Cancellation (television)

In television, cancellation refers to the termination of a program by a network, typically because of low viewership, financial losses, or unfavourable critical reviews. Other potential reasons for canceling television programs include controversies involving the program's cast, conflicts among the show's staff members or to make room for new programming.

Shows whose runs end due to a mutual creative decision by its producers, cast, and the network it airs on (such as Seinfeld, The Sopranos, or The Cosby Show) are not considered to be "cancelled" but rather "concluded" or "ended", with a special last episode called its series finale. Even so, programs that end their runs in this manner are sometimes incorrectly stated to have been cancelled, even if the program was renewed for a final season (such as with American Idol, by which the term was incorrectly applied upon the announcement of Fox, Fremantle Media and 19 Entertainment's decision to renew the show for a 15th and final season in May 2015 to air in 2016); shows that are cancelled traditionally end their runs during the television season in which the program airs first-run episodes at the time, either effective immediately after the announcement is made by the network or until all remaining episodes are broadcast.

The Friday night death slot is a perceived graveyard slot in American television, referring to the idea that a television program in the United States scheduled on Friday evenings is destined for imminent cancellation.

Commercial television is supported by advertising, or viewers paying for TV-channels. Viewing figures are collected by audience measurement ratings agencies (such as Nielsen in the United States), and the programs with the highest viewing figures command a higher advertising fee for the network. As such, shows with a low viewership are generally not as profitable. For most United States networks, the number of viewers within the 18–49 age range is more important than the total number of viewers. According to Advertising Age, during the 2007–08 season, Grey's Anatomy was able to charge $419,000 per television commercial, compared to only $248,000 for a commercial during CSI, despite CSI having almost five million more viewers on average. Due to its strength in young demographics, Friends was able to charge almost three times as much for a commercial as Murder, She Wrote, even though the two television series had similar total viewer numbers during the seasons they were on the air together. (A slight exception to this is CBS, whose self-stated target audience is persons 25 to 54 years old; because of this, CBS programs tend to favor slightly older audiences than their broadcast rivals.)

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