The Code likely canceled, episodes pulled from schedule
While there is no official fate as of right now on CBS’ The Code, it doesn’t look as though the military drama will be sticking around for another tour of duty.
If you look over and view CBS’ primetime schedule for the next couple of weeks, you will notice that the network has removed episodes of The Code from Monday nights, replacing them with repeats of Magnum PI for at least the next couple of weeks.
The Code had a pretty difficult challenge here from the start — despite getting a good premiere lead-in via NCIS, it was forced after that into a tough timeslot Monday night in the spring, airing opposite some ratings monsters like The Voice and also The Bachelorette. Its averages are not necessarily terrible — there are a lot of networks out there that would love to have their show overage over a 0.5 rating in the 18-49 demographic and over five million weekly viewers.
Yet, it’s obviously based on this move that CBS doesn’t see a whole lot of a future for The Code, and it didn’t get a big ratings bump from it airing during the summer like Code Black did. (There was a belief among many that the medical drama was canceled too early last year, leading to conversations about whether or not it could come back. That never happened.)
One other question for The Code
Does it go away just because CBS is looking to bring on board another military legal drama in JAG? It’s absolutely fair to at least wonder that, given that NCIS: Los Angeles just brought Catherine Bell and David James Elliott on board for an episode arc. We don’t think that there are any immediate plans to bring back that show, but the network is almost certainly aware of the attention that bringing back those characters got when they did it earlier this spring. (We’re just not sure if the attention was quite what they bargained for, when you consider that there were a lot of people out there who were quite unhappy with the direction of the story.)
We don’t think, in the end, that The Code is dying so that JAG can live — networks make decisions on factors that are a lot more complicated than that. Yet, we do think that you can make a good case that there is still hope for JAG in the future, and that is something we’ll be keeping our eyes peeled on entering this fall.
What do you think about episodes of The Code being pushed off the air? Do you think this means that the show is going to be canceled? Be sure to share right now in the comments.