Just days away from its upfront presentation to advertisers, NBC continued to jettison dead weight on Friday (May 13), canceling a slew of bubble shows, including “The Event” and “Law & Order: Los Angeles.”
The cancelation for “The Event” wasn’t a surprise. The highly serialized drama got off to an extremely promising start in the fall, but the audience dwindled and dwindled. NBC didn’t help matters by shelving “The Event” for a long winter hiatus, but “The Event” didn’t help NBC by scaring away most of its audience.
But there’s a twist for “The Event”: According to Deadline.com, there are talks underway to possibly take the show to a different distribution platform. Would that mean a cable network? Would that mean Netflix? Stay tuned to find out.
It’s a good deal less likely that “Law & Order: Los Angeles” will get a reprieve, from Netflix or anybody else. The Dick Wolf drama was ordered without even a script last spring as NBC was canceling the “Law & Order” mothership. After an OK premiere, ratings were already suffering when Wolf and NBC elected to pull the show and retool its core cast and structure. Shifted to Monday nights, “Law & Order” has struggled and its most recent episode drew roughly 5 million viewers and a dismal 1.2 rating among adults 18-49.
Also getting the axe on Friday were the comedies “Outsourced” and “Perfect Couples.” “Outsourced,” which finished its first season in the less-than-hospitable 10:30 p.m. time slot averaged under 3 million viewers and a 1.5 demo rating in its finale on Thursday (May 12). Those numbers look positively rosy compared to the 2.26 million viewers who tuned in for the “Perfect Couples” finale back in April.
It was also being reported on Friday that “Chase,” “School Pride” and “America’s Next Great Restaurant” won’t be back, though nobody expected any of them to return.
Check out the updated fates of all of your favorite 2011 TV Shows on the Bubble.