CBS Not Betting On Return Of 'Dr. Vegas'

It was a gamble for the audience that CBS clearly didn't think would pay off – resulting in it seemingly pulling the plug on Dr. Vegas and removing it from its prime time Friday 10:00pm slot.

As of yesterday according to Yahoo! News, CBS confirmed that it would drop the show from its schedule at least for the upcoming November sweeps season, which starts tomorrow (Thursday 4th) and finishes four weeks later on Wednesday December 1st. Typically this is a time when a network wishes to perform its best, which would suggest a lack of confidence in the ability of Dr. Vegas to earn sufficient audience numbers.

CNN also noted this morning that the show had been pulled, and also that there had been no indication of if or when it would return. Dr. Vegas ranked 58th in the ranking of the week's shows; finishing third in its timeslot with 7.22 million viewers behind NBC's Medical Investigation (9.04 million) and ABC's 20/20 (7.93 million). Whereas NBC lost only a marginal amount of the audience from its 9:00pm show, and ABC actually gained a significant (propelling it up from third place), CBS lost 2.1 million viewers from its 9:00pm lead JAG, sinking the eye network into third place.

A re-run of the highly popular CBS show Without a Trace will fill the slot this week, with CSI, CSI: Miami and Cold Case episodes all being touted to fill in at least during the sweeps period, after which time the network will presumably take a permanent decision on what to do with the slot.

Sweeps period is an important time in American television, when leading TV ratings monitor Nielsen Media sends out 2.5 million "diaries" for families to fill out their weekly TV viewing habits. This information is used to determine programme popularity and thus charges for lucrative TV advertising. Typically this means that both networks and local TV wish to show their best possible programming in order to secure good advertising rates.

For more the original stories, head over to Yahoo! News and CNN.

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