This Week on Topic A: Cancellation!

Via Romenesko, we shed a tear for Tina Brown, whose CNBC Topic A cable show--as close to an SCTV parody of a talk show as has ever aired--has been cancelled. More interesting is that absolute number of viewers she was pulling. According to this account, the show snagged just 26,000 total viewers last Sunday.

Brown is supposedly writing something about Princess Di. Two questions remain: When will her equally execrable Wash Post col be canned? And when will the official Topic A web site go dark?

Comments

[tracey]

Holy God, Mark Hoffman's letter execrates with the faintest praise I have ever read, even in the letters of reference from my undergraduate professors!

[Ken Shultz]

"...the show snagged just 26,000 total viewers last Sunday."

Is that an adjusted number?

...Isn't it likely that 26,000 people, at any given time, left the TV on while they went to the 'fridge or the can or somethin'?

[Tiny]

Who is Tina Brown anyway? Was she the one who started that magazine (Jane? Talk?) Yeah I could look it up, but I want to learn about Tina Brown from the reason community.

[Heidi Fliess]

I believe tina brown was the mayflower madam or something. She a high class ho, basically.

[Mark B.]

Ah yes, Tina Brown's leaden touch - first The New Yorker, then Talk, now CNBC! She's developed a real genius for losing money for her backers - I wonder if she compares notes with Donald Trump regularly?

[NoStar]

I think she was the saucy black chick with the english accent on MTV back in the day when they played music videos. Yeah, that's it, Downtown Tina Brown.

[Downtown Tina Brown]

Wubba Wubba Wubba

[manny]

Royalty: Queen Noor, Queen Latifah

Funny. Real funny. Real cancelled.

"Your pretty face is goin to hell. "
-Iggy Pop

That is by hell he means, cable new network mediocrity.

[Douglas Fletcher]

I'm just wondering whatever happened to Eddie Dean since Tina had him on retainer. Anybody know?

[Bob Basil]

I'm surprised to be so out of the loop on this one, not just with you Reason folk but with the cable audience, too. "Topic A" was my favorite show on CNBC, and I wake up every Thursday looking forward to reading her WPost column.

At any rate, even if you don't like her recent work, it's hard to argue against her achievements at Vanity Fair (which she essentially resurrected) or The New Yorker (which she unstiffened). "Talk," though, truly was a misconceived mess.

[Bob Basil]

Her website certainly didn't seem to be very popular. Very few people seemed to write in: http://www.topicawithtinabrown.com/tmail.html