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The critically acclaimed dramedy “Pushing Daisies” may only have made its debut on U.K. television over the weekend, but already it has been benched … for the “Eurovision Song Contest.”ITV, the British terrestrial channel that acquired the broadcast rights to the American series that is broadcast on ABC, has announced that they plan on cutting the series by a week as they don’t believe it has what it takes to compete with the annual BBC event. This comes despite pulling in a 5.7 million viewership figure — not a small number by any stretch of the imagination in terms of British programming — and being the first American show to hold a primetime slot on standard television for a number of years in the country.

The interesting twist to the decision is that when the series airson April 18, it will be with “The Fun At The Funeral,” the third episode of the season. What happened to Episode 2? According to an ITV spokesperson, the episode didn’t have enough serialized drama to keep it on their schedules.

“Episode 2 was the only show we could drop without spoiling the storyline,” the spokesperson said. In eight weeks time, ITV will again become home to soccer, and “Pushing Daisies” needs to be done by then so that it doesn’t interfere. That means the loss of Episode 2.

Many viewers who have been waiting months to watch the show have already begun expressing their disappointment and anger at ITV’s decision by flooding into several of the shows online communities. Looks like fans will have to wait for the DVD release to see all nine episodes of the morbidly funny fairytale series.