Sci-Fi Renewal Scorecard (2011)

Any and all viewers of television have to occasionally put up with the cancellation of their favorite shows.  Science fiction fans, however, have it worse than most.  While niche cable channels and syndication offer some safe havens for genre programming, on the big networks the demands of ratings take a higher toll on sci-fi and fantasy programming … and since it just doesn’t have the same wide appeal as cookie-cutter cop, hospital, and legal shows, sci-fi tends to get the axe quicker.

Here is the current renewal/cancellation status (as of late March) for each sci-fi or fantasy show on the big four networks — ABC, CBS, NBC, and FOX — plus the “netlet” that is The CW.  These are the shows that we’ve chosen to cover here at SciFi Stream. (On rare occasion you might consider a show to be sci-fi enough to warrant coverage, but for one reason or another we’ve chosen not to follow it.  Shows like Chuck, Ghost Whisperer, and Medium come to mind.)

No Ordinary Family (Tuesdays, 8/7c) – GOOD AS GONE.  What looked like kind of a corny idea a year ago turned out to be one of our favorite new genre shows of the season.  ABC tried to mix the superhero factor of Heroes with the family values of TGIF Fridays, to create a sort of live-action Incredibles.  The result was sometimes sweet, sometimes funny, sometimes exciting — and yes, sometimes corny.  If it had been on ABC Family, it probably would have gotten a second season.  As it is, ABC cut the episode order and plans to air the last of 20 on April 5.  Its two leads, Michael Chiklis and Julie Benz, have been cast in new series pilots.  Don’t expect to see No Ordinary Family on the fall schedule.

V (Mondays, 8/7c) –
ON THE BUBBLE.  The good news: Last year ABC defied the naysayers and granted V a second season.  The bad news: It was only a 10-episode run.  The show has been pretty solid creatively, but the ratings are ho-hum.  ABC really could go either way here: It could show confidence in an arc-based show with a loyal following — though not one that will ever make the record books for ratings — and give it another shortened season for next winter.  Or, it could give up on the project and try something new for genre fans next year, hoping (yet again) to recapture some of that LOST appeal.

Is CBS really not showing anything remotely science fiction this year?  The Eye is playing it safe with its reality competitions and its many police procedurals — all variations on the same theme.  CBS: Your upfront presentation for the fall season is in less than two months, and we’re calling you out.

The Cape (Mondays, 9/8c) – CANCELLED.  This mid-season replacement premiered to reasonable numbers and dropped like a stone, so quickly that NBC put the last episode online and never aired it.  Summer Glau deserved better than this pile of corn masquerading as a dark drama.

The Event (Mondays, 9/8c) – GOOD AS GONE.  Year-in and year-out NBC has tried to grab its piece of the LOST pie by creating a serious drama with a large, ensemble cast and a sci-fi twist. Surface, Flash Forward, and now The Event … all decent shows that suffer from the “one and done” effect.  (For what it’s worth, The Event was easily the best of these.)  Ratings are good enough in the fall to justify a full-season pick-up, but continue to fall throughout the year so that the network seemingly has no choice but to chuck it all and try something different.  (As of March, the show is averaging around 4.5 million viewers per week, excluding online and DVR-delayed.) First-year shows are supposed to grow their audience, or at least maintain, and not slide to the bottom of the pile in just a few months.

The good news is that NBC has a lot of genre pilots in the works, so hopefully we’ll see at least two new series on the peacock network next fall.  But it sure would be nice if one of them lasted more than a single season.

Fringe (Fridays, 9/8c) – RENEWED.  The Great Hope for science fiction on network television right now is Fringe, which was considered to be on the bubble after FOX moved it to Friday nights (the “graveyard”) this season.  But the show has continued to perform well (as well as can be expected, for Friday night in the DVR age), and in March FOX gave it a big show of confidence by renewing it for a full, fourth season.  Expect it to stay on Fridays, in both universes.

The CW has made itself a bit more friendly to keeping fantasy shows on the air for longer stretches, in part because of the ‘handsome hunk’ factor that appeals to their audience of younger female viewers, and in part because their already low ratings means they are often more in competition with cable than with the Big 4.

Smallville (Fridays, 8/7c) – ENDING. After an incredible 10 seasons and well over 200 produced episodes, Smallville is coming to its natural conclusion with May’s series finale.  Michael Rosenbaum returns as Lex Luthor, Clark becomes Superman, and all is right with Metropolis.  Congratulations to a show that has stayed remarkably consistent year-to-year, and set a new record for the most number of episodes in a sci-fi series filmed in North America.

Supernatural (Fridays, 9/8c) – SURE THING. The CW may be losing Smallville, but it’s not about to let the well-performing Supernatural slip through its fingers, too. The Winchester boys will be back on the road for Season Seven, though the network hasn’t officially announced a pick-up yet. Now the show just needs a new genre companion for Friday nights.

The Vampire Diaries (Thursdays, 8/7c) –
SURE THING. Though the ratings are down a bit from the first year, Season Two is performing quite well for The CW. Consider it a shoe-in for another year of intrigue in Mystic Falls.

For more details on where these shows stand in the ratings heading into the end of the 2010-2011 broadcast season, check out TVBytheNumbers’ Bubble Watch.