Cancellation Watch: Tracking the weekly ratings and the cancellation prospects of the science fiction and fantasy shows currently airing on broadcast and cable networks.
By John J. Joex
The CW announced yesterday that Vampire Diaries would be returning next year for a fourth season and that Supernatural would continue into an eighth season. Neither of these are big surprises seeing as the former series is the network’s highest rated show and the latter is still one of their better performing entries. Both have dropped off in the ratings this past season, along with all of The CW’s shows, but they have done well enough to justify the renewals. That leaves the network’s other two genre shows uncertain of their fates at this point. Deadline Hollywood seems to think that Nikita has a decent chance of a renewal despite the fact that it is one of the lowest rated shows on the network. That series has a big international audience, though, so perhaps that will be enough to keep it going. And that leaves The Secret Circle as potentially odd-man out. The series comes from Kevin Williamson and L.J. Smith, the same team responsible for Vampire Diaries, and looked to grab the same audience in the Thursday 9 PM EST lead-out slot. But it never really seemed to build a strong following and regularly dropped in the ratings from its Vampire Diaries lead-in. And it has really tumbled during the second half of the season, last week pulling only a measly 0.5 rating in the 18-49 demographic. The network may still try to salvage it, but I would guess that they will renew no more than one of their two bubble genre shows if they don’t end up cancelling both of them. However, as I discussed this past Wednesday, both shows might get some attention from Neflix in the case of cancellation as that service continues to try and beef up its original programming with network cast-offs.
Stay tuned to this site for more renewal and cancellation announcements as we approach the upfronts two weeks from now when the networks announce their final schedules for next season.
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