week.
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