NBC's quarterlife Bound for Bravo
NBC Debut of Former MySpace Series Earned Lowest Time-Period Ratings in Almost 20 Years
By Marisa Guthrie -- Broadcasting & Cable, 2/28/2008 6:06:00 PM
The next stop for itinerant Web-to-TV series quarterlife looks to be Bravo.
Sources at NBC -- which picked up the Web series about a 20-something blogger and her friends during the Writers Guild of America strike and debuted it Tuesday -- said the rejiggered drama will run on its NBC Universal-owned cable sibling.
The show first surfaced in November 2007 on MySpace after being developed and passed over by ABC. But its NBC premiere Tuesday at 10 p.m. pulled in a dismal 3.1 million viewers, losing 5 million viewers from its The Biggest Loser lead-in and earning the dubious distinction of becoming the worst performer in the time period in almost 20 years.
NBC has yet to formally announce quarterlife's fate.
Speaking Wednesday night at an Entertainment and Media conference at Harvard Business School, Marshall Herskovitz, co-creator of the show with Ed Zwick, said quarterlife was out of its element on broadcast television.
"It never should have been a network show," he added. "It will probably end up on cable."
quarterlife also aired Tuesday on MTV.
On Thursday, Herskovitz was compelled to clarify his remarks, issuing a statement that said in part, "Reports of quarterlife's demise are exaggerated."
"We’re deeply grateful for NBC’s efforts to make quarterlife a success on network television," Herskovitz added. "However, I’ve always had concerns about whether quarterlife was the kind of show that could pull in the big numbers necessary to succeed on a major broadcast network. It is important to remember that quarterlife has already proved itself as a successful online series and social network with millions of enthusiastic fans. We live in a media world today where many shows are considered successful on cable networks with audiences that are a fraction of those on the Big Four. I’m confident that quarterlife will find the right home on television, as well.”
