5 Of Your Favourite Television Shows That Were Almost Cancelled

Every avid fan of television has one show or the other which they loved with all their hearts. The thing however with television series is that their survival from the onset is mostly dependent on viewers perception of them from their very first season.

We are sure you’d find it surprising that some of your favourite shows cane quite close to being cancelled as a result of their initial poor ratings. The survival of these shows was most likely due to luck, tenacity and cleverness of the fans of the show’s which ultimately made them evergreen.

Seinfeld

Seinfeld ran for nine seasons between 1989 to 1998 but would nearly have ran for no more than a season as the television studio NBC, booked the show for only four episodes which was named The Seinfeld Chronicles as opposed to thirteen episodes that a show will normally receive for a season.

The head of late-night programming of the network, Rick Ludwin was instrumental in the survival of the show as he was able to convince NBC executives to produce four more episodes. This resulted in the show getting higher ratings which resulted in NBC ordering a second season.

Seinfeld became the most-watched TV show from 1994-95 and 1997-98 with the show’s finale becoming the fourth most watched finale in the history of television with 76.3 million viewers.

Roswell

It appears that television viewers of the 90s weren’t that impressed with shows bordering on teen aliens as this science-fiction show was almost cancelled after its first season due to poor ratings.

Fans of the show however came to the rescue as they campaigned for the show’s survival which led to the WB network giving the show another opportunity for survival by renewing it for a second season before another station- UPN, allowed the show to run for its third and last season.

Chuck

Chuck is an American action-comedy/spy-drama television series, about an “average computer-whiz-next-door” named Chuck, played by Zachary Levi, who receives an encoded e-mail from an old college friend now working for the Central Intelligence Agency.

The message embeds the only remaining copy of a software program containing the United States’ greatest spy secrets into Chuck’s brain, leading the CIA to assign him handlers and use him on top-secret missions.

The second season ratings on Chuck was nothing to go by which made NBC consider cancelling the show until fans reached out to one of the primary advertisers on the show with a “Save Chuck” campaign which resulted in sponsorship deal with the network which covered renewal costs of the third season. The show went on to run for another two seasons and ultimately came to an end in 2012.

Friends

This wonderful show which followed the story of six friends living in Manhattan had an ensemble cast which included Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, Lisa Kudrow, Matt LeBlanc, Matthew Perry and David Schwimmer. The show was a fan favourite in the 90s but what most viewers didnt know was that the show was nearly cancelled in the first season.

Co-creator David Crane recently made it known that the series “didn’t test very well” at first because it was considered to be focused on a very young audience and contained too much sexual innuendos. It was also believed that the characters on the show were not striking a chord with viewers as they were only moderately likable.

Television house, NBC saw the show as a lacklustre one but continued with it since there was no show to replace Friends schedule. That stroke of luck paid off as the show went on to become a fan favourite with multiple Emmy awards nominations.

Baywatch

Baywatch was initially cancelled after its first season on NBC, but survived and later became one of the most watched television shows in the world. The show is about the Los Angeles County Lifeguards who patrol the beaches of Los Angeles County and stars David Hasselhoff, Pamela Anderson and Jason Momoa.

The original run from 1989-90 had poor ratings and was stung by the shutdown of its studio, but David Hasselhoff and the show’s creators teamed up to revive the show.

By the second season, the show had become successful in international markets and went on to run for 11 seasons leading to a film adaptation starring Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson which is expected to hit cinemas in May 2017 amongst a host of spinoffs.

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