NBC Benches ‘Community,’ Britta’d Up Their Whole Schedule

Relevant because the Community staff is getting spanked? Just go with me here.

Community, an awesome show that should be getting six seasons and a movie, is instead being pulled from NBC’s midseason lineup. New episodes of 30 Rock will air in its time slot and Up All Night will take 30 Rock‘s old time slot. Meanwhile, they also ordered more episodes of Whitney and of a Chelsea Handler sitcom.

Sources told THR that Community “will return to the schedule at a date to be determined.” Meanwhile, Brian Stelter of the New York Times tweeted that “its chances of being renewed next year are painfully low.” The inevitable but likely futile petition has already been started.

NBC’s excuse for shelving Community? The ratings are low, averaging 3.69 million viewers per episode and getting a 1.6 in the 18-49 demographic while being set up against Big Bang Theory and X-Factor. Except they forget that a huge chunk of Community fans in the demographics advertisers covet no longer sit in front of televisions with Nielsen boxes and/or they’re too damn active to sit around voluntarily filling out Nielsen diaries. If you can’t figure out how to account for the ad revenue from your website, NBC, that sh-t’s on you.

Anyway, here’s a small selection of some of the relevant tweets by people reacting to the news so far:

I’ll let Alison Brie sum up my WTF reaction to this news:

Yes. This.

[Sources: TheDailyWhat, THR, Deadline, @brianstelter, @danharmon, @alisonbrie, @joelmchale, @DonaldGlover, IFC]

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