Night of the Living Cancellation

While we're fast approaching the new television season, so let's take a minute to note the passing of all the cancelled shows that are no longer with us. I've got to say that one of the things I've liked best about following the development process in the media news this year is that I've become much better able to keep track of which shows have been cancelled and which are still around. You'd think this would be easy. Your favorite series gets replaced by a different show and there aren't any commercials telling you that it's been moved to somewhere else on the schedule so it's gone, right? Oh, if it were only that easy.

When I was younger, and I watched a lot of weird little genre shows that never made it past one season, it used to drive me up the wall that I couldn't figure out whether shows I followed had been officially cancelled or not. They would get yanked from the prime time schedule only to reappear in the midseason or during the summer months. A couple swapped networks or ended up on cable. Nine times out of ten, once a show disappeared form its original time slot it was finished, but there were always those odd exceptions to the rule that made me hope every time that somebody would figure out a way to save my latest favorite, doomed show.

Even now, it can be difficult to declare a series permanently expired. DirecTV is running "Damages" and gave "Friday Night Lights" its final season. "Terra Nova" and "The Killing" were briefly considered for pickups by Netflix a few months ago, and they're bringing back "Arrested Development" sometime next year. Many last minute reprieves can be sudden, as they were for "Sliders" and "Law & Order: Criminal Intent," which were both saved by jumping to cable. On the other hand, you may remember the critically lauded Aaron Sorkin series "Sports Night," which was supposed to make a similar move after floundering for two seasons on ABC. They even wrote the transition into the show, but it didn't work out in the end.

Cartoons are always difficult to make calls on, because they can be shelved indefinitely and then revived without too much trouble. "Futurama" and "Family Guy" went away for years, and then came back. "The Venture Bros" has been AWOL from Adult Swim for over two years, but there's a new season in the works. I'm pretty sure that "Generator Rex" and the new "Thundercats" series are both dead, but it's hard to say for sure since Cartoon Network has a habit of rebooting its properties every couple of years. Then there are the reality shows. "Fear Factor" is back after a five year hiatus. "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?" stopped its original prime time run in 2002, but returned briefly in 2004 and 2009, and the syndicated daytime edition has been going strong for a decade now.

Ironically, I'm much less frustrated with these kinds of maneuverings now, because it's a lot easier to stay on top of the latest information about what's coming and going and whether anybody has a straight answer about the prospects of the shows on the brink of cancellation. A lot of times, the answer is no. When a show is in limbo, the people who are actually involved in the production often know as little as the fans. When there are contentious negotiations or complex deals in the mix, often the decisionmakers themselves don't know how things are going to play out. It's been getting even less predictable recently because small audiences aren't automatically a bad thing, and there are so many new forms of distribution popping up, including cable companies and web services. Who knows what the TV landscape is going to look like in a few years as the audience continues to migrate.

Also, the internet has proven time and time again that any series with a significant fanbase can keep a cult favorite alive for years. "Firefly" is more popular now than it was when people were campaigning to save it from the FOX Network's fickle programmers a decade ago. Though it never found its way back to television, it was revived briefly as a film and a continuing run of comics. And if you're willing to brave the wilds of fandom, you'll find fans of every conceivable property still carrying a torch. I stumbled across an enclave of "Due South" fans the other day. You remember, the 90s police procedural with the mountie with the pet wolf? These days you can cancel a television show, but you can't stop the signal.

And after all, if we didn't have cancellations, we wouldn't have new shows every year to make a fuss over, would we?
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