Slimming down the TV lineup

Can’t find your new favorite show? Well that’s probably because it’s been canceled or, as… Can’t find your new favorite show? Well that’s probably because it’s been canceled or, as the networks would say, “on hiatus.”

While the networks are a little less trigger-happy this season – canceling only seven shows compared to 12 by this point last year – it can still be frustrating trying to find that new addiction you developed in September.

Fresh off a ratings upswing, ABC seems to be refusing to give some of its new shows a chance to grow. They had a solid game plan in mind for dealing with reruns of their hit “Lost.” All they had to do was make Taye Diggs relive the same episode for 11 weeks, and tell “Lost” fans that there would be a clip of “Lost” during the commercials.

No one bought it.

ABC promised us that after 11 weeks, everything would be resolved and we would only be left wondering why we committed 11 hours of our lives to a mediocre “Fugitive” rip-off. Fortunately for those who get sucked into TV shows far too easily, they only had to spend four hours watching Diggs run around and look confused. As a courtesy, ABC put the rest of the episodes online.

“Lost” seems to have the touch of death: Not only could “Daybreak” not live up to the ratings, but yet another new series, “The Nine,” was canceled for not being able to hold onto enough “Lost” viewers.

ABC tried to keep viewers tuning into “The Nine” by promising that they’d find out what happened in the bank. But it seems that people didn’t really care what went on in the bank, or what happened after they got out of the bank, or what they did before they went into the bank. For anyone who did care, just assume that the guy from “Wings” or the guy from “Party of Five” did something wrong.

So far that’s two serialized dramas canceled. There are two more, and they’re both about people getting kidnapped. The first one, NBC’s aptly named “Kidnapped,” premiered to less-than-stellar numbers, and things didn’t go well from there.

After a handful of airings, “Kidnapped” was moved from its original 10 p.m. Wednesday timeslot to the dead of Saturday night. The move was short-lived, but the good news is that you can catch all 13 episodes online.

The story is much the same for Fox’s missing-persons drama, “Vanished.” The only differences between this one and “Kidnapped” were that “Vanished” killed the main character off in an attempt to get people’s attentions, and the show was moved to the purgatory of Friday night instead of the hell that is Saturday night.

The most shocking cancellation of the season was CBS’s new heist drama, “Smith.” With a cast that included movie stars Ray Liotta, Virginia Madsen and Amy Smart, the show seemed to be a surefire hit, or one that would at least make it through one season. This just further proves the point that TV viewers don’t care about banks, even if they’re getting robbed.

Not only were high-profile drama actors ignored by TV viewers, but comedy veterans didn’t fare well either. John Lithgow (“3rd Rock from the Sun”) and Jeffrey Tambor (“Arrested Development”) couldn’t keep “Twenty Good Years” on the air for more than four episodes, and Ted Danson (“Cheers”) found himself seriously contemplating a “Cheers” reunion after “Help Me Help You” was yanked from the schedule.

“3 Lbs.” gets the award for being the show that was canceled most quickly. After three airings, CBS threw the brain surgery show away, ensuring that no one would get addicted.

Fox didn’t extend the same courtesy to “Happy Hour,” however. This unfunny sitcom with terrible dialogue, barely-there characters and a cheesy plot lasted about a month too long. Even in cancellation Fox had malicious intentions: They programmed two episodes of the equally awful Brad Garrett debacle “Til Death” in its place.

While no official word has come out on “Six Degrees” or “Justice,” things aren’t looking good for either show. “Six Degrees” comes from J.J. Abrams (“Alias,” “Lost”) and stars that girl from “Swimfan” and one of the bar-dancing girls from “Coyote Ugly.” All that talent onscreen still wasn’t enough to keep the “Grey’s Anatomy” audience around. With low ratings and “Men in Trees” filling its timeslot, it would take a miracle to get it back on the air.

Fox’s “Justice” hasn’t been officially canceled, but after moving from timeslot to timeslot and finding fewer and fewer viewers, it seems unlikely the show will return in the new year.

“Justice” was one of the first shows to successfully switch up the typical procedural formula, by having the lawyers defend someone and not know her guilt until the end of the episode. All the timeslot switching most likely led to viewer erosion, because this is one of the few shows that deserves to stick around.

So what have we all learned from this television season?

Don’t associate a show too closely with “Lost,” nothing interesting ever happens at banks, big names mean nothing and if you must get attached to a serialized drama, you’d better have high-speed Internet because you’ll be watching the episodes online.