No Season 12 For MURPHY BROWN

Murphy Brown, CBS’s revival of its hit 1990s series about a feisty investigative reporter and her newsroom colleagues, will not be getting a new season.

initially conceived as a one thirteen-episode season-and-done revival, CBS did concede that if things went well another season could be a possibility. However, viewership for the show dropped 39% in viewers and the 18-49 demographic over its three month run.

The starred Candice Bergen in the titular role of a no nonsense investigative reporter for a television newsmagazine called FYI. When the series returned, it saw Murphy coming out of a retirement to host a morning cable news show with some of her former FYI colleagues. Additionally, she was dealing with her adult son getting a headlining show on a competing, and conservative leaning, news network.

While it might have seen like a no-brainer to bring back Murphy and the gang in the Trump “Fake News” era, the show did hit a number of hurdles. The first several episodes were burdened with a number of Trump jokes that it seems like creator Diane English and company had been storing up for a while. The problem is, with nightly talk shows all having pivoted towards stronger political and current events driven humor, many of those jokes felt somewhat stale. By the time that the show got into its feet and began addressing broader topics like immigration that weren’t quite so much subject to the whims of the 24-hour news cycle, it was already in a ratings decline.

About Rich Drees 6757 Articles
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