Certain Cancellation:
N/A
Leans Cancellation:
Brilliant Minds
Leans Renewal:
The Fall and Rise of Reggie Dinkins
Happy's Place
St. Denis Medical
Stumble
Likely Renewal:
Chicago Fire
Chicago Med
Chicago PD
Law & Order
Certain Renewal:
Law & Order: SVU
Saturday Night Live
Brilliant Minds: One of the more surprising decisions this year, amid a flurry of odd decisions by NBC, was their choice to renew Brilliant Minds. While its ratings weren't as awful as the other new and sophomore dramas that occupied the NBC lineup last season, it was far from a hit. Its 0.23 average came after a fairly strong lead-in from The Voice, and it sunk as low as 0.17 behind that lead-in. It took over four months after the finale aired for a renewal to come, which is an unusually long time. NBC would typically renew even modest performers before May if they ended the season that early. But this was not a typical season, so it seems like Brilliant Minds benefited more from the failure of other series than from its own merits. Of the two freshman series renewed last season, I think Brilliant Minds has more going for it, and it's in a better position for another renewal. For one, it's keeping its fall slot, and will have a full season. NBC canceled two sophomore series that they gave full-season orders to last season (The Irrational and Found), but a full-season order is still generally a positive sign, and it's more than The Hunting Party has going for it. The show rated a bit better in MP+35 ratings than I expected, with 7.5 million viewers, the sixth-highest of any NBC show (tied with Tuesday episodes of The Voice). In other words, the show was a fairly weak performer, and a cancellation would've been easy to justify, but it's not DOA heading into this season. It LEANS CANCELLATION to kick off the season, and will probably be competing with NBC pilots (or even reality shows) for a spot on the 2026-27 schedule, if it doesn't drop too much this season.
Chicago Fire, Chicago Med & Chicago PD: Easily the most successful franchise we've seen on broadcast TV in recent memory, this trio remains valuable for NBC. They were their three most-watched series last season in MP+35 ratings, and Med and Fire were their #2 and #3 series in the key demo in linear ratings. It's NBC strongest and most cohesive lineup, and even though NBC rarely wins Wednesday nights thanks to the powerhouse that is Survivor, these shows are still a force to be reckoned with. However, they're also pretty old. All heave reached a double-digits season count, with Fire entering season 14 and the youngest, Med, entering season 11. All look pretty safe for another season, but budget cuts continue across the board, with actors once again seeing their episode guarantees reduced next season and the next seasons of the trio all running for twenty-one episodes, the first time it has dipped below the standard 22 for reasons unrelated to COVID or Hollywood strikes. That's still more than most shows on TV, of course, but it does underline just how tricky the financial situation is on broadcast, with the networks cutting costs anywhere they can. Chicago PD is the safest of the trio in my estimation, thanks to its strong syndication deal, while Chicago Med is the most endangered, given its lack of syndication. All three of them are fairly mediocre streaming performers, running at least three full tenths behind SVU in the season's multiplatform+35 demo ratings, despite having more viewers and higher linear averages than SVU. I doubt any are in real trouble this season, but last season's renewals did take longer than I would've expected for one a one-season pickup, so I'm going to be cautious here and start all three as LIKELY RENEWALS. I do expect, however, for all of them to be upgraded to certain renewal status over the course of the season, particularly PD.
Happy's Place: With a 0.27 average, Happy's Place was a solid option for NBC on Friday nights. It didn't light the world on fire, but it did fine business on a tough night, which is all NBC could really ask. It was more consistent over the course of its first season than St. Denis Medical, averaging only eight hundredths below its premiere rating, thought its finale rating was an eye-raising outlier rating, earning only a 0.20 in the key demo. If it returns on that level, we may have reason for long-term concern. If it returns closer to its season average, it'll probably be okay. NBC really does seem committed to comedy at this stage, and it's pretty understandable why. They haven't had any real comedy success in years (since The Good Place debuted nearly ten years ago), and this year's new comedies both showed promising signs of life. Not to mention, all of their new dramas this season were a bust. Happy's Place and St. Denis Medical are their only comedies on the fall lineup, but they're still keeping two comedy hours. As long as NBC keeps those two comedy hours on their lineup, and as long as it avoids a major year-to-year drop, Happy's Place will probably be in a solid position for renewal. It LEANS RENEWAL for a third season, but I think it's the safest of their four comedies to start out the season.
