As the new fall television season gets under way, it’s a good time to remind you all not to get too attached. Yes, 11.7 million people tuned in to the debut of NBC’s Revolution last night — the highest debut for a drama on any network in three years — but that doesn’t mean it’s going to be around come net season. After all, the last network drama to premiere with more than 11.7 million viewers was ABC’S V. The last NBC drama to premiere with higher numbers? Bionic Woman. Where are they now?
Exactly.
Of the 43 scripted programs that debuted last year on NBC, ABC, Fox and CBS (I’m not counting the CW, because who cares?), only 14 were renewed for a second season. That’s a really bad business model.
Of course, there’s always the chance that we get lucky with a show like NBC’s Awake, which was canceled, but it was a splendid one-season television series. Then again, many of the dramas that were renewed — Smash, Revenge — stopped being any fun to watch 10 episodes into the series.
You will have better luck with comedies. There’s a better percentage chance they will be renewed, and if they’re not, at least there’s less investment in characters, story lines, and your time.
So, once more, before we move ahead, let’s take a look back. Here were the 43 shows that debuted last season. The shows in bold are the ones that are returning.
ABC
1. Charlie’s Angels
2. Don’t Trust the B—- in Apartment 23
3. GCB
4. Last Man Standing
5. Man Up!
6. Missing
7. Once Upon a Time
8. Pan Am
9. Revenge
10. The River
11. Scandal
12. Suburgatory
13. Work It
14. You Deserve It
CBS
15. 2 Broke Girls
16. A Gifted Man
17. How to Be a Gentleman
18. NYC 22
19. Person of Interest
20. Rob
21. Unforgettable
Fox
22. Alcatraz
23. Allen Gregory
24. The Finder
25. I Hate My Teenage Daughter
26. Napoleon Dynamite
27. New Girl
28. Q’Viva! The Chosen
29. Terra Nova
30. Touch
NBC
31. Are You There, Chelsea?
32. Awake
33. Bent
34. Best Friends Forever
35. The Firm
36. Free Agents
37. Grimm
38. The Playboy Club
39. Prime Suspect
40. Smash
41. Up All Night
42. Whitney
43. Who’s Still Standing?
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What the fuck is Q’Viva?
That is a particularly good question.
The series follows superstars Jennifer Lopez and Marc Anthony as they travel throughout Latin America, along with director and choreographer, Jamie King, to discover the most authentic, genuine and talented entertainers and recruit them for their Las Vegas production of “the greatest Latin show ever”. The talent that the trio are auditioning includes dancers, acrobats, singers, musicians among others.
My god, that sounds like the worse show ever. I can literally not thing of a concept that could be worse (except possible for a reality competition titled “Sieg Heil! Searching For the Next Hitler”).
How did this fly so under the radar without the incurring the collective wraith of the Internet?
Who’s still standing? The last man standing.
Ugh, I hate myself.
You Deserve It, Man Up!
Man, that makes Whitney’s survival even more inexplicable.
I’d trade all of those surviving NBC shows for Awake to be un-cancelled. I’d also throw in CBS’s stuff and Touch, to sweeten the deal for… someone. The gluttonous Aztec god to whom cancelled TV shows are fed, I suppose.
I agree totally. I just do not understand how or why NBC kept that show.
I still haven’t met a single person that likes the show.
And about a quarter of those are probably only alive because of commitment to a creator or star (i.e. Whitney, Last Man Standing, Smash).
Never saw either but weren’t “Bent” and “BFF” actually fairly promising comedies that NBC decided to burn off all at once? I swear that once “Community”, “30 Rock”, and “Parks and Rec” are off the air I won’t watch NBC ever again.
I was one of the few who caught a couple of Bent episodes while NBC was flushing it out. It was funny, promising and Jeffrey Tambor! But unfortunately won’t be around again. It was waaaay better than Whitney and on par with shows like Up All Night and New Girl.
You can go back and watch both of them on Hulu – both are good-ish, but you’ll just be sad when the last episode is over.
