TV News: CW Orders Full Seasons of ‘Hart of Dixie,’ ‘Ringer,’ ‘The Secret Circle’

CHICAGO – None are doing well by traditional ratings scales but The CW doesn’t have the same expectations as other networks and so they not-too-surprisingly gave full-season orders to new shows “Hart of Dixie,” “Ringer,” and “The Secret Circle” this week, ending speculation that one might be canceled. Given the low ratings for all of them, especially “Secret,” one can safely assume that they had nothing interesting waiting in the wings to replace them.

Sarah Michelle Gellar of Ringer Photo credit: The CW

The “Back Nine” episodes were ordered for all three and announced via press release yesterday, October 12th, 2011. When a series is picked up, the first 13 scripts/episodes are ordered. It then has to prove itself to earn a full season, which, in the case of The CW, is 22 episodes. Despite some pretty-anemic ratings, The CW deemed these three worth of the full season.

Mark Pedowitz, President of The CW, said via press release — “We believe in the creative strength of these dramas, and by giving them back nine orders we can give our audience the chance to enjoy complete seasons of all three of them. With compelling storylines, engaging characters and tremendous buzz, we firmly believe that Hart Of Dixie, Ringer and The Secret Circle can become signature series for The CW, the kind of top-notch shows that are synonymous with our brand.”

In our feature this week, we predicted that the network would order full seasons of the Rachel Bilson and Sarah Michelle Gellar vehicles but thought they might cut ties with the teenage witch show given its failure to keep the audience tuned in to “The Vampire Diaries” and inability to match “Nikita” numbers in the time slot next year. Two out of three ain’t bad.

[11]	By BRIAN TALLERICO [12] Content Director HollywoodChicago.com brian@hollywoodchicago.com [11]