Fox Yanks Cracking Up

By Paige Albiniak
( Broadcasting & Cable )
published

Fox will pull sitcom Cracking Up after its sixth episode airs April 5. The network said it plans to bring the show back this summer. The network has five episodes left to air.

Cracking Up stars Molly Shannon and was created by Mike White, who created NBC's critically acclaimed but short-lived Freaks and Geeks and wrote movies School of Rock and The Good Girl.

Fox gave the show a prime launch opportunity, placing it behind expanded editions of American Idol in a two-night premiere March 9 and 10. It's subsequent ratings were only so-so.

In its place, Fox will air double-runs of The Bernie Mac Show on Monday at 8 to 9 p.m. That leads into new reality series, The Swan, in which women get extreme makeovers and then compete against each other in a pageant.

Cracking Up is produced by Twentieth Century Fox Television and Brad Grey Television.

Paige Albiniak
Paige Albiniak

Contributing editor Paige Albiniak has been covering the business of television for more than 25 years. She is a longtime contributor to Next TV, Broadcasting + Cable and Multichannel News. She concurrently serves as editorial director for The Global Entertainment Marketing Academy of Arts & Sciences (G.E.M.A.). She has written for such publications as TVNewsCheck, The New York Post, Variety, CBS Watch and more. Albiniak was B+C’s Los Angeles bureau chief from September 2002 to 2004, and an associate editor covering Congress and lobbying for the magazine in Washington, D.C., from January 1997 - September 2002.