The new ABC comedy Work It, a show about two men who dress as women to land sales jobs, got off to a wobbly start with viewers in its first airing Tuesday (3 January).

The show attracted 6.1 million total viewers for its debut, a 17 percent drop from  Man Up, the cancelled sitcom it replaced on the ABC schedule.

The Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, the Human Rights Campaign and transgender activists had tried to convince ABC not to air the show because they feared it could contribute to the high levels of job discrimination that transgender Americans face.

GLAAD and HRC placed an ad in the Hollywood trade paper Daily Variety last month pointing out that 'by encouraging the audience to laugh at
the characters’ attempts at womanhood, the show gives license to similar treatment of transgender women.'

The ad personalized the issue by featuring the faces of five transgender men and women and stating: 'They deserve better than ridicule.'

Work It also did not impress television critics with Entertainment Weekly coming to this conclusion in a review posted earlier today: 'There’s no denying this was one lousy sitcom.'