Viva Laughlin Cancelled

BURBANK,
October 23: CBS has axed Viva Laughlin, an adaptation of the BBC’s Viva Blackpool, after just two episodes,
with plans to fill the Sunday 8 p.m. time slot with the 12th season
of the Emmy Award-winning The Amazing Race.

The
five-time Emmy winning reality series returns to the CBS schedule November 4,
taking contestants on a 50,000-mile global journey, including stops in Ireland,
Lithuania and Croatia. In its 11 previous seasons, The Amazing Race has averaged more than 10
million viewers. Jerry Bruckheimer, Bertram van Munster, Jonathan Littman and
Hayma Screech Washington are the executive producers for Bruckheimer Television
and Earthview Inc. in association with ABC Television Studio and Amazing Race
Productions.

Viva
Laughlin
has been pulled from the schedule, effective immediately. This Sunday, the slot
will be filled by a repeat of CSI. The off-beat musical drama, featuring Hugh Jackman
and Melanie Griffith, premiered last Thursday with CSI as its lead in. It
averaged just 8.4 million viewers, a huge drop off from the 21.2 million
viewers that tuned in for CSI. Moving to its regular time slot on Sunday, the
show’s ratings fell further to a reported 6.8 million.

Viva
Laughlin is
the second casualty of the fall season—the first was Online Nation on The CW.

—By
Mansha Daswani