Ovitz TV Show Canceled, Another in Limbo

Former superagent Michael Ovitz’s run as a network television supplier suffered a few setbacks Thursday, as one show from his Artists Television Group was canceled and another was pulled off the air and placed in near-cancellation limbo.

ATG, which operates under the aegis of Ovitz’s Artists Management Group, made a splash last spring by selling seven shows to the broadcast networks, making the independent studio one of the top suppliers of network shows for the fall 2000 season--and giving ATG, a newcomer to the field amid media giants, immediate vitality and bragging rights in Hollywood.

Now, ATG has been knocked back a few strides. On Thursday, Fox canceled its drama “The $treet,” and ABC announced it was pulling the sitcom “Madigan Men” from its schedule.

Stu Bloomberg, co-chairman of Walt Disney Co.’s ABC Television Group, said the network hadn’t made its final decision on “Madigan Men,” but given that ABC hasn’t extended its initial 13-episode commitment to the series, cancellation seems likely. ABC’s corporate sibling Touchstone Television shares a 50% stake in “Madigan Men.”

Seen in the context of the high failure rate for new series, ATG’s setbacks aren’t out of whack. But Ovitz had made himself something of a maverick target for his competitors, who predicted he had overspent out of the gate--committing an estimated $60 million to a handful of writer-producers and stars such as Steven Weber and “The $treet” creator Darren Star, also the creator and executive producer of “Sex and the City,” a hit for Time Warner’s HBO.

“We got a lot of attention because we were the new kids on the block, but this is a five-to-seven-year process,” said ATG president Eric Tannenbaum, adding that he was hopeful ABC would give “Madigan Men” a second chance. As to the Fox decision to cancel “The $treet,” Tannenbaum noted its tough time slot on Wednesday nights opposite NBC’s “The West Wing” and ABC’s “The Drew Carey Show.”

The lusty Wall Street drama cost an estimated $2.3 million per episode to produce and had ATG looking for someone to share the financial burden. ATG still has Star’s satire, “Grosse Pointe,” on the WB and the sitcom “Cursed,” starring Weber, on General Electric Co.’s NBC. “Off Limits,” a late-night sketch comedy series, is in the works at Viacom Inc.’s UPN. But two other high-profile ATG projects, one from best-selling author Michael Crichton and another from comedian Ellen DeGeneres, have yet to emerge out of development.