NBC Signs Do Not Resuscitate Order for "Trauma"

Trauma goes down quietly.

Time of death: 7:59 PM October 28. NBC has canceled their freshman drama Trauma, of interest here at AfterElton.com because of gay paramedic Tyler Briggs, who had such a touching coming out scene this past Monday.

The show has been plagued by mediocre ratings since the premiere, but had shown a slight uptick during this week's Halloween episode where Tyler and San Francisco's Castro neighborhood featured prominently. And it was seen as a good sign when NBC announced that they were keeping it on their schedule through November sweeps. Despite these positive indicators, the plug was pulled on ordering a full season last night.

Tyler and Boone may never resolve their issues.

Conventional wisdom has NBC showing the remaining seven episodes through their broadcast of the Winter Olympics. They'll use the promotional high from the Olympic broadcast to launch their spring lineup. The cancellation coincides neatly with an increased order for Chuck, bringing that series to 19 episodes, which seems about right for a season with an Olympic broadcast.

Trauma was an old-school drama, with location shoots and special effects. The pilot episode, complete with the helicopter crash, was rumored to have run $4m. Regular episodes were ringing the cash register for $2.2m each, which is probably what ultimately killed it.

This can't have been cheap, and even NBC doesn't deny that accountants run the network.

For those keeping track, I'm showing three major cancellations this fall for the broadcast networks: Trauma and Southland on NBC, both with innovative gay characters, and The Beautiful Life on The CW, with a horrible gay character. Just like that, using GLAAD's numbers, we've gone from 3% of network primetime to 2.5%.