Renew/Cancel Wrap-Up 2020: Comparing Our Record Other Websites’ Predictions


The 2019-20 broadcast television season has come to a close, and every renew/cancel decision has been made (except for The CW’s Katy Keene, which is unanimously predicted to be renewed.)

For an easier read, below will be a table of shows where not every website agreed on a prediction.


The following shows were universally incorrectly predicted by all websites:

Hawaii Five-0
Duncanville
Broke
Man With A Plan
Schooled

All shows on neither lists were correct predictions for all websites. There are 57 of those shows. The Baker And The Beauty would have made 58 had TV Grim Reaper not abstain by considering it a summer show.

As you can see, we correctly predicted more shows and incorrectly predicted less shows than the other websites. This is not the first time The TV Ratings Guide has come in first; in fact, in our five years of doing renew/cancel columns, we were more accurate than everybody else more often than not.

There were no instances in which we incorrectly predicted something that everyone else correctly predicted. On the flip side, there were two cases of us being the only website to correctly predict a certain show: Single Parents and Stumptown. The latter spent its fair share of time in our cancelation category, but ultimately was a renewal prediction at the end.

It always hurts to get a prediction wrong. We know fans of shows have seen our predictions before, and the worst outcome possible is predicting a renewal, only to see the show get canceled. Luckily, there was only one instance where not all websites were in unison where we predicted a renewal for a canceled show: Bless This Mess.

Speaking of which, there was one fan of a certain show that had a strong opinion on one of our incorrect predictions:


Well, at least we can say the creator of The Resident took the time to click on the link and check out our predictions.

Here is a quick table with the overall hit-miss record for every website:


Now, let’s have a brief discussion on the five shows everyone missed.

Hawaii Five-0 was far and away the biggest shocker. The ratings were more than passable for Fridays, and the final season announcement was not made public until weeks before the series finale. It’s been said to be more of a decision made by the show and not the network, but it has to be wondered if CBS figured they can move on by having MacGyver and Magnum P.I. be Friday staples instead.

Broke, Man With A Plan, and Schooled all had very similar situations: their same-day ratings were solid at best, and their delayed-viewing ratings were far from impressive. Still, Man With A Plan was 19 episodes away from what used to be the magic 88 episode syndication number, and the show seemed syndication-friendly. Schooled appears to be a case of being on a network wanting to cut comedy hours, and Broke was seemingly not seen as a priority by CBS.

It is well known that FOX is looking to expand their slate of animated comedies in the near future. With The Simpsons reportedly not making them money now that Disney owns it (maybe it does when FOX NOW is factored in?,) and Family Guy aging, it’s easy to see why they would want more animated comedies. They had already renewed Bless The Harts, a time slot half-hit with almost nonexistent delayed viewing ratings. Duncanville went under a million viewers in same-day viewing sometimes, and was a hit by no means. FOX claims it did well on FOX NOW, their free, ad-supported streaming website, although there is no way for any prediction website to find out just how well it did. It appears FOX is very serious about finding a new animated block without their staples. Who knows, maybe it will eventually catch on in syndication like Bob’s Burgers did. Plus, Family Guy didn’t exactly do great at the beginning either. Then again, neither did Bordertown, Allen Gregory, or Napoleon Dynamite.

So yes, we did have our fair share of incorrect predictions, but we also had more key hits than anyone else. We are not asking anyone to read our predictions and ignore the other websites, but we do hope you take our predictions seriously.

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