Canned Soup

With such a proposition, who could lose? Take Jackie Mason, the veteran Borscht Belt comic. Put him in a sitcom produced by the same people who created hits for Bill Cosby and Roseanne Barr. Give it the surefire time period following No. 1-rated Roseanne. Almost every TV prognosticator in the business picked Chicken Soup as the season's big hit. But Mason had a troubled autumn. He got bad reviews, both for his acting and for making racially inflammatory remarks during the New York City mayoral race. More dismaying to ABC, Chicken Soup -- though the highest-rated of any new show this fall -- regularly lost nearly one-third of the huge Roseanne audience. Last week the network abruptly canceled its can't-miss hit. Moral: when it comes to TV programming, nobody knows borscht.