Only attracting 3.2 million viewers, Sarah Palin's Alaska has been cancelled by Discovery Communications, meaning it will not be airing a second season on TLC, or any other channel for that matter. According to award winning executive Mark Burnett, the show lacked reality and it was impossible to find any reality where there wasn't any. In other words, there wasn't any material worth filming.
Burnett states, “We knew we were in trouble during the first episode when we saw a polar bear just standing there, checking his watch and waiting for reality to kick back in, and everywhere you looked there were confused and bored puffins” These statements were made nearly a year ago before the show even aired.
Eileen O’Neill, president and GM of TLC, shared the sentiments of Mark Burnett when she declared,“We were confident ‘Sarah Palin’s Alaska’ would be compelling television, but there was just no reality there whatsoever. In the end, it just wasn’t fair to our audience or the puffins.”
O'Neill and Burnett aren't the only ones who addressed the show's cancellation. Sarah Palin herself addressed her Facebook "fans" in an attempt to smooth out and downplay the entire situation. Unfortunately for former Alaskan governor Palin, her statement only further sealed the fact that there simply was no reality in her show.
As for the future of the former Alaskan governor, who knows? Palin has to decide this year as to whether or not she wants to run for the upcoming 2012 presidential election. It's also rumored that her husband, Todd Palin, may make an appearance on television's Dancing With The Stars, as her daughter Bristol just did this previous season. Time is running out for Sarah to make her decision, but now that we know her reality show has been canned, she has time to figure out what she wants to do.
Whether or not the canning of Sarah Palin's Alaska is upsetting to anyone, there have been some other show cancellations lately that have upset fans of television. SyFy not only cancelled Caprica before the end of 2010, but they also canned Stargate Universe, which was shaping up to become an excellent science-fiction program. Both SGU and Caprica didn't reach as many viewers as Sarah Palin's Alaska, combined, although their fan-bases are still angry about the cancellations.
Chelsea Hoffman - Published novelist and freelance writer Chelsea Hoffman can be found on twitter @ckhoffmanf
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