We kind of knew that Southland was in trouble when NBC pushed its premiere date from September to October, but today things got even worse for the John Wells because The Hollywood Reporter is saying that the show has been cancelled before it even aired its second season premiere. The show was suppose to begin airing on October 23rd, but the network stopped production after 6 episodes today and as of now it is not known if anyone of them will air at all.
This is one of the very very very few shows that actually was picked up for a second season from the old head of the network, and with its cancellation I think means that Parks and Recreation is the only show of his that survived to a second season.
The cancellation of Southland is a very sad day for NBC because that means there is one less scripted program on their network that already devotes 5 hours to talk a night, 2 hours a week to reality, their weekends are repeats and/or football and now a news program will be taking over Southland’s slot. So that means only 7 hours a week are devoted to scripted programming during their primetime lineup. And it will be even less once America’s Got Talent comes back in a few weeks. How does NBC expect to get groove their back when they barely have anything to watch and be loyal to? Sad.
UPDATE: The Shield and The Unit’s show creator Shawn Ryan Tweeted it best, “Everything you need to know about NBC at this moment in time: They even managed to lose the Seinfeld reunion to another network.” So ouch, but sadly so freaking true.
