WB’s ‘7th Heaven’ ends its 10-year run

The Camden family is passing into TV history, with the WB network announcing Friday that “7th Heaven” will end after 10 seasons.

“7th Heaven” was quietly the most popular show in the WB’s history, even as the relentlessly hip network trained its spotlight elsewhere. Nineteen of the 20 most-watched shows in the network’s history were “7th Heaven” episodes, and it ranks second only to “Gilmore Girls” in this season’s WB ratings.

The show also proudly proclaims itself the longest-running family drama in TV history, with this final season enabling it to pass “The Waltons” and “Little House on the Prairie” in longevity.

Series creator Brenda Hampton said she anticipated this would be the last season, but it was still difficult to break the news to the cast and crew.

“At this point, we’re all very much a family,” she said. “However, just like the Camden kids, I think we’ve all grown up and it’s simply time to leave home.”

No one gave a reason for the cancellation, but production costs tend to increase as shows get older and salaries rise. Contracts for most of the people involved in “7th Heaven” reportedly run out at the end of the season.

The WB hasn’t announced a date for the finale; the ratings “sweeps” month of May is most likely.

Death sentence for ‘Arrested’?

It looks like curtains, too, for Fox’s comedy “Arrested Development,” which never translated its Emmy Award and critical raves into a broader popularity.

Fox didn’t announce the end of the show, but pulled it off the schedule for the rest of the November “sweeps” and cut its episode order from 22 to 13.

Critics loved the quirky comedy starring Jason Bateman, and it won the Emmy for best comedy last year. But its already paltry ratings dropped precipitously this season, averaging 4.3 million viewers on Monday nights at 8.

The series returned last Monday with back-to-back episodes after being off the air for a month because of the baseball playoffs, which Fox carried.

The network also decided against a full season order for “Kitchen Confidential,” the new comedy that followed “Arrested Development” at 8:30.

Both series will temporarily return to the air on Dec. 5. Reruns of “Prison Break” will air during the 8 p.m. hour through November, before that series goes on hiatus until sometime next year.