Why Renewals and Cancellations Don’t Always Stick

It used to be that if a show was cancelled or renewed, that would be that. Nothing else would change about the news as it always would. But as the world of television changes, so does simple things like whether or not a renewal or cancellation will stay as it originally was announced.

 

This was normally done in just one of two ways that wouldn’t always be that abnormal in the end. The first way is when a just cancelled show would be immediately picked up by another network to air more episodes of that for at least one new season. We are seeing this more with streaming picking up shows that were on network television at some point. The other way was a cancelation being reversed. There is a whole category on Wikipedia on shows revived or brought back after cancellation.

 

What has changed more now with newer television is that the frequency of the shows that are not just cancelled for good or renewed for good is changing as there are always more that are affected by this in the end. The other thing is that the length of time between the original decision and the one that ends up reversing it keeps getting longer as well. It can go a whole season between this decision that winds up reversing it and bringing a cancelled show back for another season.

 

This always sucks for the renewal side of things. If you like a show, you don’t want to hear that it was brought back for another season just to hear instead that it was cancelled at some point instead. This gives people false hope. Also, the idea that a cancellation could just be reversed also gives false hope to that many people who don’t get that when a show they like gets canceled. Still, it can be nice when that happens, even if it leaves for something that you aren’t able to watch, such as various streaming sites, only one of which you might have at any given time.

 

There’s not much else to say about this. I hope that this enough of the topic. There are various reasons as to why this happens. It normally relates to some sort of dispute between companies, such as the one that lead to the shocking cancellation of Magnum P.I. by CBS only for NBC to pick it up for at least two new seasons in the end. But there are any number of reasons that this happens in the end.