In a story that's sort of akin to taking a lame horse out behind the barn, NBC-Universal Co-Chairman Ben Silverman has hinted in an interview with iFMagazine that the network's Thursday night horror anthology will most likely wrap up after the first season is over.The lackluster series, which debuted in June as the red-headed cousin of Showtime's Masters of Horror
series, has generally performed in the range of a 1.0 rating--which is not bad if your show is ECW on SciFi, but doesn't quite cut it for prime time on one the Big Three. Not sure about all of you, but I've yet to see a single episode that's engaged me from beginning to end, and that's a bad sign when the season is almost half over.“We’re still debating,” Silverman told iFMagazine, in reference to whether or not Fear Itself will return next summer. “...You almost can’t lose at the business deal we have [ie. shooting the show in Canada and buying it cheap by selling off the DVD rights]. It’s whether we can do better, which we want to do.”
"Doing better" refers to the in-development Crusoe, a period action drama based on Daniel Defoe's 18th century novel (must admit, a pretty original idea, and that's rare for network TV.)
“We’ll definitely do scripted [programming] next summer,” said Silverman. “Not sure if we’ll do horror anthology again... Crusoe could perform better.”
There you have it, people. Forget vampires, ghosts and serial killers. Come summer 2009, thank God it's Friday.