Game Gets Shorter for NBC’s ‘The Player’

NBC has trimmed the original order of 13 episodes for new drama The Player to nine. The Wesley Snipes-starring series airs Thursdays at 10 p.m., leading out of The Blacklist, but has not drawn an audience. Last Thursday, The Player’s 0.8 overnight rating among viewers 18-49 did show a 13% increase from the previous week, though just 4.1 million watched.

NBC has had big hopes for The Player. In an informal poll among affiliate leaders following the upfront presentation last spring, the drama emerged as the network’s top freshman pick to be a hit.

The Player is produced by Kung Fu Monkey Productions and Davis Entertainment in association with Sony Pictures Television. Exec producers are John Rogers, John Zinman, Patrick Massett, John Davis and John Fox.

It’s not the first rookie series to have its order shorn; Fox has done the same with Minority Report.

Among the happier rookie show news, NBC has picked up a full season of Blindspot, Fox has done the same for Rosewood, ABC has for Quantico, and CBS is in for a full 22-episode season of Limitless.

CBS also opted for six additional scripts for first-year hospital drama Code Black.

Michael Malone

Michael Malone, senior content producer at B+C/Multichannel News, covers network programming, including entertainment, news and sports on broadcast, cable and streaming; and local broadcast television. He hosts the podcasts Busted Pilot, about what’s new in television, and Series Business, a chat with the creator of a new program, and writes the column “The Watchman.” He joined B+C in 2005. His journalism has also appeared in The New York Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Playboy and New York magazine.