Outsiders canceled by WGN America; will season 3 find new home?

There’s some bad news coming for fans of Outsiders on WGN America — the series is being canceled … at least for the time being.

In a statement per The Hollywood Reporter, the network indicates that a big part of the reasoning for this has to do with a shift of programming strategy more so than anything pertaining to this show:

“After three years of investing in marquee, brand-defining dramas, WGN America has successfully expanded its audience, its reach and its presence in the minds of viewers. In our next phase, we intend to expand our original and unique content to continue growing our relevance and appeal to the widest possible audience. To achieve this, we will be reallocating our resources to a more diverse programming strategy and to new structures, enabling us to expand both the quantity and breadth of content aired by WGN America. This move is designed to deliver even more value to our advertising and distribution partners. To free up the resources to reach this goal, we will unfortunately not be renewing Outsiders. We are grateful to our production partners at Sony Pictures Television and the terrifically talented people who made the show possible.”

It is still possible that the show finds a new home elsewhere, but one of the things to remember is that even in this era of shows finding new homes here and there, we do think that this is far more of a rarity than a certainty that shows are brought back. In terms of its ratings at present, Outsiders is averaging a 0.2 rating in the 18-49 demographic and around 800,000 viewers. We don’t think that this is necessarily terrible given WGN America and its total audience size, but we do think that this is a network that as a whole may have went a little too big with its original series strategy out of the gate. As of right now, we do think they’ve got a decent hit in Underground, but one of their other marquee series in Salem is also now over. (Even with that being said, though, Outsiders was actually getting more total viewers a week than Underground so far this season — the latter just tends to get more buzz on social media.)

What is your reaction to this news, and do you think that Outsiders could end up finding a different home elsewhere? Let us know some of what you think in the comments! (Photo: WGN America.)