FOX announced this afternoon that third year series Sleepy Hollow will be coming back for a fourth season. That comes as a bit of surprise considering the all-time ratings lows it slipped to (which looked bad even for a Friday night show), but there were plenty of rumors circulating that it would survive into a fourth year. FOX owns the show and apparently it plays well internationally, and it appears they want to get it to a better episode count for a syndication run. It will come up short of the typical 88 ep threshold after its fourth season due to its shortened episode orders, but perhaps they are targeting international syndication more than the domestic market. Fans were unhappy with how the show ended its third season with a major character death, and that could hurt its ratings even more next year. But FOX has extra hours to program during the 2016-17 season because American Idol is not coming back, so apparently they decided to keep this show around to plug up an hour on Friday nights.
Officially cancelled yesterday by FOX was Second Chance, but that announcement was expected. That show performed poorly when it bowed at mid-season with American Idol as its lead-in and it was quickly shuffled off to Fridays for a burn-off run. It was already in trouble when it debuted because it had gone through multiple name changes and had its episode order cut. Minority Report was also officially cancelled, which was no surprise either. That one bowed to poor numbers last Fall and had its episode order cut from thirteen to ten episodes. I slipped to historically low numbers for a Big Four broadcast network show before wrapping up its run, and the assumption has been that it would not be back.
Keep a close eye on this site and the Cancelled Sci Fi Twitter Site for breaking news and other cancellation / renewal announcements as we cover the leadup to the Upfronts over the next few days.
