Axiom’s Edge Science Fiction and Fantasy

By John J. Joex

The Good News:  The CW has announced pickups for a ninth season of Smallville and a fifth season of Supernatural.  Rumors before the season began had the current season as Smallvile’s last, but apparently they have decided to extend it at least one more.  The pickup announcement comes as no surprise as I have predicted that these two have been safe all season long.  I have to admit that I am glad to hear that Sam and Dean will continue their adventures, as Supernatural has made it to my weekly must-watch list.  Now let’s just hope the CW doesn’t close its doors before we can see the next seasons.  No word on a Reaper renewal yet, but its second season won’t even start until March 3rd.

The Not-So-Good News:  The ratings for Heroes have been slipping all season, and this past Monday night they hit an all time low.  The fourth episode of Volume 4 pulled only a 3.4 rating in the 18-49 demographic and under seven million total viewers.  What’s worse, a repeat of Two and a Half Men on CBS pulled almost twice as many viewers during the first half of the 9 PM EST hour.  I have resisted raising the Cancellation Alert on this in our Network Ratings Tracker all season, but for upcoming column I will be bumping it up one from a low to moderate threat.  That may not seem too bad, but take note of the fact that, with one exception, every show I have raised the Cancellation Alert on this season has either been cancelled or currently stands on the brink of getting the axe (the one exception was Fringe which started the season with pretty iffy numbers). 

Bill Gorman at TV By The Numbers thinks that both Heroes and its lead-in Chuck are still safe because NBC currently resides in fourth place among the broadcast networks, and has few successes to brag about this season.  Point well taken, but there’s another factor to consider here.  Next year, Jay Leno gets five hours of Prime Time real estate weeknights in the 10 PM timeslot, thus NBC will have less room on its schedule for other programming.  Since the network is struggling anyway, do they take the leap and dump the shows not performing up to snuff and go with a clean slate to act as a lead-in to their new Prime Time flagship?  Too early to tell, but consider it a possibility.

The fact is that the entire Monday night lineup continues to struggle with Chuck taking a drop this week and Medium still performing well below the numbers it saw last season.  If NBC were to pick only one of those three shows to continue into next season, I would bet on Chuck.  Sure, it doesn’t pull great numbers, but it has a lot of positive buzz from fans and critics alike.  Heroes, on the other hand, continues to get slammed even though Volume 4 really looks promising.  I see people railing on the show all over the internet and over 30% of the search engine terms used to drive people to the Axiom’s Edge site contain some combination of “Heroes” and “Sucks”.  NBC may decide the show has already passed its prime and dump it as dead weight.  And as for Medium, that one always seems like an afterthought for the network , so they may decided to let it fade as well.  Anyway, at this point, I am not saying that any of these shows are definitely targeted for cancellation, but they can’t feel too comfortable right now.

Another show with grim prospects ahead is ABC’s Cupid, which hasn’t even made it to the air yet.  When ABC greenlighted the remake of the cult series last year, they gave it a thirteen episode order and put it on the schedule for mid-season.    But word is that they did not like what they saw early on and cut back the episode order to eight.  They have further trimmed that now to just seven episodes, and have moved its premiere date yet again (now targeted for March 31st).  You can’t like the odds for this show.  It could very well arrive DOA or possibly get booted off to the Summer Prime Time wasteland.

On FOX, Dollhouse’s second episode saw a drop in viewers from the already meager numbers that the premiere pulled.  However, the series did make it to number one on the iTunes television download list.   That’s at least some good news for the series, but it’s still too early to determine the fate of this one.

Three shows that should start packing their bags are Knight Rider, Life on Mars, and The Sarah Connor Chronicles.  Knight Rider airs its last episode tonight and likely will head into television oblivion after that.  This makes it the second failed franchise reboot from the peacock network in two years following last year’s re-imagining of the Bionic Woman.  Mars and Sarah Connor continue their downward spiral in the ratings, and if their numbers get much worse, they could get yanked from the schedule without completing their runs.

Check our Cancellation Watch page for the status of all the shows currently running, and check back on a regular basis for renewal/cancellation announcements as the networks start the initial phases of hammering out their upcoming schedules.  Also, keep an eye on the weekly ratings with our Network Ratings Tracker.

Previous Column:

Feb 18th – What are the Chances for Dollhouse and Sarah Connor?

New on DVD at the Axiom’s Edge Webstore:

Plus, take a look at Johnny Jay’s select picks on some recently releases DVD sets