According to Hollywood Reporter, Lifetime has decided to cancel there supernatural series Witches of East End after its second season. That news comes as somewhat of a surprise as I expected this one to get a third season nod. Its numbers did drop in its second season, but not too much based on its ratings in the 18-49 demo. During its 2013-14 season run, the show averaged a 0.7 score based on the overnights and in the Summer it was down by only two ticks to a 0.5 score. Considering that it had a fair amount of competition during the Summer, a time when viewership in general is down, that didn’t seem like too much of a drop. But since Lifetime has not had much in the way of genre programming, and I have not tracked their other drama series, it was a bit iffy to determine their threshold for where shows like this should land. But it seemed like that 0.5 score might be good enough (Syfy has recently renewed shows at lower ratings levels) especially when you consider the online engagement from the show’s fans (it won our Summer Sci Fi TV pulse poll by a wide margin). It should be noted that Lifetime previously cancelled its series Drop Dead Diva then reversed that decision. That show was pulling higher ratings at the time than Witches of East End did during the Summer, though. Fans should definitely make some noise over this and see if they can convince the network to change its mind. And this one might be a good candidate for Netflix or Amazon because it is a relatively low cost entry, so targeting those services might be an option as well. More information to follow, but I am assuming that this show’s fans will be taking to the streets shortly.
