NBC Celebrity Cooking Show Burns
NBC tossed its Celebrity Cooking Showdown into the garbage disposal. Following abysmal ratings of its planned weeklong series of shows, NBC quickly aborted its kitchen competition. It was taken off the air Thursday and Friday, replaced by reruns of other series.
After a fair showing of 8.2 million viewers on Monday, the cooking show sunk to 3.3 million viewers on Tuesday night — unusually low numbers even if it was competing directly against Fox's American Idol. Although the third installment recovered slightly to 4.8 million viewers on Wednesday, NBC pulled the plug. It instead streamed Thursday's planned episode over the Internet, where viewers were invited to vote on the winners.
That was an unusual way to settle a cooking contest, as New York Daily News critic David Bianculli noted: letting people who can't taste the final product decide. NBC said Friday it will air that penultimate episode on Saturday night, followed immediately by the final show where the winner is announced — the show that was originally supposed to air on Friday. Saturday is usually the least-watched night of network television.