The Hunting Party: It's unusual for a series to feel like it has no chance for another renewal immediately after its first renewal, but that's n how this one felt. We knew we were in for at least one questionable NBC renewal given that they had so many catastrophic performers on their lineup last season to possibly cancel them all, particularly when it was reported that NBC had zero dramas in development for the fall season. There ended up being two questionable renewals, this series and Brilliant Minds, but The Hunting Party was the renewal that felt especially egregious. Brilliant Minds was a flop, but this show outright bombed, squandering a football lead-in for its premiere, then stumbling out the starting gate and ultimately getting destroyed by NCIS: Origins of all series once that series returned from a month-long break. The Hunting Party was hanging on by a thread to begin with, but with some increased scripted competition, it sunk to a lowly 0.14, and was down again the next week, ultimately ending its season on a string of 0.1s. It looked dead, but since it was fully owned by NBC (unlike several other NBC bubble series), it always appeared to have somewhat of a chance. That didn't mean its renewal wasn't a head-scratcher, though. Ratings provided by Nielsen after the season painted a more clear picture of why The Hunting Party got a renewal: it and Brilliant Minds were the most-watched of the bubble dramas in multiplatform ratings, with The Hunting Party ranking 73rd for the season with 7 million viewers. In fact, both had more viewers than Law & Order, which is a bit of a shock. Despite looking OK in that metric, The Hunting Party is no hit by any means. It ranks two million viewers behind SVU, and three million behind the Chicagos. So delayed ratings feel unlikely to save it again, since NBC will hopefully make at least somewhat of an attempt to develop some shows to air in fall 2026, unlike this season. Making matters worse for The Hunting Party, and making it the most obviously endangered series of the season on NBC, is that it was benched this week after initially being planned for a fall launch. It'll premiere sometime in midseason, certainly cutting down its season two episode order from the initial plan of 18-22 episodes. It was benched in favor of airing season five of Law & Order: Organized Crime on NBC, several months after that show aired on Peacock originally. NBC is apparently prioritizing repeats over The Hunting Party. It's hard to write this show off entirely, especially before a single episode has aired, but given everything that's happened, it's also hard not to. It starts as a LIKELY CANCELLATION.
Law & Order: A show that's arguably safer than it should be due to the franchise it's a part of, Law & Order has been just a decent performer since it was revived a few years ago. Its linear performance is more or less fine - it's the weakest Dick Wolf show, but with a 0.30 average, it isn't that far behind SVU. It and SVU do provide a solid Thursday night duo for NBC, and Law & Order rarely ever sticks out as a major underperformer. However, its multiplatform performance frankly stinks. We don't know its demo rating in that metric, since it missed out on the top 100 (much like all but two of NBC's series) on Nielsen's season rankings, but we do know its total viewer total, and it wasn't good. SVU averaged 8.7 million viewers (good enough for 47th place) and Law & Order was two million viewers behind it, at 6.7 million viewers (80th place). That's lower than both of the renewed bubble dramas, and only 100,000 viewers above canceled flop The Irrational. This isn't a super surprising result, as its L+7 DVR gains have always been pretty underwhelming. Really what seems to be saving it is NBC's respect for Dick Wolf himself, as they haven't canceled a scripted series of his since Law & Order True Crime in 2017. Also working in its favor is NBC seemingly wanting to make this Law & Order block stick. After one season of Found struggling at 10 PM after they shuffled Organized Crime off to Peacock, the SVU spinoff is back at 10 PM this fall in a surprising move, reviving the night-long Law & Order block. Maybe I'm reading too much into the OC scheduling, and they don't really care that much about having a Law & Order night, but I think last season may have taught them a lesson about the value of keeping the lineup together. In other words, I expect Law & Order's decent linear ratings and Dick Wolf ties to be enough to start it as a LIKELY RENEWAL, though it's absolutely the most endangered of the five Wolf shows airing original episodes on NBC next season.
