#Stately: “Later Debriefing” Canceled

by Wanda Rowell
December 13, 2006

Prescription Services's new after hours talk show, Later Debriefing, has been canceled after a record one airing. Network officials withdrew the program Wednesday after a poor showing the day before.

"It was a runaway disaster from the first minute," Operation Director Clara Tumor said Tuesday. "It was like our version of The Chevy Chase Show hosted by both Harold Hayes and Robert Hughes; there is already a niche viewership for Debriefing and, frankly, to cash in on that is us not knowing our audience."

Later Debriefing had been in development for close to four months as way to extend the popular and long-running program Debriefing, a hodge-podge of incoherent essays on various subjects, idle speculation about why things work, and contests. According to its producers, Later Debriefing was to have more of an "artsey slant," featuring extended book reviews, discussions of medicine in the arts, drug-induced theater pieces and "The Drug of the Day," a commercial-bumper feature to include new drugs and how to pronounce them (i.e. PerQuasin or Trypticon).

Long-time viewers of the SAHSHRS Network will no doubt recall this as another attempt to gain a lead in the after-hours audience that the network was so late to enter. The SAHSHRS Network, formerly SHA and SHSA Family, has been trying to compete in the afternoon time slot for years but never winning.

In 1980, Debriefing arrived amid considerable fanfare as a 30-minute extension of the regular workday, airing from 5:30 to 6. The program was expanded fifteen minutes in 1984, pushing starting time to an earlier 5:15.

In 1987, in a blood-curdling scream for attention, the program switched from a semi-news format to Afternoon Update, a bizarre talk-variety show, complete with studio audience and comedian the late Thorny Woods. Since the mid-eighties the program has tanked in the ratings and it didn't help when the show was cut back to fifteen minutes in 1995. Lurching from host to host, format to format, the network is desperate for a target audience. Or mainly to forget the competition.

Opposition includes the recent hit The Day Off and the wildly popular staples, Flex-Time-A-Rama, where people can leave early without being punished, and Morning Staff Meeting, a program similar to Debriefing but before work when more people would probably pay attention, want to participate and remember the information better.

"We've looked at doing something similar to Morning Meeting," network representative Tori Monroe said. "We are looking into finding a way to incorporate features of that show into a new venture without making it an outright rip-off."

In the meantime, Debriefing will continue to run at it's regular 5:15 timeslot. Occasional specials and exclusive interviews may run the program over, as they have in the past from time to time, but for now, the network is working on way to improve what they have, before worrying about something new.

"That's probably what we should have done," Tumor said. "Besides, Later Debriefing's only showing aired 10 minutes and no one here at work can get credit it for. We can only earn comp time in fifteen-minute intervals. But would you want your name associated with such trash anyway?"