Cancellation Watch: Wrap Up of the 2017-18 Regular Season

The 2017-18 regular season has wrapped up and we know the fates of most of the shows that aired over this past year (still awaiting word on Timeless, Ghosted, Legion, and a few more). At current count, 43 shows were renewed for the season and 17 were cancelled or ended across all of the networks and streaming services. Among the cancellations, there were a few surprises as I believed both The Last Man on Earth (FOX) and The Librarians (TNT) would get at least one more season and I figured that Lucifer (FOX) and The Expanse (Syfy) were good for several more seasons (the latter was saved by Amazon, though). But apart from that, most of the other cancellations played out as expected. The renewals mostly followed expectations as well, though I believe Syfy’s Van Helsing was a close call and that one could start out On the Bubble next season.

As for my predictions, I came in a little below my 90.5% score from last year as I currently stand at a 86.5%. But considering that it is getting tougher and tougher to make the renewal / cancellation predictions on shows in the Peak TV era, a drop of four percentage points is not bad. And my score is coming in right around the same levels as the TV Grim Reaper and the Cancellation Bear, but they only offer predictions for the broadcast networks which are usually easier to make a call on (I had a 90% score on those shows this year).

For calculating my score, if I had a show at a status of Renewal Likely or Renewal Possible and it was renewed, I get a point for that. If I have it at Cancellation Likely status and it gets the ax, I get a point for that. If either of those go the other way, then it counts against me (I also don’t get credit for Amazon saving The Expanse because my prediction applied to Syfy). If I have the show On the Bubble, then I am essentially saying it is too close to call and that counts as a push. I don’t count the streaming shows in the scoring because there is just too little data to make a good prediction on them. The exception to that is if I count one as Renewal Likely or Cancellation Likely which means that I am making a definitive call on the show. The only one I did that with this season was Hulu’s The Handmaid’s Tale which I had as Renewal Likely and it was renewed early in its second season. Note that if I did include all of the streaming shows in my scoring, my numbers would go up considerably because I default those to Renewal Possible and they almost always get renewed.

I waffled on a couple of shows as the season came down to the wire in May as I switched The CW’s iZombie and ABC’s Agents of SHIELD back and forth between Renewal Possible and On the Bubble. I’ve decided to take the hit on the latter show, but take credit for the former. Agents of SHIELD is always floating around Bubble status toward the end of the year, but I predicted iZombie would be back for at least one more season since before it returned this year and The CW has indeed renewed it for a fifth and final season. If you take credit for both away from me, that only drops my score to 86.1%. As for Starz’s Outlander, that one came into this season already renewed for a fourth year, but early on I predicted it would get an extension and the cabler has committed to the show through its sixth season. If you don’t want to give my credit for that either, my score is still at 85.7%.

Below is the score summary along with all of the shows that counted in my tracking (you can see the full rundown of all the renewals and cancellations this season at this link). And even though it is getting harder and harder to make the predictions in the current environment where any of a number of intangibles can impact the fate of the show, you can still consider Cancelled Sci Fi a fairly accurate source for gauging how well the genre entries are performing. That might become more of a moot point as we continue to move toward streaming domination, but for now, our tracking of the sci fi and fantasy shows remains quite reliable as the numbers show.

Shows Tracked (sorted by Cancelled then Renewed):