Infamous Sci Fi TV Cancellations: This ongoing series looks back at some of the most notorious cancellations of sci fi and fantasy TV shows by the broadcast networks, cable channels, and streaming services.
What Is It?
This series takes place in the town of Jericho, Kansas, following a nuclear strike on the country. The people of the town are cut off from all contact with the outside world and must learn how to get by on their own. But questions start to arise, and people start to turn against each other as the situation in this post-apocalyptic setting gets more desperate.
Aired: CBS, 2006-08, 2 Seasons Totaling 29 Episodes
Starring: Skeet Ulrich, Lennie James, Ashley Scott, Kenneth Mitchell, Brad Beyer, Esai Morales
Created By: Stephen Chbosky, Josh Schaer, Jonathan E. Steinberg
Why Was It Cancelled?
This post-nuclear war series started out with decent ratings, but by mid-season, they were in decline. It didn’t help that the series had nearly a three-month hiatus between its fall and spring runs, and the fact that it was slow to provide many answers to its mysteries during the first half of the season probably frustrated a large number of viewers as well.
Still, the numbers for the series were not bad, and the producers actually expected to get picked up for a second season. However, word came in May that CBS would not continue the series, and then the network had to deal with the wrath of the fans. A huge outcry followed, resulting in fans sending large quantities of nuts to CBS offices to show their support for the show (prompted by Jake’s defiant reply of “Nuts!” to Constantino when the latter demanded that Jericho surrender to the New Bern forces). Allegedly, up to 20 tons of nuts were sent to the network, which then donated them to charity.
The tenacity of the Jericho fans led the network to agree to a truncated second-season run of seven episodes. But CBS showed little commitment to the series and failed to take advantage of the fact that it was one of the few original scripted shows on the air during Spring 2008 due to the impact of the 2007-08 writers’ strike (the second season had been filmed prior to the strike and was just waiting in the wings to air). The network could have heavily promoted it and possibly even rerun the first season as a warm-up to fill dead airtime. Yet it didn’t take that route, and Season 2 of Jericho languished in the ratings, leading to the show receiving a cancellation notice for the second time in a year.
Fans rallied together once again and lobbied other networks to pick it up, and the producers themselves tried to shop it around. Even so, no other venue would bite, and the show ended its run after twenty-nine episodes.
Should It Have Continued?
Yes. As mentioned above, CBS did little to promote the second season even though it had every incentive to highlight it, seeing as it was one of the network’s few scripted shows airing in the Spring 2008, and the fans had made such an effort to save it the previous year. But since the network did little to help the show, the ratings were not sufficient to keep it going. There were talks of a big-screen version, which probably would not have worked well, and Netflix even showed interest in reviving the series during the early days when it was ramping up its original content.
The negotiations with that streaming service went on for some time and apparently came close to bringing the show back. According to an interview with series star Skeet Ulrich, Netflix had a schedule, budget, and locations, and he was asked if he would return to the show. He agreed and proposed that the story jump ahead five years since that much time had passed in the real world. But ultimately, the revival never moved forward because, according to Ulrich, “CBS wouldn’t sell it. The deal wouldn’t work for them.”
Thus, Jericho came tantalizingly close to returning, and it would have been interesting to see where the story went with the characters five years later. It also would have been one of the earlier examples of a streaming service stepping in to revive a cancelled network series, but ultimately that did not happen.
Where Does the Property Stand Now?
The huge fan support for the show led to a continuation of the story in comics with the six-issue run of Jericho: Season 3 – Civil War, from Devil’s Due and then switched to IDW with Jericho: Season 4 (both of which have been collected in trade paperbacks). Sadly, the second run ended on a major cliffhanger, and the promised fifth season was never released.
There have since been occasional rumors and discussions about bringing the television series back, but seeing as twenty years have passed since it first aired, that seems very unlikely at this point. A reboot or another project set in the same world might be more feasible, but there has been no indication that anything like that is currently moving forward.
It would be nice if they would finally release the fifth season of the comic because the continuation was actually quite good and Season 4 clearly left the story unfinished. But no fifth season ever appeared, and no definitive explanation seems to have been given for why those plans were abandoned. Unless something changes, it appears that fans will have to live with yet another Jericho cliffhanger.
Where Can You Watch It?
The complete series has been released on DVD, and you can purchase it VOD. It is available on streaming with a subscription to Paramount+.
Why Were They Cancelled? 2nd Ed.
How many times has it happened? You start watching a sci fi/fantasy show, it’s getting really good, and then—out of nowhere—it disappears.
What happened to it? Where did it go? Why were no more episodes produced? Will the story ever be resolved?
The answer to what happened is simple: it got cancelled. And it was cancelled because viewership did not meet expectations, whether that was measured by the Nielsen ratings or whatever metric the network or streaming service uses to gauge its audience.
But why was the viewership low, you ask? It was such a great show and more people should have been tuning in. Why didn’t its network do more to promote it? And why do the companies that produce and air television shows seem to hate sci fi and fantasy so much?
These are questions genre fans have been asking for years, and Why Were They Cancelled? is here to provide some answers. This is the updated and expanded second edition of the book, and it looks at the era of the Nielsen ratings and how that is becoming a thing of the past while also focusing on the more recent impacts of the streaming services and Peak TV.
