A yr in the past, NBC canceled five scripted series in in the future (and later a sixth) to assist clear house on its schedule for primetime NBA video games. Fox and CBS additionally axed six reveals final yr, together with one pre-announced sequence finish, and ABC dropped two reveals.
In uncooked numbers, the 20 canceled reveals final yr have been essentially the most for the massive 4 networks since 2022. When it comes to share of scripted sequence canceled or ended (34.5 p.c), it was the best since 2020. It was simple to take a look at that, together with a a lot longer-term development of declines within the whole variety of scripted sequence and ever-larger footprints for stay sports activities, and predict the upcoming demise of the community comedy and drama.
That demise may not be fairly as imminent now.
Whereas the networks ordered about the identical variety of new sequence this yr (11) as they did in 2025 (12), cancellation numbers went approach down — from 20 to only six, as of publication time. (One present, NBC’s second-year drama The Searching Occasion, remains to be in limbo, and Fox’s miniseries The Devoted isn’t included within the cancellation quantity.) The consequence: There shall be 55 scripted sequence on the massive 4 within the 2026-27 season — yet another on every community than there have been in 2025-26 — with a small likelihood {that a} renewal for The Searching Occasion might bump the entire as much as 56.
The uptick might also sign a deeper recognition of the symbiotic relationship between networks and their related streaming platforms. “I think they both have very bright futures,” Jeff Bader, president program planning and technique at NBC, mentioned in a press session earlier than this week’s upfronts. “When it comes to reaching the most people, watching the same thing at basically the same time, there’s nothing that compares to broadcast. And we’re very lucky that we do have Peacock, because the strength of streaming is it allows our shows to grow over time, which is incredibly important to scripted series. Some of our shows get 50 percent of their audience from Peacock, and even more importantly, they get younger.”
ABC’s scheduling chief, Ari Goldman, additionally famous that placing collectively an on-air schedule and contemplating a present’s streaming afterlife go hand in hand now.
“We know we’re not going to change how people want to watch TV, but we can make sure our content is scheduled in a smart, consistent fashion and make sure we’re introducing the right audiences at the right times,” Goldman, senior vp content material technique and scheduling on the community, advised The Hollywood Reporter. “When I think about the linear schedule, we obviously are concerned with timeslots and days of the week, and making sure we have optimized for audience flow. But we’re also very mindful of how this content is then hitting the streaming service. We don’t want to have too many interruptions, and we want to be mindful of the times of year that might be lighter in terms of launching original series on streaming, where we can come in with our current content.”
After all, 55 or 56 reveals remains to be a far cry from the 87 scripted sequence on ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC simply 5 seasons in the past. The uptick, nonetheless, is the primary since 2024, and that yr’s improve was not less than partly an after-effect of the earlier yr’s strikes when networks held again a couple of reveals that had been initially developed for 2023-24. Whether or not this yr is one other blip or the beginning of not less than a small rebuild is in fact unimaginable to say but, however the variety of reveals rising (as did the number of pilots networks made) is an encouraging signal.
