Sabrina Goes Poof!
"Sabrina The Teenage Witch" ended it's long 7 years run on television with 3.2/4 million viewers watching. Sabrina, the Teenage Witch began its prime-time life on September 27, 1996, on ABC, with Hart, then 20, casting her first spell as Sabrina Spellman, a high-schooler who learns of her magical powers on her 16th birthday. (Hart previously played Sabrina, then known as Sabrina Sawyer, in a 1996 TV-movie for Showtime.) Sabrina's run on ABC and the WB produced 163 episodes and two TV-movies. About the only cast member to last the long broom ride, save for Hart, was Nick Bakay, as the voice of Salem, the talking cat. The series was based on the Archie Comics character (the character itself created by cartoonist Dan DeCarlo in 1962). Legal and contractual issues meant that Sabrina would remain "the teenage witch" no matter how long the show ran or how old Hart got. The series went through two major overhauls--the first, in the fall of 2000, when it jumped from ABC, where it was averaging 10.6 million viewers, to the WB, where it was coveted for its appeal to teen girls. "Sabrina" nearly went away three years ago. It was fading on ABC and about to fall victim to that network's dismantling of its TGIF lineup when the WB saved it from cancellation. The second major revamp came last year. Longtime costars Beth Broderick and Caroline Rhea (as Sabrina's aunts) departed, as did David Lascher (Sabrina's love interest, Josh). Sabrina's fan base might be sad to see her leave the air. Hart has lived much of her life on camera. Her prime-time career dates back to the mid-1980s. As a teen, she starred on her first series, Nickelodeon's Clarissa Explains It All, from 1991-94. Now she is free to do whatever her heart desires--assuming producers are willing to ante up for it. First up is a six-part reality series for ABC Family set for this summer detailing her own wedding plans leading up to a trip down the aisle to rocker Mark Wilkerson. "A wedding is either a good place to start a story--or end a story," she told Zap2it.com during the shoot for the final WB episode, "or I might be starting a new story." Edited Amit Avner, Source: Melissa Joan Hart Online