why did the series not last?
It was a shame that only a few episodes were made it could of been so successfull but i heard it was cancelled after a season.
shareYes, 26 episodes from September 1966 to March '67, and ABC pulled it off their schedule after just a handful of repeats rather than run them through the summer.
The GREEN HORNET Strikes Again!
The reason that William Dozier did not continue the series was not for bad ratings, but he want a hour long window for each episode (reason for the 2-parters) and ABC wasn't willing to give him the extra 30 minutes, so he just pulled the plug to the series, and ABC got back at him by pulling 'Batman' off the network!
shareVan Williams said this in a 1988 interview in Starlog magazine (October 1988), but to say that I've got no reason to believe it is an understatement. Cinefantastique magazine's February 1994 issue was Batman-dominated, with sections on the Tim Burton/Joel Schumacher theatrical films, the Fox network TV cartoons and the 1960s campy Batman series. In the latter, they categorically stated that that show's "ratings sagged second season," corroborated by the fact that ABC reduced it from two episodes a week to one for the third (that and the fact that the network ran that season's twenty-odd episodes straight through on consecutive Thursday evenings--including Thanksgiving!--and did no reruns thereafter strongly suggests that they had committed themselves to a third season well in advance and when the time actually came, they'd have rather cancelled). In discussing the cross-over with The Green Hornet ("A Piece of the Action/Batman's Satisfaction"), Cinefantastique reported that its ratings were often in Nielsen's bottom 20. Even Williams admitted in the previously mentioned interview that the cross-over was an attempt to draw Batman's audience to The...Hornet, paradoxical to his having also claimed there, "We were winning our time slot." As they were up against CBS' megahit The Wild Wild West, that is definitely not true, reducing the believability quotient of any of the actor's statements. I've never encountered any actual, credible corroboration for Williams' one-hour-expansion claim, just people like you repeating it. And there's that evidence above working against it.
The GREEN HORNET Strikes Again!
I can neither confirm nor deny any official decision about one-hour episodes. But in another thread here before I read this, I remarked that the episodes on the SyFy GH marathon seemed too pat and rushed, and that they would have benefitted from a one hour episode slot to develop the story better. I recorded only about 5 episodes, but the 2-part "Beautiful Dreamer" felt like a better story because it had enough time to develop with twists and turns.
As they stand, the ~25 minute episodes didn't do much for me beyond nostalgia and watching Bruce Lee kick serious butt.
Because it was pretty bad.
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