Cancellation Watch Breaking News: AMC’s Renews The Walking Dead for Season 8, MacGyver Gets a Full Season Pickup

I guess you can call this breaking news, but it was pretty much assumed, AMC has announced that their zombie-pocalypse series The Walking Dead will be returning for an eighth season.  The news comes a week ahead of the show’s seventh season premiere, but their is little to be surprised about with the announcement seeing as it is currently the highest rated scripted show on television by far.  It’s numbers did slip a little last year and I wouldn’t be surprised if they trended lower again this season following the premiere as a backlash against the jerking around of viewers AMC did with the show last year.  But if they slip, I don’t expect it to be much and Robert Kirkman and crew have plenty more story to tell with this series which is still quite a ways from catching up with its comic book source material.  The eighth season will be sixteen episodes as usual and will be split in half with a several month hiatus in the middle just like with prior seasons.  This coming Sunday is the Season 7 premiere and showrunner Scott Gimple promised fans at the New York Comic Con that Negan’s victim would be revealed in the episode (as opposed to stringing us along like the did last season).  Expect that episode to be one of the show’s higher rated entries.

CBS announced today that their MacGyver reboot will be getting a full season pickup of 22 episodes. That announcement does not come as a huge surprise considering the show’s early ratings numbers and the fact that broadcast networks are quick to keep a series on the schedule for the full season if it shows any ratings life these days. MacGyver bowed with a 1.7 rating based on the overnights for the 18-49 demographic but has seen its numbers taper off since then. As a Friday show, though, it is still performing at acceptable levels. CBS is notorious for killing off sci fi shows (as they did with the fan-favorite Limitless last year), so if MacGyver’s numbers slip too low, it could find itself On the Bubble as the season progresses.

We are still have a few Spring / Summer shows that we are waiting to hear word on: Braindead (Cancellation Likely),Wayward Pines (On the Bubble), and Slasher (Renewal Possible). Be sure to stay tuned to this site and the Cancelled Sci Fi Twitter Site for updates and breaking announcements on those shows and more.