NBC Renew/Cancel Week 23: Open Season for The Hunting Party + NBC Renew/Cancel March Madness Championship Voting!

This week on the NBC Renew/Cancel, I assess two of NBC's most at-risk bubble series once again, as recent developments seem to work against both of their cases for renewal. Plus, the championship match is set for the third-annual NBC Renew/Cancel March Madness Tournament, and readers can now vote for this year's champion!

Certain Cancellation:
Brilliant Minds (0.14, 0.11-0.18)

Likely Cancellation:

The Hunting Party (0.16, 0.10-0.22)

Leans Cancellation:
On Brand with Jimmy Fallon (0.17, 0.14-0.22)
Stumble (0.20, 0.11-0.61)
The Wall (0.16, 0.12-0.19)

Leans Renewal:
N/A

Likely Renewal:
Law & Order (0.25, 0.20-0.29)
The Voice (0.29, 0.19-0.42)

Certain Renewal:
Dateline NBC (0.19, 0.15-0.20)
The Fall and Rise of Reggie Dinkins (0.48, 0.25-1.38)
Law & Order: SVU (0.30, 0.21-0.33)
Saturday Night Live (0.64, 0.43-0.91)

Already Renewed:
Chicago Fire (0.34, 0.29-0.39)
Chicago Med (0.34, 0.28-0.39)
Chicago PD (0.29, 0.25-0.34)
Happy's Place (0.25, 0.18-0.33)
St. Denis Medical (0.31, 0.24-0.37)

The Hunting Party: I upgraded The Hunting Party a month ago, and while I don't necessarily regret that upgrade, I do think its chances of a renewal are fading. Its ratings haven't collapsed on linear or anything, but it's pretty clear that, just as the 0.10 premiere was a fluke, so was that 0.22 it received in early March. It's a show pretty reliably delivering rounded 0.2s, rating between 0.15 and 0.17 all other weeks. That's not much worse than the other shows airing in the hour (Grey's Anatomy and Elsbeth), but NBC could probably do better in that post-SVU slot, and they probably expect better, too. There's a reason they brought back a full-fledged pilot season after several years of limited development slates, and it's not because they're content with renewing nearly their entire schedule. It's likely that we'll see several drama pilots ordered to series, and a middling performer like The Hunting Party is going to be the sort of show they part with to give new shows a shot. This show already got a second chance, and it's not doing enough with it to get a third.

There's also its streaming performance. While we don't get multiplatform ratings from NBC, the trends on Peacock are very concerning. The Hunting Party was a reliable presence on the Peacock top ten chart at the start of the season. In recent weeks, it's been nowhere to be found, even being outperformed by Law & Order. We know that Law & Order has been a middling streaming performer for a while, but that show has Dick Wolf to save it, while The Hunting Party is (at least partially) in competition with a new Dick Wolf pilot for a slot on the schedule.

Next week, NBC will air a new episode of The Hunting Party in its regular timeslot of Thursday at 10 PM. That might not seem too notable, but both Law & Order and SVU will be off that night. It's not a scheduling necessity, either. After tonight's episodes, all three series will have four episodes left in their current seasons. NBC airing The Hunting Party alone next week will mean it wraps a week earlier than the two Law & Order series. While NBC hasn't announced what will air at 10 PM on May 14th, airing The Hunting Party on its own (and at the end of the night, no less) feels pretty unnecessary, and not like something they'd do for a series that they're intent on renewing. Perhaps I'm reading too much into scheduling, but if this does mean anything, it feels like it can only be a bad sign for its renewal hopes.

All in all, while the second season of The Hunting Part hasn't been quite the ratings disaster it seemed like it could've been, it hasn't been a huge success, either. NBC wasn't prepared for every new series they premiere last year to perform so abysmally, and they had no pilots in development to replace them. They had to scramble and renew a few of the least-embarrassing performers of a very bad bunch, and this was the result. I don't expect The Hunting Party to receive another reprieve, not when NBC seems to have learned its lesson from last year, and is now better prepared, with five drama pilots ready to fill the slots they have available. It's back down to a likely cancellation this week.

Stumble: Stumble ended several weeks ago, but that doesn't mean we don't have new developments on it! After its finale, there was a semi-promising sign for Stumble, in that NBC was continuing to air repeats of the freshman sitcom on Fridays at 8:30, as Happy's Place contained to air new episodes at 8. This was something they did not do with Lopez vs Lopez last season, and they obviously did cancel that show by May. After just a single week of airing a Stumble repeat in that slot, NBC pulled all future Stumble repeats and replaced them with Happy's Place repeats. That is never a good sign. Something seems to have changed to prompt NBC to pull those repeats without explanation. It's not as if Happy's Place won't be repeated heavily in the months ahead, as repeats of the Reba sitcom will fill this hour in late summer. To me, this indicates NBC has decided they'll be moving on from Stumble, and thus, they have no reason to broadcast any further repeats for exposure.

While Reggie Dinkins did have a rough showing on Monday, with its worst retention thus far (though it notably faced the NCAA championship game, while its lead-in did not), it's still been a better overall performer than Stumble, and it comes from a creative team that has long been associated with NBC, so it still feels like a lock to me. Stumble is the most at-risk sitcom NBC has, in a season where they have three comedies (both multi-cams and a single-cam) in development. If NBC wants to keep Reggie to shortened seasons, they have the Dan Goor single-cam to take its slot. And if they want a Happy's Place companion on Friday (which their orders strongly suggest they do), they have two sitcom pilots starring TV veterans to choose from. I think all three pilots are more likely to be picked up for next season than Stumble is (though I do not expect all three to actually be ordered). I don't see a place for Stumble on the schedule, and I think NBC has probably already made up their mind about moving on from it. They indicated that in their pilot orders, and they're reinforced that. in their decision to cease airing repeats on Friday nights. It leans cancellation, but it's closer to a downgrade to likely cancellation than it is to an upgrade to a renewal prediction.

NBC Renew/Cancel March Madness:

This week saw the most votes cast so far in this year's tournament - and it wasn't close. Law & Order: SVU led the way with nearly a thousand votes, demolishing Stumble, 949 votes to 335. Stumble had led in the vote count the past two rounds, but couldn't keep up with the veteran SVU, a two-time winner of the tournament. That's not to discount the incredibly impressive run Stumble has had - it faced a higher seed in both its previous rounds, and comedies are generally at a disadvantage in this tournament to begin with (no comedy has reached the championship match before this year).

In the other matchup, which was far closer, the iconic sketch comedy hit Saturday Night Live defeated St. Denis Medical by roughly 7%. It was fairly competitive all week, but SNL always had the advantage, and St. Denis just never managed to catch up to it. That means the perennial #1 seed is finally off to the championship game, where it'll hope to take down SVU, the only winner this tournament has seen since its inception. Coincidentally, this matchup will see NBC's two oldest series facing off, after having defeated two of the network's youngest shows in the semifinals. You can vote below for which series you'd like to see take it all this year!

Interactive Schedule:

The TV Ratings Guide	8:00	8:30	9:00	10:00
Mon	St. Denis Medical	Reggie Dinkins	The Voice	Brilliant Minds
Tues	NBA on NBC
Wed	Chicago Med		Chicago Fire	Chicago PD
Thurs	Law & Order		Law & Order: SVU	The Hunting Party
Fri	Happy's Place	Stumble	Dateline NBC
Sat	Encores
Sun	Sunday Night Basketball