Another Election Upset: ABC's Coverage

The same day Donald Rumsfeld resigned as defense secretary, CBS announced its decision to pull from the schedule its new drama series about a nuclear attack on the United States.

In truth, CBS also said it planned to bring "Jericho" back after a 10-week hiatus. But we're curious to see how many bloggers read past the first paragraph of an item. Now we can find out.

And there's no getting around the fact that during the "Jericho" hiatus, CBS has decided the perfect lead-in to its increasingly popular pervy crime drama "Criminal Minds" would be -- "King of Queens," so there's really no knowing what dark forces are at work over at the network.

Just like the Bush administration shrewdly waited until the morning after the election to announce Rummy's ouster, CBS cleverly waited until the Reporters Who Cover Television had published their articles excoriating ABC's plans to rest serialized doomsday drama "Lost" for 13 weeks so as to avoid airing repeats, before announcing virtually the same play pattern for "Jericho."

CBS mostly has stayed away from serialized dramas like "Jericho" because the nonserialized ones repeat so well for the network. "Jericho" is considered one of this season's surprise successes; it's averaging about 11 million viewers Wednesdays at 8 and, more important, it's providing "Criminal Minds" with the lead-in it needs to, as of last week, outstrip "Lost" in the 9 p.m. hour.

CBS originally mulled whether it wouldn't be better to keep "Jericho" where it was and air repeat episodes, but after remembering how badly serialized dramas have repeated since the days of "Knots Landing," the network decided to cut "Jericho's" run into two distinct, rerun-free seasons, the first of which will end with a cliffhanger Nov. 29.

In truth, this is not such a new scheduling stunt for the broadcast networks. Back in 2003, ABC cut up the season of "NYPD Blue" and ran it without reruns so as to goose its ratings in its waning days. "Blue" went off the air at the end of November and returned in early February and didn't miss a beat, ratings-wise.

More recently, Fox had success with the same strategy for "Prison Break."

To relaunch the show, CBS has scheduled a recap episode on Feb. 14, followed by an original episode on Feb. 21 looking at life in the little Kansas town of Jericho one day before the nuclear bombs go off around the country.

To keep die-hard fans from revolting during the break, CBS says it will "create an online destination" for the show including original content, recaps and previews and will continue to stream on its broadband channel all episodes that have aired to date; "Jericho" is CBS's most streamed show.