After yesterday’s somewhat crazy renewal, cancellation, and pickup announcements from The CW, ABC’s first round of news prior to next week’s upfronts seemed rather sedate. They announced the renewals of Agents of SHIELD, Once Upon A Time, and Resurrection–all of which I called in my last set of Power Rankings–and the pickups of new genre shows Agent Carter, Forever, and Galavant. No word yet on the sci fi comedy The Neighbors, but I’m guessing that it will not be returning
The Agents of SHIELD renewal was expected, though if it can’t be considered the mega-hit it first appeared to be at the beginning of the season. That one started out with huge ratings but went on an immediate decline and hovered around a 2.0 rating in the 18-49 demographic based on the overnights for much of the second half of the season. But since it is part of the multi-billion dollar Avengers franchise and ABC is owned by Disney, I expected the show would get a the nod for a second season. I believe it will go through some major reworking in its sophomore year, and its leash may be short, but it gets to stick around for now.
The Resurrection renewal was also expected, even though that late season entry went on a ratings downturn after having an impressive debut. It managed to keep its decline from turning into a death spiral, though, and performed relatively well on Sundays, a night that has seen massive ratings attrition across the broadcast networks. The renewal of Once Upon A Time was almost assured from the beginning of the season seeing as that one is a third year series and one more round of episodes makes it much more attractive to the syndication market where shows really start to make their money back. That series did experience some ratings fluctuations throughout the year, but never enough to put it in jeopardy.
For pickups, the Agent Carter spin-off from Captain America was looking like a strong candidate early on (expect a time travel crossover with Agents of SHIELD at some point during the season). Galavant is likely going for the Once Upon A Time audience, and Forever sounds a lot like FOX’s failed New Amsterdam from several years back (which starred Game of Thrones alum Nikolaj Coster-Waldau). You can read the synopses for these shows at this link and I will be looking at them in more detail in an the coming weeks.
Update: I have not seen the official announcement that The Neighbors has been axed, but TV by the Numbers has it as cancelled in its current tally of shows. The cancellation move was expected, though, so that would come as no surprise.
We are still waiting on Cancellation/Renewal announcements from NBC and CBS (we did get word that NBC is picking up Constantine), and I expected those to hit at some point today or this weekend at the latest, so be sure to keep a close watch on this site and the Cancelled Sci Fi Twitter Site for more breaking news.
