CBS Puts ‘Frank’s Place’ Out of Business

“Frank’s Place,” the Emmy Award-winning drama/comedy about an ensemble of black characters who inhabit and run a down-home, New Orleans restaurant, has been canceled, CBS said Tuesday.

“Looks to me that we just didn’t please the Nielsen monster,” said Hugh Wilson, creator and executive producer of the series.

“Frank’s Place,” which won three Emmys in August for its first and only season--including best writing for a comedy series--has been playing in reruns on Saturday nights to a small and diminishing audience. Last Saturday, for example, “Frank’s Place” was one of the least-watched network shows, seen in slightly more than 5 million homes.

“ ‘Frank’s Place’ embodied every element of excellence that a programmer would want to see in a television show,” Kim LeMasters, president of CBS Entertainment, said in a statement released by the network. “It received the widespread support of CBS, of television critics and of a broad spectrum of the entertainment community. Unfortunately, the viewing audience simply failed to respond to it, and as it is not in the fall schedule, it will not return to production as a mid-season replacement.”

The series, which starred Tim Reid, had gotten low ratings since it premiered in September, 1987, but LeMasters previously had said he would return it to the CBS schedule later this season. Wilson and his writing staff had been working on new scripts since the writers’ strike ended in August and the show was supposed to go before the cameras next week.

“I’m not mad,” Wilson said. “I’m more sad than mad. We just didn’t produce an audience. Maybe the show wasn’t fast enough or it was too smart for its own business. I think maybe TV needs to move faster, be more obvious, more physical, and not rely so much on tone or a patina.

“It’s very discouraging,” said Wilson, formerly the creator of “WKRP in Cincinnati” as well as the writer and director of the first “Police Academy” film. “There’s always (network) people sitting around in meetings saying that the viewer is a lot smarter than we (producers) think they are. This is not one of those moments.”