Folks, it’s time to put on your sackcloth and get out the Shiva stools. Official word has come down that NBC has decided not to renew Life. This is obviously a disappointment for all of the show’s fans, including myself and many members of the CliqueClack team, who enjoyed the adventures of Charlie Crews and Dani Reese. Not only was it a neat piece of criminal procedural but it was also a great drama that featured well-rounded characters that, while inherently good, had their flaws.
While sad, it’s not a surprise that this happened considering the quality of programming talent that runs NBC. Jeff Zucker and his gang of idiots aren’t really interested in those types of shows for the network anymore. Simply put, they’re looking at one thing and one thing only… money. Screw the fact that Life was a quirky little drama that put another spin on the tired criminal procedural. Obviously, they decided that Biggest Loser: Former M-List Stars would be a bigger revenue generator than, you know, a well-scripted, well-acted series.
What gets me is that Life didn’t need to be canceled at all. If the network had difficulty finding a time slot and audience for the show (which is probably one of the reasons it was let go) why didn’t NBC and Universal give it a chance on USA? Charlie and Reese would have been a good fit amongst shows like In Plain Sight, Burn Notice, Monk and Law & Order: CI. It had the quirkiness of all of these shows, plus it had the added feature of an intriguing subplot (Charlie’s quest to find the members of The Conspiracy). Add it to a summer slot, and the show could have definitely given Universal some good numbers.
The cancellation of Life is just another example that the legacy networks are no longer interested in quality television. Hence, the reason why so many writers, producers and actors are moving to cable to strut their stuff. I wouldn’t be shocked, in the very near future, if the cable networks as well as the Interweb became the dominant force for quality, cutting edge programming (if they haven’t done so already) while the legacy channels became home to crappy reality programs and 18 hours of Jay Leno.
Good luck with your decision, NBC. With the dreck you’re adding to the fall schedule I’m sure the decision to cancel Life will bite you on the ass sooner or later. Especially if you decide to cancel Chuck as well.
Clacked by Richard Keller 
on May 04, 2009 @ 17:15 EST5EDT
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I hate NBC. They’re the new Fox.
Ugh, its at the point that I dread getting attached to a show on a major network, because chances are that if its interesting and well written enough to catch my attention, it’ll be gone after at most two seasons.
Ya know I blame the executives for about half the idiotic moves they make, and the other half goes to the other tv watchers. I really enjoyed Life, it was well written, and some good acting with a nice story each week. I just don’t understand what other people are watching these days. All of these freaking reality programs are horrible. I just don’t get it. Then the geniuses at NBC give Leno a prime time hour each night, are you kidding me?! Unbelievable, Life I really wish they could move you over to USA, but I doubt that would happen cause that would make too much sense.
The show had horrible ratings on a last place network, of course it will be canceled. But let’s blame NBC anyways!
Horrible ratings against Lost. Who would have thought?
Not to mention Idol and Criminal Minds.
But, I do blame NBC in this since they saw the ratings and didn’t do anything else to bring in the audience. Hell, FOX moves their schedule around constantly to make room for Idol and 24. NBC could have done the same knowing that Idol and Lost would be its competition in the second half of the season.
totally agree! what did they expect sticking Life in the same time slot as Lost and Idol?!?!
i am also to the point of feeling ambivilent about investing my time and energy in new TV shows. i mean what is the point when i know they all get cancelled within 1 or 2 seasons?!
Fox started a new show this year called Lie to Me and it went up against LOST several times and won. So once again not just NBC’s fault.
Is it NBC’s fault that Heroes lost like 60% of it’s viewers in less than 2 years? No, the show just isn’t good.
Lie to Me aired right before Idol, so it had a built in audience. NBC aired Knight Rider, which had little audience and probably didn’t retain much as the lineup moved from mind-numbing action to something thoughtful. So, again, I blame NBC.
IIRC, Lie to Me has always played at 8p. Lost’s new episodes run at 9p. So, if Lie to Me beat Lost, even once, it was one of those “enhanced episodes” from the previous week.
But honestly, I don’t know if I would believe even that. I’d really want to see those numbers.
Actually, you’re wrong Dorv. The first four episodes of Lie To Me were at 9, against Lost, before the show was moved to 8. In the first three, Lie To Me did have more viewers, but Lost passed it on the fourth go. And you could reasonably speculate that it would have continued to do so. In the demo, the shows did tie once, but Lost beat Lie To Me rather handily the other three times.
Getting back to the subject at hand, I rarely cotton to the argument that a show was put in a tough time slot. They’re all tough. If Life wasn’t on Wednesday, where else would you have it? Mondays have House, DWTS, and the CBS comedies. Tuesdays have NCIS, The Mentalist, Idol, and DWTS Results. Thursdays have Survivor, CSI and Grey’s. And Fridays are there own built in excuse for everyone except CBS. At some point, a show has to find its own viewers.
Networks make mistakes, to be sure, but I think it’s hard to put too much blame on NBC for this one. I’d like to see another season of Life as much as anyone, but it’s hard to argue with the numbers the show was bringing in. The fault for this lies much more with the viewing audience. People like to take shots at shows like The Biggest Loser, but at the end of the day, it’s knocking down three or four million more viewers a week than Life, and more than doubling the Life demo, at a fraction of the price. When that changes, so will the scheduling decisions.
You managed to put my point across in a much more eloquent manner.
And since the spreadsheet is open, the numbers you wanted to see.
1/21/09
Lost 11.35m/5
Lie To Me 12.37m/4.9
1/28/09
Lost 11.23m/4.9
Lie To Me 12.20m/4.4
2/04/09
Lost 11.01m/4.7
Lie To Me 12.99m/4.7
3/04/09
Lost 10.65m/4.9
Lie To Me 10.2m/3.7
I stand corrected and apologize. Still doesn’t jive with me, though.