BFF was fantastic, and they gave that Betty White show as a lead in. It had no chance.
Yeah, BFFs was an utter shame. Cute, got better with each outing. But typical NBC – “Let’s launch a new night of comedy on Tuesday but – Shhhhh! Don’t tell anybody!” I noticed that all 6eps were on Xfinity OnDemand, if you care.
Don’t Trust the B—- in Apartment 23
Man Up!
Work It
You Deserve It
I Hate My Teenage Daughter
Touch
Are You There, Chelsea?
Smash
Who’s Still Standing?
Of the shows whose titles could function as a complete sentence, three survived. That’s the exact same percentage (3/9 = 33% vs. 14/43 = 33%) as the larger sample. But all of those that used punctuation in their title were canceled. Moral of the story for TV executives? Punctuation in your title is a greater show-killer than Summer Glau or Ted McGinley.
You just made a bunch of under-30-year olds google “Ted McGinley.”
Well, ok, just one. Good to know he wasn’t the sarcastic doctor on Scrubs.
I’m under 30 and I’ll always know who Jefferson D’arcy is.
He made me Google Summer Glau.
Not because I didn’t know who she was, but just because… well, Summer Glau.
5 Year Old have watched MWC re-runs. We all know pretty Jefferson.
Pshaw. Who cares? When’s Justified coming back?
I miss Free Agents.
I thought Free Agents showed some promise. Better than that collective nightmare of Whitney and Are You There, Chelsea
All sitcoms need at least a season to get their chemistry and comedic style down. How many potentially great sitcoms will we miss out on because the networks are so impatient? And why the hell are they so impatient anyways? What are they going to replace Free Agents with, a sitcom starring Guy Fieri? (And if any network execs read this, PLEASE DON’T THINK THAT’S A GOOD IDEA).
Except for Whitney. Whitney is worse than ass cancer.
I’m confused. Does the network with the most shows renewed have bragging rights or are they more desperate than the other networks and probably has herpes?
The River was infuriatingly bad. So much wasted potential.
i watched some of Revolution last night. Had to turn it off. The acting was so bad. The WORST death scene I have ever scene acted out by the main girls father. I would rather watch Honey-Boo-Boo’s mother pole dance.
That can be arranged. Do you have a liter of Mountain Dew Code Red and a half a SlimJim?
I’m with you, Cornbread. Revolution was terrible. Like, not terrible for a tv show. I mean terrible in a bad made-for-tv movie kind of way. Holy crap, I deserve money for sticking it out until the end.
I caught a few minutes during halftime of the football game. I think the acting was below that of Mega-shark vs. Giant Octopus. That’s saying something.
Bent had a lot of promise, but it was dead before it ever aired. NBC is the worst.
I can’t get passed Alcatraz being clipped after being 30th in the ratings. It’s not like Sarah Jones’ hair and makeup was going to bankrupt FOX.
Did anyone happen to catch Campus Ladies when it aired? I can’t remember the network, but I always thought it was a really great show.
I caught a few episodes and I thought it was actually pretty funny. I want to say it was We or Oxygen or one of them other menstruating channels.
Wow. Scorecard of renewal of new shows I actually liked:
ABC: 1 for 1
CBS: 1 for 2
FOX: 1 for 3
NBC: 0 for 1
So I liked 7 new shows and got 3 of them back.
I’m deciding which is the bigger sin: ABC only putting out 1 show I liked, but renewing it, or FOX putting out 3 shows I liked but only rewnewing 1.
I’m so glad to say I’ve never watched any of these shows!
/dismissive wanking motion.
I only watch 2 of the 43, and both got renewed (New Girl, Grimm). So suck it.
Though it is sad that we will lose Maria Bello in a fedora. That was priceless
5. Man Up!
31. Are You There, Chelsea?
Thank fucking christ
Its not “Rob”, its “!Rob!”. *cue laugh track*
Damn it. I was getting into The River, Awake, Alcatraz and wanted Terra Nova to pull through. 0-4.
Smash was never fun.