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"Playmakers" has been sacked.
After months of speculation about its future, ESPN's originally scripted series about a fictional professional football team will not return, a company official said Wednesday. One of the main reasons for cutting the series after the first season was the reaction from the NFL brass.
"Many considerations went into this decision, not the least of which was the reaction from a longtime and valued partner," said Mark Shapiro, ESPN's executive vice president of programming and production. "We are proud of the show on many levels -- it was a creative and critical success, and we are appreciative that viewers clearly embraced this new genre on our network."
In its only season, "Playmakers" won critical praise and pulled in a significant audience -- an average of 1.6 million households for each of the show's 11 episodes.
Although the finale drew approximately two million viewers, longtime NFL sponsor Gatorade announced before the show that it had decided to pull its advertising for that episode.
"It was an ESPN decision and now we can all move on," NFL spokesman Greg Aiello said Wednesday. "We're looking forward to Sunday night's Pro Bowl and another great season with ESPN in 2004."
ESPN broadcasts NFL games on Sunday night, and ABC -- which, like ESPN, is owned by the Walt Disney Co. -- televises "Monday Night Football." The rights deal for both broadcasts runs through the 2005 season.
Earlier in the just-completed 2003 season, NFL commissioner Paul Tagliabue admitted to calling Disney CEO Michael Eisner to express his displeasure with what he thought were the show's "one-dimensional" plots.
The adult drama, ESPN's first series, featured plots that touched on drug use, marital infidelity and homophobia. The show caught criticism from NFL players including Bucs defensive tackle Warren Sapp, who refused to do interviews with ESPN.
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This was a good show.
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) aren't any different than those in the real world, or NFL for that matter....