It’s just too easy to blame NBC. Of course their going to cancel a show if it’s loosing them money. It’s not just good business sense, it’s good common sense. The show has done terribly for the whole of its run, not only against Lost, but against every shows it’s been up against. Looking at the ratings figures, the viewership went down almost every week. We should be happy that NBC gave the show a 2nd season to see if it would build an audience, but it’s the american public that are the ones who ignored it, not NBC.
NBC seems to be the only network that allows their shows to grow. Every single other network would have cancelled 30 Rock and The Office during their initial runs, and do you think Friday Night Lights would manage 5 seasons on Fox? No way. The show may be great, but people weren’t watching. Networks have budgets, so it’s not as simple as shipping the show off to USA. The music on Life alone is a lot more than USA spend on Monk and Psych.
NBC continue to make good quality television, but the viewers just aren’t watching. They even spent TONS of money promoting the 3D episode of Chuck, only to have the ratings hit an all time low the following weeks. No wonder they sold their souls to Leno.
So basically what the problem comes down to is that Network TV is only watched by idiots who are interested in lowest common denominator programming like Biggest Loser, rather than people who want to see smart, interesting, well crafted, scripted series. I think Richard is right. Cable will become the only place to go for quality TV, and the networks will have all the swill.
you hit the nail head-on…while dumb series like the apprentice thrive(the show doesn’t even deserve mentioning),shows that require some synapses stimulating do not appeal to the nbcs executives..all they care is their bottom line..shows like mad men gain a wider audience and the 4 networks are down in the mud with their voyeuristic-themed shows..what a bunch of losers..
NBC – These kind of decisions are WHY NBC is no longer the #1 Broadcast Channel — and it looks like it will never be again as look as it keeps making these type of programming decisions.
ARGH!
And they renewed Celebrity Apprentice?
??????
Personally I think shows like Heroes and Chuck would benefit from shorter runs. Chuck always felt like a cool idea but never lived up to it, and Heroes has been dragged out with one stupid, pointless plot twist after another. Network schedules are pretty limited as it is, but with NBC jettisoning an hour a week I think they would be better having shorter runs of shows and having more shows to give a bit of variety to the line-up. Of any 20+ episode season a fair number of those episodes end up being filler – especially when there is some sort of ongoing arc. The second season of Life was longer than the first but we didn’t learn that much more about the conspiracy. I’d rather have a dozen great episodes of Life, Heroes &/or Chuck than 20+ dodgy episodes of Heroes.
I think it’s great that Life had such a great last episode/finale. More than we got on “Journeyman”. I hate NBC for doing this but then again there were people who loved Jericho.
Too bad. “Life” was exciting, quality TV. I would’ve traded in “Southland” for that in a heartbeat but I’m not running NBC.
Money is :-)
Wow, I really disagree. Not that Life was good, because it was great. Not that Journeyman was good, because it was better. But seriously, of all of the shows that have been prematurely (in my eyes) cancelled in the last 10 years, the show runners at Journeyman anticipated, and I think got to a nice stopping point in the 13th episode.
No, it didn’t explain everything, but I don’t think you need to explain everything (See: Quantum Leap).
Ok then change it to “I wanted more” and that I wasn’t satisfied with the ending because there was so much more potential for that story.
why arent they trying to find a different way to do things, I dont know maybe when a series is in a downfall why not make a mini-series (3 to 6 episodes) with it the next year? this way we would have our closure, and who knows a second mini-series might even be made if the first one is a success.
I dont know if its a good idea or not, but one thing sure is they (as all the network stations) will have to find a different way to make tv or else ratings will get lower and lower.
Again, why produce 3-6 extra episodes if you’re loosing money on all of them? NBC is currently 4th out of 5 networks, and The CW doesn’t really count. If their aim is to improve their ratings overall, sticking with a show that does poorly in it’s timeslot each week isn’t going to help them achieve that.
How do they know it wouldn’t work if they didn’t give it a try. Hell, they gave the series a full season order this past year, so there had to me ‘some’ confidence amongst the executives. That, or guilt that the series only aired 11 epiosdes the previous season.
Then there’s another thing to consider: I thought NBC didn’t care about ratings anymore. I remember Jeff Z. mentioning something that a few months ago. If that’s the case, why not try to keep ‘Life’, a fan and critical favorite, on the air in some form. I don’t know, it just seems like the network is backing itself into a corner that they will never, ever come out of. If that’s the case I feel sorry for shows like The Office, 30 Rock, etc. that are successful but take criticism for the network they’re on.
Again, typical of Nothing But Canceled. RIP Life!
This just makes me sick to my stomach. Life was one of the best procedurals that also had an ongoing mystery/storyline running, and the music score was definitely the best available on network television. Can’t some other, more intelligent network pick it up?
Son of a %&*(#. That is one of my favorite shows. I know they have moved Kings, another well-written, fabulously acted show to the summer to die a slow death as well.
So, what do i have to look forward to come fall?
Are they nut’s. Why don’t they make primetime all cheap shows that suck like survivor?
Life should stay on what a bunch of idiots!!!!
The idiots are killing TV now with life ending like this i have lost faith in NBC why bother watching a series when you know that it will be prematurely cancelled so ….. to hell with any series that NBC does am all out of faith and i know there is a very large population like me out there all out of faith
I can’t believe!! there must be another season of life c’mon! is a really cool program and it can’t be finish in that way…i’m so disappointed.
i’m italian and me and my friends loves life!
NBC DO THE RIGHT CHOICE!!! DON’T KILL LIFE!
ema
life is one of the best tv series of the 2007 season. the nbc exec didn’t renew it bec. they prefer the dumbed down apprentice. well, nbc, you just lost a viewer…