Back in mid-March, NBC premiered a reality show, The Chopping Block, centered around a group of eight chef wannabes who tried to open and run successful restaurants. The concept hardly sounded original since FOX has been running a similar show called Hell’s Kitchen for several seasons.

To little surprise, the series tripped out of the starting gate and attracted just 3.77 million viewers with a 1.4/4 rating/share in the 18-49 demographic. Subsequent episodes dropped even further and the third installment garnered an embarrassing 2.58 million viewers and a 0.9/2 in the demo.

NBC pulled Chopping Block after three episodes and replaced it with Law & Order: Criminal Intent reruns. In a strange move, the peacock network has now decided to bring Chopping Block back to television for five episodes. They’ll be airing on Friday nights beginning June 19th.

The network is picking up where they left off, with episode four. The strange thing is that, shortly after Chopping Block was pulled off the air, the remaining episodes began being shown online. So right now, you can see seven of the eight episodes by visiting Hulu.com.

Does the network have so little available programming that they need to run shows that have already been burned off online? Is the broadcast department just not talking to the online staff? Or do they just not care?

Image courtesy NBC.