NBC shows: Which will be canceled?

'30 Rock,' 'Community,' 'Up All Night' and other NBC favorites face an uncertain future.

|
Joel Ryan/AP
'Awake' stars Jason Isaacs and Wilmer Valderrama may be looking for new shows this fall

With the Network’s traditional May UpFronts just around the corner, theTVaddict.com thought now might be as good a time as any to take a closer look at the potential fates of your favorite shows.

30 ROCK
 You Take the Good: Tina Fey is America’s Sweetheart.
 You Take the Bad: “America’s Sweetheart” isn’t what it used to be. Hence, 30 ROCK’s measly 3 million viewers per week.
 You Take Them Both and There You Have… Our Prediction: A thirteen episode seventh and final season to placate the New York Times.

ARE YOU THERE, CHELSEA?
 You Take the Good: Ummm…
 You Take the Bad: Writing… ratings… a semi-autobiographic show about Chelsea Handler that stars Laura Prepon… need we go on?
 You Take Them Both and There You Have… Our Prediction: Come September, CHELSEA’s 3 million remaining fans will be the ones asking “Are you there, Chelsea?”

AWAKE
 You Take the Good: Thanks to some incredibly sharp storytelling and ridiculously stellar acting, AWAKE gets serious credit for reinvigorating our interest in the run-of-the-mill police procedural.
 You Take the Bad: Judging by the twenty million or so viewers that tune into the likes of NCIS on any given Tuesday, reinventing the wheel does not a hit show make.
 You Take Them Both and There You Have… Our Prediction: For his next project, can Kyle Killen’s agent puh-lease point him towards a cable network?

COMMUNITY
 You Take the Good: The recent feud between creator Dan Harmon and star Chevy Chase has generated more headlines for this show than three seasons worth of creatively ambitious genre-busting storytelling.
 You Take the Bad: Much to our chagrin, our Twitter feed’s infatuation with this series does not translate into real-life ratings.
 You Take Them Both and There You Have… Our Prediction: Thanks to producing partner Sony Pictures Television powers of persuasion (See: 6 seasons and counting for RULES OF ENGAGEMENT), we’re fairly confident in saying that the Greendale gang will live to study another day.

HARRY’S LAW
 You Take the Good: With an average viewership of 7-8 million viewers per week, it may surprise you to discover that the Kathy Bates’ vehicle ranks as NBC’s most popular hour long drama.
 You Take the Bad: Only 1 of those 7-8 million viewers fall within the much sought after 18-49 demographic.
 You Take Them Both and There You Have… Our Prediction: NBC will bring HARRY’S LAW off the bench following football season in an effort to fill the inevitable holes left by whatever new drama doesn’t find an audience come Fall (See: THE PLAYBOY CLUB)

PARENTHOOD
 You Take the Good: Beautifully written and acted, PARENTHOOD continues to rank as one of the best shows you’re not watching.
 You Take the Bad: We also have a feeling that PARENTHOOD continues to be one of the Networks’ priciest shows you’re not watching thanks to an ensemble top-lined by the likes of Peter Krause, Lauren Graham, Dax Shepard, Monica Potter and Erika Christensen.
 You Take Them Both and There You Have… Our Prediction: Based solely on the fact that no Network can afford to both launch and promote and entirely fresh slate of multi-million dollar shows, PARENTHOOD will get a pick-up with a possible move to Friday nights.

WHITNEY
 You Take the Good: After a shaky start WHITNEY found its creative footing and delivered a genuinely funny latter half of the season punctuated with a super sweet finale that most definitely warrants a second season.
 You Take the Bad: Currently in NBC’s very crowded development pipeline are pilots featuring big name female comedians such as Sarah Silverman, Roseanne Barr, Rachel Dratch, among others.
 You Take Them Both and There You Have… Our Prediction: Expect NBC to renew WHITNEY so that it has a launch pad from which to build a solid hour of traditional multi-camera comedy from come Fall.

UP ALL NIGHT
 You Take the Good: We love stars Maya Rudolph, Will Arnett and Christina Applegate.
 You Take the Bad: Just not in this poorly contrived series that had the writers awkwardly juggling Rudolph and Applegate’s work life with Arnett’s home life as stay-at-home father.
 You Take Them Both and There You Have… Our Prediction: Netflix will very soon be able to thank NBC for making ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT’s shooting schedule that much less complicated.

The TV Addict staff blogs at The TV Addict.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to NBC shows: Which will be canceled?
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/The-Culture/Culture-Cafe/2012/0426/NBC-shows-Which-will-be-canceled
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe