While it’s drawn critical acclaim and a loyal fanbase, ABC’s series “Pushing Daisies” has been struggling this year. The quriky series got off to a hot start last year in the ratings, but was one of the biggest victims of the writer’s strike. ABC had faith in the series, renewing it for a second season and committing to a big promotional push for the returning show. However, a month or so into it’s season, “Daisies” is struggling in a competitive Wednesday night time slot, regularly losing to NBC’s “Knight Rider” in the ratings war.
The show has been put on several lists for a possible cancelations should ratings not begin to improve.Â
But tomorrow night the series won’t go up against a talking car or baseball, but instead will go up against the 30-minute political ad of presidential candidate Barak Obama. Obama’s campaign purchased network air time from NBC, FOX and CBS a few weeks ago in order to get its message out to the American voters in the final days for before next week’s election.  However, ABC wasn’t part of the purchase of airtime, despite the alphabet network offering the Obama campaign the time.
So while Obama is appealing to American voters on three of the four big networks, ABC will air “Pushing Daisies” in its normal timeslot.
This news can be looked at in both positive and negative lights. The negative light is that with the already ratings-deprived series could take a bigger hit from the Obama ad. The positive light is that viewers who don’t want to tune in for the Obama ad could flip over to ABC and catch an episode of the show. This could lead to better viewing figures and help jump start “Pushing Daisies” with audiences.
Looks like we’ll have to wait and see what happens when the ratings for Wednesday come out later this week.
I plan on voting wed morning, so Pushing Daisies is a no contest for me. Then again, even if I wasn’t, I still would be watching Pushing Daisies.