The Hunting Party returns to the spotlight this week, as the NBC Renew/Cancel reaches its penultimate update of the 2025-26 TV season!
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:
Law & Order (0.24, 0.20-0.29)
Likely Renewal:
The Fall and Rise of Reggie Dinkins (0.38, 0.19-1.38)
The Voice (0.28, 0.19-0.42)
Certain Renewal:
Dateline NBC (0.18, 0.15-0.26)
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)
Law & Order: SVU (0.30, 0.21-0.33)
St. Denis Medical (0.31, 0.24-0.37)
The Hunting Party: I haven't been very positive about The Hunting Party's renewal chances this season for several reasons, but as far as its actual performance goes, I do have to admit that it's had a better season than I expected. It's not a consistent show - it'll go from looking reasonably solid to extremely weak from one episode to the next. However, it's not the ratings catastrophe it looked like it would be from the start of last season, and NBC's renewal of the series last season doesn't look as disastrous as it once did.
I doubt that will be enough to survive to a third season. I do keep harping on the same thing with these bubble shows, but NBC has a busy pilot season for the first time in years, and they don't have many slots available for those shows. Law & Order: Organized Crime is already out of the way, and Brilliant Minds will surely be canceled, as well. That's an hour opened for roughly a full season on Mondays (depending on how they schedule The Voice) and a half-season opened on Thursdays. It's possible another hour opens up on Mondays if NBC scales The Voice back to one cycle a year, but that's not a certainty. With the amount of pilots they have lined up, I would expect NBC to want to order at least two or three of their new dramas, and I don't think they'd want to have the Thursday freshman sharing a time slot with The Hunting Party. If NBC had fewer pilots, I think The Hunting Party would have a fighting chance after how decently it's held up this season. The reality is, it's competing against five pilots, most of which feature TV veterans that NBC will be hoping draws a new audience. The network needs a refresh, and they need to find a new hit. They haven't had a new bona fide hit drama in years - only passable performers often canceled after two seasons, at most. The Hunting Party is the show most clearly at risk of losing its slot in the name of finding a new hit.
The door isn't entirely closed on a Hunting Party renewal. Like I said, it's held up decently well. It aired behind repeats two weeks ago, and drew an above-average 0.19, up half a tenth from the previous episode. It then slipped to a 0.16 the week after, though, which illustrates why its performance this season is hard to really sum up simply. It also illustrates why it's vulnerable, despite performing decently at 10 PM on certain weeks. NBC can't rely on it to be consistent. It can be at 0.22 and winning its hour one week, then down to a 0.14 and in third place the week after. It doesn't have a consistent floor. It started this season at 0.10, and could just as easily return to that next season and not grow like it did this season. A new show airing behind SVU could hopefully provide a bit more stability.
Its streaming performance has been hard to understand, as well. It had a nice showing on Netflix when the first season was added, never hitting #1, but remaining on their top ten for several weeks - better than several Netflix originals. The problem is that Netflix deals haven't been shown to reliably save shows in the last few seasons. It's a nice bit of money to bring to the network, but it's not always a reason for them to dump money into ordering another season if it's not already profitable in some form. Its Peacock performance has been just OK, starting off solidly but tapering off as the season went on. Its multiplatform performance last season was decent, but NBC hasn't given us any data indicating how it's done this year (they didn't last year, either - its MP+35 ratings only came out when Nielsen released a list of the 100 most-watched shows of the season). It could be stable, it could be down, it could even be up, we just don't know. Based on how NBC is moving, it doesn't seem to be doing enough on streaming to prompt a green light for season three.
The Hunting Party has performed better than I anticipated this season. It's likely also outperformed NBC's expectation, based on them cutting its order before the season began. I just suspect that the odds were so heavily stacked against it before this season even began that it hasn't overperformed enough to survive. It remains a likely cancellation.
| The TV Ratings Guide | 8:00 | 8:30 | 9:00 | 9:30 | 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 | |||||
Renewed
Certain Renew
Likely Renew
Leans Renew
Leans Cancel
Likely Cancel
Certain Cancel
Canceled
