Knight Rider Season Cut Short

Written by Ian Cullen on December 4, 2008 – 4:29 pm -

By Ian M. Cullen

According to various reports coming from SyFy Portal, EW and Hollywood Reporter the jig looks like it could be up for Knight Rider.

Last month it was reported that three principal cast members would be getting written out of the series in order to facilitate a change in format for the series, and that the above changes would start to take place at around episode 13 of the 21 episodes that were ordered.

According to Entertainment Weekly’s Michael Ausiello NBC have released a new mid season schedule, which reveals the episode order for Knight Rider has been cut to 17 episodes. This means that fans may well only get to see four episodes of the rebooted series before the season ends.

Although nothing has actually been said about the future of the series, many experts believe the writing is on the wall for Knight Rider.

The show has been sliding down the ratings since it launched in the fall, and sadly was unable to repeat the ratings success of the back door pilot movie, which aired in February of this year. The fact that the episode order has been cut from 21 to just 17 episodes is not an encouraging sign for the future of a show, not just a genre show, but also any show.

NBC ordered a full season of Knight Rider a little over a month ago, which proved a surprise to many television critics and experts due to the mediocre ratings. With the order came the announcement that Sydney Tamiia Poitier, Yancey Arias and Bruce Davison would depart after episode 13 to make room for a midseason reboot.

Knight Rider has aired eight episodes through Nov. 19 and averaged a 4.1 rating/6 share in overnights, getting whooped my most of its other competition with the lone exception of Pushing Daisies, which has also crashed and burned on ABC.

NBC tried something different in Knight Rider’s timeslot last week by airing a variety show by Rosie O’Donnell, but the ratings for that outing were even worse than what “Knight Rider” was generating, and that show survived just one episode.

Knight Rider airs Wednesdays at 8 p.m. ET on NBC.

Related posts:

  1. Knight Rider Recieves Full Season
  2. NBC Orders More Knight Rider
  3. Thompson Wants Updated Knight Rider
  4. Hasselhoff A Regular On Knight Rider?
  5. The Hoff Returning To Knight Rider?

Tags: ,
Posted in SF-TV & Movie News | 2 Comments »


2 Responses to “Knight Rider Season Cut Short”

  1. By lorie on Mar 22, 2009 | Reply

    This is the way things should be, get off what we are on now

  1. 1 Trackback(s)

  2. Dec 11, 2008: Knight Rider: The Bullet Resistant Car | Science Not Fiction | Discover Magazine

Post a Comment