‘Vinyl’ canceled by HBO despite season 2 renewal

Well, this is awkward. Even though HBO previously had ordered a second season of their music drama “Vinyl,” they have decided now to reverse course.

In a statement today, the network explained their sudden decision to cancel the drama, which counts Mick Jagger and Martin Scorsese as executive producers:

“After careful consideration, we have decided not to proceed with a second season of Vinyl. Obviously, this was not an easy decision. We have enormous respect for the creative team and cast for their hard work and passion on this project.”

“Vinyl” has been marred with a variety of problems for some time, starting with the low ratings that it received for much of its first season. From there, it lost original showrunner Terence Winter, amid a variety of suggestions that the show may have needed more time to gestate. The season 2 renewal was done at a time when Michael Lombardo was leading the charge as the HBO programming head, but since that time there has been a clear changing of the guard, and the new powers-that-be at the network clearly decided that they were going to be better suited to go in a different direction with the show.

This is not the first time that this network has renewed a show, only to cancel it later when they realized that something was not working. As a matter of fact, HBO has probably done this more than the majority of other networks out there. They really do try to establish themselves as a quality-first network, and with that in mind, they won’t keep going with a project they no longer feel is viable.

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