Law & Order: SVU: I've been a bit pessimistic about some of Dick Wolf's shows, mainly due to their ages, expense and NBC's cost-cutting measures. All of these things apply to SVU as well. However, I still think it's the safest of the bunch. It is July, so they would have time to announce a final season if that were the case, but I think this show will likely get a longer send-off when the time comes. I also expect it will be on its own terms, when either Dick Wolf or star Mariska Hargitay decide that it's time to end. Neither of them seem to want that to happen anytime soon. And the reason why I expect all pop this is because the show is a huge cash cow for NBC, even twenty-seven seasons in. It's their #1 show on streaming, and topped all others in the multiplatform demo ratings, even if its ratings in that metric are clearly down from past years. It's also still a major player in syndication, and in international sales, two important factors that set it ahead of the rest. It's a CERTAIN RENEWAL.
Saturday Night Live: We're in the midst of a late-night extinction event, with several late night shows being canceled and reporting coming out that even the ones that haven't been canceled yet are losing tens of millions of dollars. However, Saturday Night Live is no ordinary late night show. It's one of the highest-rated series on all of broadcast TV despite airing at 11:30 on a Saturday night in much of the country. It's an important cultural touchstone to this day, and NBC knows that they're lucky to have it. As long as there is a Lorne Michaels, there will be a Saturday Night Live - and likely well beyond that point, too. It's a CERTAIN RENEWAL.
St. Denis Medical: To be entirely honest, I was expecting to hand this show a cancellation prediction in my pre-season ratings back when this show was still airing. After a promising start in the linear ratings, the show began to look like any NBC comedy of recent years. It went from a 0.51 to a 0.22 in just one season, a terrible drop even when you consider that that 0.22 happened well into the spring season, when ratings are lower, particularly for 8 PM series. However, some promising data for the show came out just after the 2024-25 season ended, as Nielsen released a list of the top 100 series in MP+35 in both the key demo and total viewers. St. Denis Medical was on both of those lists, ranking as the 89th most-watched show of the season and tying for 82nd among the key demo. While that may not seem like a major deal, it's one of just two shows on NBC to make both lists. Only SVU fared better in the demo, and only by a tenth. NBC's demo ratings overall looked pretty shaky in that ranking, probably thanks in large part to their shows being exclusive to Peacock rather than still being available on the more popular Hulu, but St. Denis being their #2 show overall is something it can definitely celebrate. Beating long-time titans like the Chicagos isn't necessarily what one would expect, and so, I have to give it the benefit of the doubt. Sure, it's very likely that the show was front-loaded in multiplatform ratings as well, just like it was in its L+SD ratings, so it's possible it drops heavily in the MP ratings next season. However, NBC is still treating it like a priority, which is a promising sign for it. They've scheduled the show in a way that makes it clear they value it, moving it to Mondays and trimming The Voice to just an hour a week in order to make space for it. They went above and beyond to avoid moving it to Friday nights, when they very easily could've and just cut comedy to one hour in the fall. That gives me hope that the show continued to perform well on streaming for the course of the season, and it didn't utterly crater in that metric like it did in linear ratings. We'll find out a lot more about this show when it comes back in November, but it looks like. favorite for a third season at this stage. It LEANS RENEWAL ahead of the season's launch.
The Fall and Rise of Reggie Dinkins and Stumble: I saved these two for last, as they are the only new shows on the lineup next season. They both get the benefit of the doubt, as we haven't seen many cancellations of freshman NBC comedies in recent years, but that does not mean they're safe. We aren't currently aware of where they're airing, just that they'll most likely air midseason, and I expect that whichever one ends up on Fridays is probably the less safe of the two. NBC seems to be pretty high on both at this point, but that doesn't always translate to a renewal - no network picks up a new show dead-set on canceling it. The one possible roadblock for these two shows, and for the sophomore comedies, is that I doubt NBC will have more than four comedies on their lineup next season. They could decide against ordering any new comedies next season, as they did with dramas this season, but they could also cancel one of the four they have now. And that's why I have to be cautious with all of them, and why these two start at LEANS RENEWAL. History suggests a second season is more likely than not for both of these shows, but they are going to have to prove themselves in order to secure that renewal.
What do you think of my pre-season predictions? What are your predictions? Let me know in the comments and vote in the poll of the week1
