ABC’s ‘Daisies’ crushed by a political ad

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How bad are things for ABC’s whimsical second-year drama ‘Pushing Daisies?’ Well, on Wednesday night, it got trounced in the ratings -- by Sen. Barack Obama’s infomercial.

ABC, of course, chose not to run the political ad, evidently in hopes of giving ‘Daisies’ room to grow by putting it opposite weak competition.

Whoops.

During its first half-hour, ‘Daisies’ did manage to round up 6.8 million total viewers, according to early data from Nielsen Media Research. The only problem is that ‘Barack Obama: American Stories,’ the heartstring-tugging half-hour spot paid for by Sen. Obama’s presidential campaign, delivered a much better number on each of the networks that did air it, including CBS (8.6 million), Fox (7.9 million) and NBC (9.8 million). (The Obama spot ran on seven networks; on the three English-language broadcasters plus Univision it delivered 30.1 million viewers.) The Obama spot also pulled better numbers than ‘Daisies’ in the crucial adults aged 18 to 49 demographic.

Fairness -- and our fondness for the good folk in ABC’s PR department, who have to spin this stuff -- compel us to point out that ‘Daisies’ did hit its highest ratings this season.

And yet ... we’ll try to avoid the groaner puns on its title, but clearly this show is in deep trouble. ABC executives are puzzled ‘Daisies’ isn’t doing better, especially given its warm critical reception last year. But they have to make a decision soon -- probably before the show returns to the lineup Nov. 19, after two weeks of preemptions because of ‘Dancing with the Stars’ results and the CMA awards show.

Star Kristen Chenoweth told the National Ledger that production on the episodes ordered wraps Nov. 12. ABC would likely need to order more installments by then to avoid a production shutdown.

Otherwise, ‘Pushing Daisies’ will be ... well, you know.

-- Scott Collins