‘Longmire’ season 4: Four possible new homes after A&E cancellation

By now, the news may have started to settle in: “Longmire” is no more on A&E after three seasons on the air.

Is it possible that the show finds a new home now? Sure, since we already know Warner Horizon is shopping around; but, it is hardly a given. We’re going to chart out some likely homes for it below, but one thing that we’d start with is that if we were campaigning very hard as a fan to keep the show, we wouldn’t waste much breath on A&E itself. After they canceled “The Glades” last year in a similar fashion, they knew that this move would have backlash. Obviously, they are not that interested in scripted TV right now other than “Bates Motel,” and they’re not going to reverse a decision that they made with all of this bad PR in mind.

Now, let’s get to it.

Netflix – The obvious benefit here is that finally, the age of the viewer doesn’t matter. That is the reason that “Longmire” was canceled from a ratings perspective; thanks in part to a lack of a real lead-in or out-of-network promotion, the show dropped by a decent margin in viewers 18-49 in season 3. Netflix doesn’t have reason to care about this, since they have no advertisements. They’d just be happy with the viewer count.

This may still be a difficult sell, given that “Longmire” has not been a show that generates a whole lot of press for itself. What it does have going for it, though, is that Netflix already has the first couple of seasons on the air.

AMC – We could see the network giving the show a shot, presumably since it and “Hell on Wheels” could actually make a very good combination on Saturday nights. While “Longmire” is not a Western per se, it has many of the same tropes and themes. We feel like if AMC could guarantee the same ratings from A&E, this would be a slam dunk. The problem is that this is going to be a hard thing to do, since there are a whole lot more people around Mondays than Saturdays.

USA – A police show about a man looking to solve his late wife’s murder? That premise alone is something USA is very familiar with. The characters and the show itself could be a good fit on the network, but like with many other cable networks (including A&E), we feel like they would prefer picking up in-house projects rather than something from an outside studio like Warner Horizon. (We feel the same way here about FX, for those wondering why it’s not on the list.)

TNT – We get why there are some hoping that “Longmire” could move here, but it’s probably the most unlikely of the four. TNT has had a very good summer in the ratings, and most of their hit shows do better ratings in the key demos than it does already. They’d probably prefer to just launch their own property than take a gamble on something three years in.

Are there some other options out there? Netflix and AMC are to us the two most-likely destinations, but maybe there are some other streaming services that could be somewhat intrigued, or maybe even a network like WGN America wants to have an established hit to help their new scripted programming slate. There are some who could be beneficiaries of the show, but for right now our suggestion is to campaign, but also accept the possibility that the show could be gone. The “Community” and “Southland” stories are the minority, and our fear is that this story reminds us a lot of “Harry’s Law,” which NBC canceled despite it being one of their most-watched drama series thanks mostly to the demo.

We’ll have some further “Longmire” news soon (hopefully good), so stay tuned. Also, sign up now for additional coverage on everything at CarterMatt via our newsletter.

Photo: A&E