Zoo canceled at CBS; James Wolk, Billy Burke show done after three years

Is Zoo canceled? We’ve been wondering about this ever since the series ended this summer with ratings that weren’t as good as we were hoping for. Now CarterMatt has the answer and it’s not going to make anyone happy: The CBS show has hit the end of the road.

The news of the show’s cancellation was confirmed on Monday, and as much as we loved the show it doesn’t take too much to figure out why this happened. While we enjoyed tuning in every week since Zoo is a tremendous source of summer fun, at the same time there were some serious issues with its ratings. They were down substantially in season 3 versus season 2, and the ratings for season 2 were down by a wide margin versus season 1.

The main reason why the show, (which starred James Wolk and Billy Burke) was able to last for as long as it did was because of a lucrative streaming deal that the show had at Netflix where new episodes would premiere there not too long after the end of the season. This is a summer deal that has benefited a number of other CBS summer shows over the past couple years; streaming may also be one of the reasons why Salvation is coming back for another season. (Read more at CarterMatt about that right now here.)

The big frustration at the moment when it comes to the end of Zoo is that there are plenty of cliffhangers out there with our crew and we have virtually no idea as to whether or not the human race is going to actually be safe in the end. We were hoping that the show would at least offer up some sort of conclusion like the recently canceled The Night Shift, but that hasn’t exactly been the case.

We’re bummed to see this go down for Zoo, but it did have a good run. If there is one thing we can look back at and cite as one of the show’s problems, it was probably being a little too serialized for a CBS summer show. It may have been able to retain more of its audience if viewers could pop in and out of the show, missing an episode here or there and still being able to understand what was going on. Beyond that, we just wonder if CBS was the right home for it if this was the sort of series it was meant to be. Maybe if the show went a little more low-budget it could’ve survived better on cable, or maybe it was a good binge-watch that would’ve been better off had it just premiered on Netflix in the first place since one episode tended to blend so much into the one after it.

What’s your take on the end of Zoo?

Why do you think the show couldn’t get the ratings boost over at CBS this year? (You could also blame a rough timeslot if you wanted to.) Share below in the comments section.

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