If you were one of the many thousands of Brooklyn Nine-Nine fans who did a happy dance all the way through the weekend, you’re not alone…
It’s May, one of the scariest times of year for TV nerds. Many fan-favorite shows either got hit with the cancel button or are still on the hook waiting for renewal news. (We feel you, Lucifer fans; stay strong, Timeless peeps!) Most of the time it’s either good or bad news, and that’s the end of it, however there certainly have been cases of last-minute reprieves that give fans a reason to believe every network decision isn’t monetary. This year, it was the NINE NINE! – a cult favorite sitcom starring an exceptional cast, with innumerable famous fans (including Lin-Manuel Miranda, Mark Hamill, and Guillermo del Toro who discussed his love of B99 right here on the Daily Crate last year); NBC will bring the show back mid-season after Fox cancelled it.
The bummers of cancellation all too often overshadow the cases where a beloved title got to shine on for a little while longer (Fox in particular has a rep for cancellation, and there are many though no doubt 60% of the bitterest feelings there are still Firefly-related.) Still, it’s always worth revisiting those times when fan love kept the lights on…
It’s pretty well documented that Star Trek was not a huge ratings success in its initial run on NBC, though over the years we’ve come to hear stories of big-time fans for whom it made an indelible mark (Not the least of which was Martin Luther King Jr., who let his kids watch the show to see such a positive African-American role model in Uhura). And though Trek’s time on air in the 60’s was brief, it would have been briefer had a letter-writing campaign from ardent fans not convinced NBC to give the show a third season; when ratings still didn’t turn around, it got the ax for good and wouldn’t re-emerge as the sci-fi juggernaut it is today for over a decade. Letter writing campaigns have been known to prove to execs that an audience’s love for a show might just be enough to save it; another great example of this is the Roswell campaign that hit the WB like a spicy freight train in the early 2000’s. Fans of the alien-centric teen melodrama sent so many letters of love and tiny bottles of Tabasco (the aliens’ favorite condiment) to the network that eventually they relented and renewed the show for a second season; Roswell received another reprieve of another kind later…
…right around the time that Buffy the Vampire Slayer made the jump to rival network UPN from the WB, for its final two seasons. (Both shows were produced by 2oth Century Fox, who were able to sell them to UPN as a package deal, giving Roswell a third season that would prove to be its last.) The Buffy case is also interesting in that it provided a springboard for UPN to come in hard promoting their new acquisition, as Season 5 ‘s finale “The Gift” ended with Buffy seemingly sacrificing herself to save Sunnydale; the “Buffy Lives” campaign gave the show’s new home the perfect angle. Of course, only two more seasons would follow before Gellar declined to return, and that Faith series we thought we’d get never happened. Le sigh. Meanwhile, the shifts in network have continued to be a viable option especially for genre shows to this day; most DC TV fans felt that Supergirl had arrived at her rightful home on the CW alongside their other superhero series, following her debut on CBS.
And then, we move onto the 21st century’s latest iteration of these find-a-new-home rescue stories: The Streaming Option. Arrested Development is about to return for a fifth season on Netflix, but it’s been already been five years since arguably the first and biggest story of this kind, when the critically acclaimed and much-beloved (and featured in our crate this month!) sitcom rose from the depths of Newport Bay over seven years after Fox initially cancelled the Bluths and all their schemin’ and dreamin’. The relatively relaxed requirements of a streaming channel to acquire and produce content – particularly shows with a niche fan base who had (or might have) a hard time on network TV – has made it a veritable panic-button nowadays for fans any time a network or cable channel kills their fave program. “Please, Netflix, save my show!” Truth be told, other streamers have come to the rescue just as often: Community was saved by Yahoo, though the show’s sixth season wasn’t able to jumpstart the big Y’s plans for a competitive platform. And Hulu’s rescue of The Mindy Project when Fox dropped it made it the most likely first contender to save the Nine Nine, before the big Peacock jumped into the fray.
BONUS FUN FACT!: Did you know that without the assistance of Britain’s Sky Television, Ron Moore’s Battlestar Galactica reboot might have been cancelled before it ever really began?! Syfy (then the much more logically-spelled SciFi Channel) had already aired the 4-hour BSG Miniseries in 2003, which had considerably good reviews but not massive ratings. SciFi were inching very close to passing on picking up BSG to series, but Sky stepped in and offered a deal: They’d underwrite the first season if they had the option of airing it first, which is why the UK got to see Season 1 three months before the States and elsewhere. Rule Britannia, because if Sky hadn’t intervened we may never have gotten one of the all-time great scifi shows – and certainly one of the most passionate fandoms – of the last 20 years. So say we all!
