Posted on Thu, May. 20, 2004





CBS axes 'Hack' after 2-year run

By Ellen Gray

graye@phillynews.com



"HACK'S" RIDE is officially over.

CBS yesterday shut off the meter on the first network drama ever to be filmed entirely in and around Philadelphia, announcing a fall schedule that replaced the Saturday night show with the latest edition of the Emmy-winning "reality" series "The Amazing Race."

"I'm not surprised," David Morse, the Philadelphia-based actor who starred in the show, said yesterday. "It's disappointing only... in that it's been wonderful working here in Philadelphia. But I really feel as if we've made history here. This has never been done before. We managed to do two years of a show in Philadelphia. I feel like we did something pretty impressive and I'm grateful for that."

It was Morse who'd insisted he would only take the role of disgraced-cop-turned-cabdriver Mike Olshansky if it were filmed here, and after two years of shooting on location, in every kind of weather, he remains a fan of his adopted city.

"I really wanted to have a show that was part of the community... . We were going into people's homes and their neighborhoods, and I wanted to represent their city and them well and have them represent themselves, in a way."

"Hack" had averaged 8.3 million viewers this season, and though it regularly won its time slot in total viewers, it often placed fourth among the 18- to 49-year-olds most networks target. In its first season, before it moved from Friday to Saturdays, it averaged 9.2 million.

Once the show moved to Saturdays, it was hard to grow its audience and "the expense of the show just didn't justify" a viewership that size, Morse said.

The Nielsens, of course, weren't the numbers that most interested Philadelphians, who'd taken a lively interest in the show's movements around town - and in the money the production brought to the city.

"It certainly helped a lot of folks in town. It gave a lot of actors a leg up," said Diane Heery, who handled local casting for the show.

Heery estimates that "Hack" employed some 9,300 extras over the course of two seasons, at rates of $75-$115 per day, depending on whether they were union.

And though some of those "background" actors worked more than once, "we really tried to keep giving [the show] new faces," she said. "Otherwise, it looks like a very small city."

In addition, she said, "Hack" supplied more than 300 speaking roles for local actors, work for which each received $678 for eight hours, plus a portion of the money from reruns and any syndication.

In all, Greater Philadelphia Film Office director Sharon Pinkenson estimates "Hack" pumped some $65 million into the local economy, including "120 full-time local crew jobs, 8,000 days of work for local actors and well over a million dollars per year in Philadelphia city wage tax."

Eager that "Hack" shouldn't be the last big show to film here - because you shouldn't expect to see money like that from "The Real World" - Pinkenson's pushing two bills, now in the Pennsylvania Senate, that offer tax incentives to film and TV producers similar to those that have helped lure so many productions to Canada.

In a prepared statement, Pinkenson, whom Morse singled out for praise, along with the police who'd aided in the show's production, also said she was "proud because Philadelphia was able to support a network TV series of the highest caliber with dedicated, talented and experienced crews, actors, and City of Philadelphia employees. David Morse was our hero for making the show possible, and I will forever be in his debt for insisting that Philadelphia serve as the location."

As for Morse, a veteran actor with a long film resume, he's just back after two months in Los Angeles, shooting a movie, "and hopefully I'll be able to do some more movies, maybe do some theater," he said.

Though he'd taken "Hack" in part to spend more time with his children - he and his wife, Susan, have a daughter and twin sons - the show's "brutal" shooting schedule had given him less free time than he'd hoped, he said.

"I think the only comfort was them knowing that I was in the vicinity and that I would be sleeping at some point in their vicinity," he said.

Even if "they never actually saw me doing it." By contrast, he saw his family for just four days in the past two months.

"It's tougher on the family. But we're all doing well and we had a nice two-year break from that."