The producers and stars of CBS’s just cancelled “East New York” think it has a chance of finding a new home.
It should. This kind of series in the past would run on CBS Sundays for five or six years. It had an average of 5 million viewers a week. It was just edgy enough without being offensive. The actors, like Jimmy Smits and Richard Kind, were endearing and engaging. The writing was very good.
In the old days. a Warner Bros produced series on CBS was a no brainer. Before running CBS, Les Moonves ran WBTV. The two were hand in glove and the result was very likeable network fare.
But CBS is telling all its shows that budgets are too high. They cancelled “SWAT” then changed their minds the next day after star Shemar Moore threw a temper tantrum on social media. So something had to go, and it was “East New York.”
Let’s hope one of the many other platforms pick it up. It happened a couple of years ago for “Manifest,” cancelled by NBC then picked up by Netflix.
