WB chief laments 'Jack & Bobby' fate

Published: Wednesday, July 27, 2005 12:31 p.m. MDT
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BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. — Canceling the WB's "Jack & Bobby" broke David Janollari's heart.

"Look, 'Jack & Bobby' is the most heartbreaking experience this network went through last year. And, personally, that I've been through in my entire career," the WB Entertainment president said. "We loved the show. We thought it was exceptionally executed on every level. Week after week, the quality was consistent. We tried to be as patient and supportive of the show as we possibly could."

And, while some have suggested that revealing the characters' futures in the pilot episode — that Bobby would one day be president of the United States and Jack would die prematurely — doomed the show, Janollari disagreed.

"Did we ruin the surprise by revealing the outcome at the top?" Janollari said. "I don't know that that's the reason, at least in its entirety, that the show didn't catch on more."

The point is that it never did catch on.

"We were looking for it to catch on, frankly, with any one of our key demos, to really show some traction all year through," Janollari said. "And the heartbreak of it all was the episodes got better and better and better and kept delivering. And, at the end of the day, we looked at the number and we couldn't find a single kind of piece of potential, positive, ongoing forward traction that would have really suggested that there was a big hit potential in the show."

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E-mail: pierce@desnews.com

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