FOX announced late on Friday that new series Second Chance will be moving to Fridays starting next week. That news comes as no surprise and I have been predicting the move since the show’s poor debut. It bowed with only a 1.2 rating based on the overnights for the 18-49 demographic and then slipped to a 1.0 score in its second week. That’s a loss of over half the audience of its American Idol lead-in, and I knew the network would not tolerate that for long. And note that we haven’t seen the Live+7 delayed viewing numbers for the show (those are on a 2+ week delay) and nothing has been released on the Live+3 numbers that I have seen, so FOX is likely acting on the overnights which it previously indicated were worthless. But the networks DO pay attention to those numbers as this move proves. Viewers may have been confused about what to expect from Second Chance because it has gone through two name changes (originally titled The Frankenstein Code, then Lookingglass and then its current name), but the post-American Idol timeslot should have brought on some curious onlookers. Not enough, though, and I figure that FOX what not want to waste such a valuable hour on its schedule. I already considered Second Chance likely to be cancelled, and this move to Fridays is basically the first stop before it gets sent to the Network Executioner. FOX already has de facto cancelled Minority Report when they cut its episode order from thirteen to ten, and has two other genre shows that appear to be on the way out: Sleepy Hollow and The Last Man on Earth. Low-rated Scream Queens was renewed, but that was more the network salvaging what they could from a disastrous Fall season. Second Chance is not getting a second chance and it will be one of what will likely be quite a number of genre cancellations by season end.
Be sure to keep an eye on this site and the Cancelled Sci Fi Twitter Site for more breaking news as mid-season progresses
