Proven Innocent season 2: Why isn’t it renewed? Discussing cancellation
Is Proven Innocent renewed for a season 2? Well, not so much. Instead, tonight’s new episode of the Fox series is the series finale, not the season finale.
Ultimately, it’s been a foregone conclusion for some time now that the series would not be coming back for another batch of episodes. The ratings just aren’t good enough — as a matter of fact, they’ve been pretty bad. The legal drama has averaged only a 0.4 rating in the 18-49 demographic, and that is the most important metric for any show out there. Given that Fox already canceled STAR, a show that has delivered some at least solid ratings this season, we find it fairly hard to imagine that all of a sudden, they’d be extremely inclined in order to bring Proven Innocent back.
(Note that Fox may not have officially canceled the show yet, but it’s almost sure to be gone.)
So why didn’t this show work? Well, there are a few different reasons for it, and, perhaps more than anything, they start with the simple fact that the timeslot was terrible. If you have a brand-new show, premiering it on Friday night is typically a recipe for utter disaster. That’s why the majority of shows that air on Fridays these days originally started elsewhere. Think in terms of Hawaii Five-0, The Blacklist, Last Man Standing, or Blindspot. There are some exceptions to the rule like MacGyver and Blue Bloods, but they’re on a network that is known for having some quality Friday programming that performs well. Fox doesn’t have that luxury.
Beyond that, another clear issue here is the fact that Proven Innocent performed after a comedy in The Cool Kids, one that failed to really provide all that much in the way of a stable lead-in. There just weren’t a whole lot of people checking that show out at the end of the season and because of that, there weren’t a lot of people carried over here. In between a lack of big-time star power, a premise that may have been too similar on paper to other shows, and a bad timeslot, Proven Innocent never really had a chance.
Oh, and did we also mention that Fox is making some huge changes in the wake of the Disney acquisitions? It is now a fairly independent network, and there is an especially big turnover with a lot of its schedule this year. Shows that were at one point featured fairly prominent are now finding themselves heading off into the sunset. Also, the network is losing a night of scripted programming to make way for pro wrestling. (Yes, go ahead and make all of your “wrestling is scripted” jokes right now — after all, haven’t we heard all of them before? It certainly seems like it.)
If you do want to check out more news on the fate of several other shows…
Are you bummed out that there is no Proven Innocent season 2 happening on Fox? Be sure to share right now in the attached comments.