Court will soon be adjourned for the Mark-Paul Gosselaar drama, Raising the Bar. TNT has decided to cancel the series after two seasons but, there may still be more to come.
From executive producer Steven Bochco, Raising the Bar revolves around a group of law school classmates who work on opposite sides of the courtroom. The drama’s cast includes Gosselaar, Gloria Reuben, Currie Graham, Melissa Sagemiller, J. August Richards, Jonathan Scarfe, Teddy Sears, Jane Kaczmarek, Stacy Hall, Natalia Cigliuti, Paul Joyner, Wayne Lopez, Jon Polito, and Angel Oguendo.
Back on September 1, 2008, the series premiere attracted 7.7 million viewers. That set a record for TNT as the biggest audience for a new series launch on regular cable. Unfortunately, much of the audience didn’t return for later episodes which averaged 5.5 million. Despite an early decline, TNT renewed the series for a second season.
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On June 8th, season two of Raising the Bar attracted just 3.6 million and shed half of the audience of its lead-in, The Closer.
As a result of the low ratings, the cable channel has cancelled the legal drama. Via a statement, a TNT representative said, “Everyone at TNT had a great experience working on Raising the Bar with Steven Bochco and the rest of the show’s terrific cast and crew. We’re proud of the series and appreciate the efforts of all of the creative people who were involved. Unfortunately, ratings for Raising the Bar’s second season did not reach the levels required for TNT to renew the series.”
TNT had opted to split the second season into two parts. The first dozen episodes finished airing on August 24th. That leaves three episodes on the shelf. It was expected that they would air in early 2010 but they haven’t been given airdates yet.
What do you think? Are you upset that the series has been cancelled? Why do you think that Raising the Bar failed — acting, storylines, or something else?
Image courtesy TNT.
“Raising The Bar” was a great show, but people do lose interest when it is not on for weeks at a time! Most networks start a series, get you hooked and then it seems you see more reruns than new shows!! Some seasons have about only 10 new shows to them. Then you have to wait 4 or 5 months for new ones and the networks can’t understand why people lose interest!!!!
“Raising the Bar” was superior television. For once it showed us the inner workings of the law from both the defence and prosecution sides, the bargaining, and the deals to be made, and with gripping realism that was involving for the audience. The cases were engrossing; the cast was charismatic and brought great intensity to their roles. This was the most interesting, intelligent and thought-provoking legal series on television today. Also Steven Bochoo has a stellar track record and this show should have been allowed time to find its audience. My week will not be the same without “Raising the… Read more »
Raising The Bar is an excellent program. It seems that all people are interested in seeing what lengths the police will go to catch the bad guys. Raising the bar showed what it’s like in American’s courtrooms and how our system is set up to convict the bad guy – whether he or she is the right one or not. I guess that’s not exciting enough for the shoot’em up / reality tv / American Idol watchers. What a surprise!
Loved Loved Loved this show. I was hopeful when I heard they would be back in June. Now I see that it has been cancelled. Why don’t they take off the air some of the shows that really stink. I feel the network never really promoted the show anyway. I always had to search to find it.
I loved this show. I was waiting for it to come back on this season. Someone needs to reconsider and bring it back. Put it on a different station at a regular time and promote it more and maybe more new people will watch. I know the ones who watched it while it was one will watch again. I am one of them! Bring it back!!!!!
The show was great. I could not wait to see the next episode. Great cast. Something different. Even is the ratings was the problem, it should given time to grow. It grew on me the first show. The young man with the long hair. Having diversity within the courtroom.
I want to see it again. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Have the reviews considered the economy? Maybe the decline in viewers stem from people turning off their cable because of lack of income. In 2010 someone decided to demand that everyone have some type of cable boxes. Now the shows people love to to watch are cancelled.
That was a conversion to Digital TV from Analog for those that didn’t have Cable or Satellite. The only thing these new boxes did was make it so people without Cable/Satellite TV got stronger signals/better pic quality, and a few extra channels, it did not sign them up for channels like TNT, USA, MTV, Nickelodeon, etc, and certainly didn’t give them access to premium channels like HBO, Showtime, etc. It also made some of their channels available in HD if they had a TV capable of viewing HD channels.
I loved this show, too. Came looking to see when it would be back on. What a appointment!
I watch very little television, and of course one of the few show I watch gets canceled. I was looking around just now to see when it might be coming back on and surprise, surprise.
I hate this show was cancelled it was definatly a great show…..maybe we will get lucky and a local will pick them up….I think part of the reason it failed is people cannot afford cable anymore these days…..so maybe another network(local) will help it out….will miss you “raising the bar”!
This was one of my favorite shows. The story lines were always moving the actors were terrific. It’s really to bad people don’t enjoy real quality when it hits them in the face. This show had all the right stuff. I will miss this show and I will watch my DVD’s over and over again. I’m very disappointed. There is so much crap on TV and this was a GEM!
I will miss this so much. I went looking for it today online because we miss it. Loss for TNT.
I used to wait eagerly for each episode of this show and I’m so disappointed that it was taken off air prematurely. I so hope that the producers of this show would reconsider their decision.
Sorry this show will not continue. Maybe the reason it did not do well is because of the split of sessions. I like to know when a show will air.
I loved this show. However, I never knew when it was on. I always watched the episodes on the internet. I hardly ever saw the show being promoted after the lead up to the first year. Sometimes the cable networks programming can be so skitzofrenic (sp). I’m still not sure when new episodes of the closer are on. Even when viewing them online. Is it the beginning middle or the end. I was wondering why it was missing from the tnt list of full episodes online and cared enought to google to find out. I didn’t care enough about googlin… Read more »