With the cancellation of Grosse Pointe Garden Society last week, all of NBC's shows have now had their fates announced, which means it's time for much-delayed wrap-up of the 2024-25 NBC season! Keep reading for my look at what went right, and what went wrong, as I a attempted to predict NBC this season!
Certain Cancellation:
Grosse Pointe Garden Society (canceled 6/27)
The Irrational (canceled 5/9)
Leans Cancellation:
Found (canceled 5/9)
Leans Renewal:
Suits LA (canceled 5/9)
Likely Renewal:
Happy's Place (renewed 2/20)
Law & Order (renewed 5/8)
Certain Renewal:
Chicago Fire (renewed 5/5)
Chicago Med (renewed 5/5)
Chicago PD (renewed 5/5)
Law & Order: SVU (renewed 5/8)
Saturday Night Live (renewed)
St. Denis Medical (renewed 1/14)
Correct predictions are listed in bold, incorrect predictions are listed in italics
It was an odd season on NBC, to say the least. Not one of their new dramas managed to get anywhere close to the seasonal league average (0.32), with Brilliant Minds coming the closest at a 0.23 average. With an NBA deal thankfully coming through to bail them out next season, it seemed certain that we were due for a blood back this season on NBC, and we did get one. Or, at least, the 2025 equivalent of one. In a time where fewer scripted shows are airing on broadcast TV than ever before, NBC canceled six of fifteen primetime scripted series - forty percent of their offerings this year. As a testament to just how rough of a season they had, they very easily could have canceled an outright majority of their series this season. Only Dick Wolf's series and their freshman comedies performed well enough this season to actually look safe for the majority of the season, with every freshman and sophomore drama and veteran comedy looking questionable for renewal at best. But I'm beating a dead horse here, as I spent the entire season bemoaning what a dreadful season NBC had in this column. So, this final column of the season is going to be more about how my predictions stacked up than about how NBC performed this year, and what I can perhaps do differently to improve my 81% prediction record this season.
We'll start with the misses.
My guess going into the pre-Upfronts week was that NBC would renew one bubble drama that didn't really deserve it, with the other vacant slot on their schedule going to the new Jimmy Fallon reality competition. While that series, On Brand, is indeed on their fall schedule, it's not airing through the entire fall. It will air on Tuesdays before the NBA starts, as well as Fridays before the premieres of Happy's Place and an as-of-yet unnamed comedy. So this meant a slot was open for two dramas, rather than one. The show I predicted as a renewal, Suits LA, was not one of those two renewals. While I recognized the show's extreme weakness in the ratings, and had it originally pegged correctly as a cancelation prediction, I changed my mind later on, assuming that its ties to the Suits franchise and NBC's desire to capitalize off the parent show's streaming popularity would be enough to push it ahead of the other struggling series and get it a second (and, likely, last) chance. That was wrong, and the show was canceled. Ratings-wise, it was entirely earned, probably the most earned cancellation of the season. I certainly didn't predict renewal believing it deserved one, so it was probably always a mistake to predict it to begin with, but hindsight is 20/20. I was back and forth, and the prediction switch just didn't pan out. Something I overlooked was that it was filmed in LA, making it more expensive to produce than if it filmed in Vancouver, where it filmed its pilot. Had I realized that, I may have made a different call on it, and that's something I'll need to consider more closely in the future.
My other two misses were both cancellation predictions who pulled off renewals. NBC didn't seem terribly enthused about renewing either the Hunting Party or Brilliant Minds, as they only announced those renewals at the exact moment that they announced their schedule, but those were the shows they picked to keep going. Looking at the linear ratings, Brilliant Minds is the show that "deserved" a renewal most, though I counted it out due to how long it had been since it aired. I felt it was essentially forgotten by the time May rolled around, and its ratings, though higher than the other dramas that were on the bubble, were still not that impressive, given it aired in a more favorable time of year for ratings, avoiding the spring - and airing behind a diminished The Voice - entirely. Though the claim was that Zachary Quinto's schedule prevented a larger order for the show's first season, I didn't really believe that. It felt like a PR line to cover for the fact that the show had struggled in the ratings and wasn't getting a backorder. In the end, though, Brilliant Minds did get renewed, and is getting a full season next year, so my gut was certainly wrong on that front. I had it as a certain cancellation at one point, but cooled on it towards the end of the season, since it was hard to be certain anything was getting canceled when so many shows were struggling. Though my prediction was still wrong, I'm glad I upgraded it to avoid too much embarrassment. It'll be back next season in its time slot from last season, helping NBC keep a bit of stability on a night that'll undergo major changes, as The Voice shifts to just one hour and comedies join the fray.
