Cancellation Watch: Mars Gets a Second Season, Still No Decision on From Dusk Till Dawn S4, and More from the TCAs

From the TCAs: The Television Critics Association press tour has been going on this week and quite a lot of announcement concerning sci fi & fantasy television have been coming from the meetings. Among the latest, the National Geographic Channel announced that their docu-drama series Mars will be returning for a second season. I didn’t even know that it was being considered for more than one round, but it just goes to show that the mini-series, event series, limited run tags and more mean nothing if the network decides there is a big enough audience to keep a show going. Mars pulled decent but not spectacular ratings linear ratings for NGC, but the network claimed that it reached an audience of 36 million people globally and also that it was their most DVR’d show (something that is more important to the cable channels than the broadcast nets). The second season will bow either later this year or early in 2018.

The El Rey network still has not reached a decision on whether it will bring back its supernatural series From Dusk Till Dawn for a fourth season. The actors were released from their contracts after the show’s third season, but the network claims it is still trying to work things out to bring it back for a fourth year. It may be a few more months before we get a final decision on that, though. Other announcements from the TCAs included American Horror Story getting renewed through it ninth season, Constantine coming back as an animated series, updates on The X-Files and Wayward Pines and more. I have a roundup of all that at this link.

Ratings Results of Interest: On Tuesday, Agents of SHIELD returned from hiatus and its numbers remained low at a 0.8 rating with 2.7 million total viewers. That show continues to look like it is in its final season unless Disney decides to keep it around for another year to pad out its syndication package and to pair up with the new Inhumans series set to debut in Fall. On Thursday, USA’s Colony returned for its second season, but it only posted a 0.29 rating with 930k total viewers. That ratings score is down notably from the show’s 0.38 average it had in its first season, but then it typically saw good delayed viewing gains last year and it has a streaming deal with Netflix, so perhaps that can help it stay afloat. Over on NBC, The Good Place improved slightly to a 1.1 rating with 3.6 million total viewers. Its season finale is next week and those numbers could be an important deciding factor for the show’s fate.

Chart Activity: For the week of January 2nd, MacGyver returned to the broadcast net Top 25 based on total viewers with its mid-season return at the Number 22 slot. And Son of Zorn made it into the Top 25 based on the overnights for the 18-49 demographic at the Number 9 slot, largely due to a good lead-in from The Simpsons and bleed-over from the NFL playoffs.

The TCAs continue this weekend and into next week, so be sure to keep an eye on this site and the Cancelled Sci Fi Twitter Site for any updates and/or breaking news coming from those meetings.