Renewal fever continues to be strong this season and the latest beneficiary of that among the sci fi / fantasy shows is FOX’s Lucifer. The network has announced that one will be returning next year for a second season. The news does not come has a huge surprise and I have been leaning toward Lucifer getting renewed of late despite the fact that I have had it at a Moderate Cancellation Alert status. That show bowed to very strong numbers in January when it had the X-Files revival as its lead-in. But it saw its numbers slip each week and they dropped notably when Gotham took over the lead-in hour on Mondays. But overall, Lucifer has performed higher than the network’s average for non-sports, non-special, non-repeat programming and it has had decent delayed-viewing gains (assuming that means anything to the broadcast nets). The fact that the network has additional hours to program on its schedule next year with American Idol bowing out after this season may have factored into the renewal decision as well. Among genre entries, FOX has renewed Scream Queens, Gotham, The Last Man on Earth and now Lucifer this season. There has been no word on The X-Files yet, but its ratings (and the fact that it ended on a major cliffhanger) strongly suggest it will be back. The network still has three more genre entries awaiting word on their fate: Sleepy Hollow, Minority Report, and Second Chance. The first of those still has a slight chance of surviving based on the current renewal fever, but the other two are almost certainly headed to the Network Executioner based on their poor ratings performance.
Expect more renewal / cancellation announcements over the coming weeks as we approach the May Upfronts where the networks present their schedules for the 2016-17 season (you can see the timing of those at this link). And keep a close eye on this site and the Cancelled Sci Fi Twitter Site for updates and breaking announcements.
