American High gets the boot

By Azad August 15, 2000 1:21 PM

The Fox network has finally decided to pull the reality series "American High" from its summer schedule after four airings. The 13-part series chronicling a year in the life of students at a suburban Chicago high school averaged about 3.5 million viewers over two half-hour episodes that ran last week in the Wednesday 9-10 p.m. time slot.

For network television, that's a pretty small group. I have never seen the show myself, and if it were to keep airing, I would never intend to watch it. And I'm glad it's finally off the air. In fact, it was horrendous waste of airtime. The whole concept of showcasing the immature antics of American high school students with attention deficit disorder is simply... horrible.

"American High" executive producer R.J. Cutler said Monday that he was hopeful the show would soon find a new home on another network, and Fox's sister cable channel, FX, seemed the logical, and probably only option. What half decent network would even want a show like that?

"We just didn't get a large enough group of people watching the show, but the numbers we did get stayed very constant," Cutler said. Yeah, probably the population that's on crack.

"Our Web site is incredibly popular. There's no question we will be back to finish telling the stories of this remarkable group of kids." Once again, I will say that these people who are involved are all on crack.

Fox will replace "American High" this week with back-to-back episodes of the animated comedy "Futurama." Finally, a good use of air time. At least now I will sigh in content instead of feeling enraged at the stupidity of silly TV programs.

| comments: 3

Reader Discussions:

Post YOUR opinion too!

RE: American High gets the boot   reply

Posted by Loath (loath@dtheatre.com) on August 15, 2000 2:35 PM

Trading American High for Futurama is the best thing they've done for a long time! If they can replace Opposite Sex with something (almost anything) else, Fox will do even better. =)

RE: American High gets the boot   reply

Posted by Jack (jack@dtheatre.com) on August 15, 2000 3:39 PM

Yeah that show just sucked bad...

RE: American High gets the boot   reply

Posted by Demona (frogfarm@hempseed.com) on August 17, 2000 12:19 AM

All "reality TV" sucks, but American High was the least offensive and exploitative of the bunch. Just goes to show you, 99% of everything is crap, and the 1% that's left usually dies off pretty damn quick, at least in the mass media.