During the break between MTV’s version of the show ending and the prospect of ABC’s series coming to fruition, the deal fell apart, and it’s not entirely clear why. Showalter laments, “It all fell apart. They couldn’t get enough of the affiliate stations to wanna do it — I don’t know. I have no clue.”
Not only did they lose the ABC deal, but they also lost Todd Holoubek, who felt his voice in the group had been waning anyway. But as Lennon confirmed, “Todd quit, but Todd quit because we were all pushing him to quit so hard, because we were being psychos.”
CBS jumped into the equation as a new home for “The State” to get their network shot, but as Allison pointed out, “CBS was like the worst place to be at that time, because it was the older folks sort of network.” Black echoes those sentiments by noting, “The average age of that audience was probably somewhere in the mid-80s,” which isn’t the best place for a punk rock sketch comedy show that found success at MTV, the channel that many CBS audience members openly hated.
Jann recalls that CBS encouraged their arrival because they were hoping to change their whole brand and use “The State” as a way to bring in that revolution. But even The State’s entertainment reps encouraged them not to leave MTV for CBS.
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But they tried anyway. Before going head-to-head with “SNL” in the fall of 1996, the deal indicated that The State would do a series of holiday specials in 1995, starting with a Halloween special that aired on October 27. The show received fanfare from critics, including a four-star review from Michele Greppi of the New York Post, the same critic who originally panned their MTV debut, who wrote, “That was then, this is wow.”
Unfortunately, the Halloween special ratings were abysmal, largely due to a lack of promotion, and CBS chose to cancel the next planned New Year’s special, and their hopes for a proper series on CBS were dashed entirely. Looking back on the attempted shift, Wain says, “We probably would have had a longer, more solidified run at MTV than having the one special on CBS that nobody watched.”
Instead, this was the end of The State, though Black thinks they wouldn’t have continued much longer if the CBS fallout hadn’t occurred, “Us going to CBS probably hastened our demise, but probably not by that much.”
That’s probably why Black didn’t waste too much time throwing a pity party and instead opted to capitalize on their success by creating a spin-off of “The State.” Black recalled, “When the group stopped, I was immediately like, ‘Okay, let’s do something else.'”