The other cancellation prediction that proved to be wrong was The Hunting Party. This show's ratings were right in the middle of the bubble shows, with its 0.21 average (boosted in part by a post-NFL debut, it would've averaged 0.18 without it) putting it ahead of The Irrational, Grosse Pointe and Suits LA, but behind Brilliant Minds and Found. By the end of its run, it was looking pretty dire. Facing competition from NCIS: Origins (which was in repeats for much of its run), it fell to 0.1 territory for its last three episodes, and its renewal hopes seemed, to me, pretty much sealed. A one-off airing of Found the week after its finale soundly out-performed it, another knock against it (and in favor of a different bubble series). Still, I felt there was a remote chance of renewal for it, like most of the other bubble dramas. Not a strong one, but I felt NBC could pick it up again, especially since they do own it, and tis delayed viewership gains were decent enough. Still, I stuck to a likely cancellation prediction for essentially its entire run, and I did not waver as the season came to a close. That was a mistake. It, like Brilliant Minds, was handed a renewal, securing my third missed prediction of the season. We didn't know this data until well after renewals were handed out, but based on the season's multiplatform+35 ratings, NBC actually did seem to pick the right two linear drama flops to renew, if they were hell-bent on making pity renewals rather than picking up something new to air. Brilliant Minds and The Hunting Party were the most-watched of the bubble dramas, coming in about half a million viewers ahead of the runner-up, The Irrational, and a million viewers ahead of Found. I wish I did know this data beforehand, though I can't lie and say I'm certain I would've guessed renewals for these shows even with this data. Both were pretty clear misses for me, and I'll have the chance to get them right next season.
As for my correct predictions, most were fairly obvious. Every renewal correction that I got right was pretty clear to anyone with ratings knowledge: they were their eight highest-rated series, and none of them ever looked particularly endangered this time around. On the other end of things, The Irrational and Grosse Pointe Garden Society both looked like clear cancellations to me, even if Grosse Pointe did, against all odds, take nearly two months to finally get canceled. The Irrational started well enough, but sunk to historically-low ratings by the middle of its second season, and I never felt it had much of an argument for renewal after the second or third episode of the season. Comedies Lopez vs Lopez and Night Court both looked like they were performing well enough for renewal at certain points in the season, but ended up being pretty clear cancellations by the end. Lopez vs Lopez was essentially dead as soon as NBC passed on ordering more episodes to air with Happy's Place, while I was down on Night Court from the pre-season, feeling its time slot downgrade was a sign it was on the way out. The only correct prediction that I got that I was completely unsure about was Found. I had it and Suits LA battling it out for renewal, and in the end, both were canceled. Found was a renewal prediction for a short time, but spent the majority of the season as some sort of cancellation prediction, and it ended its run as "leans cancellation." Delayed ratings show that it wasn't exactly lighting the world on fire, and had fewer viewers than any NBC series this season besides Grosse Pointe and Suits LA, so maybe it wasn't as close to renewal as I thought. Still, I got it right in the end, having listened to my gut.
This season was a bit of a wash for me, with several misses amid an unpredictable season for NBC. It's likely the last time I'll ever have so many series to predict, with only ten scripted series set to air on NBC next season I(more could be ordered, NBC still has two fall half-hours open). Though it'll make my job a bit easier, I don't love to see another network joining in on cutting down on scripted programming, though from a ratings point of view, it certainly makes sense. The NBA will be a big improvement on this season's disastrous Tuesday nights, and will also prevent another attempt at a spring Sunday lineup that limps to the finish line (though, The Americas did quite well for them). The big question will be how many of their four sophomore series will be able to survive, given how two of them look like questionable renewals already, and St. Denis Medical was already struggling by the end of one eighteen-episode season. We also still don't know how many new series NBC will have next season, with several sitcoms still in development - and they'll need to decide on those soon if one or both is going to launch in fall. So, while it was a season of declines, capped off with several cancellations, NBC will still give me plenty to talk about next season. Make sure to return for those predictions this fall!
