Because it was aired on over-the-air television, CBS felt that the characters needed to be toned down. Now instead of working against the police, he worked with them. possibly because it rotated with Hawkins, another high-quality series but with a starkly conflicting demographic, and was cancelled after one season. Contemporary analysts suggested that since the two shows—Shaft and Hawkins—appealed to vastly different audience bases, alternating them only served to confuse fans of both series, giving neither one the time to build up a large viewership.[2][3][4][5] Richard Roundtree himself has publicly expressed his disdain for the small-screen version of Shaft.[6]