‘Covert Affairs’ season 6: Is there hope for canceled USA show elsewhere?

Typically when the word came down about a canceled show, that typically meant one thing: The end of the road is here.

With that being said, it does not necessarily mean that now for “Covert Affairs.” The series has been canceled now by USA after five seasons, but we have seen so many other shows keep fighting. “Longmire” managed to get a fourth season over on Netflix, and “Arrested Development” was revived after many years. “Southland” moved from NBC to TNT, and “American Dad” from Fox to TNT. With this in mind, you have to think that there is always a little bit of hope.

With that being said, we’re not going to sugarcoat anything for the sake of excitement here: The odds of the Piper Perabo series airing elsewhere are pretty slim. For one, this is different than “Longmire,” which was a Warner Bros. TV series airing on a non-Warner Bros. network in A&E. NBCUniversal already had a major stake in the series, and they happen to own USA. Therefore, licensing costs were not an issue here. It was more about being able to justify the cost of producing the series itself versus the ratings live it was able to pull in live and from recordings. While DVR ratings are becoming more important, we’re not at the age yet where they are a substitute for live numbers.

Another issue here, at least for streaming providers, comes in terms of total viewers. The show saw these figures decline steadily over the years, and by season 5, it was drawing half of the live viewership of “Longmire” most weeks.

We suppose that it’s possible that an ION or a streaming provider like a Yahoo or Amazon (who streams many past seasons) could be interested, but it would really come down to a service believing in a product more so than anything else.

We’ll have some other news soon in the event that something does break, but to sign up to receive some more scoop via email, our suggestion is to head over here. (Photo: USA.)