Wednesday, January 27, 2010

ABC cancels "Ugly Betty"

Remember two weeks ago when yours truly made up a "tweets" page for Ugly Betty as a response to her "blog"? Here's the newest tweet from Ms. Suarez:

- Mode closing. Sad. Readership fell off; ad pages dropped. Out of work like a lot of Americans. :-(

Yes, even fictional Mode magazine isn't immune from the problems plaguing the media industry.

ABC pulled the plug on Ugly Betty today after four seasons. The program - which along with Heroes - was in the elite freshman class of 2006 with terrific writing, strong characters, and plot structure.

But ratings - and quality for both have declined since, even though the quality of Heroes declined faster than that of Ugly Betty.

Even so, the plots became more outlandish and more cliche - particularly the story arc where they put Gabrielle Union in the stereotypical "crazy black woman" role you find in Tyler Perry movies.

Ugly Betty started off strong on Thursday nights opposite Survivor, but never really made a dent in the reality show's ratings. It was moved to Fridays last fall, where it fell victim to the Friday Night Death Slot curse. It recently moved back to Wednesday at 9 p.m. Central Time, but it fared no better opposite CSI: NY and even The Jay Leno Show.

The series ends its run in April, but no word on whether Betty (played by America Ferrara) will fall in love with her boss, which happened toward the end of the run of its Colombian counterpart (Betty La Fea), which Ugly Betty is based on.

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