In the past two seasons, NBC canceled a total of five series — two at the end of 2023-24 and three in 2022-23.
It matched that total on Friday, cutting five shows in the largest single-season purge of its scripted lineup since the 2020-21 season (not including pre-announced series finales). Comedies Lopez vs. Lopez and Night Court and dramas Found, The Irrational and Suits LA were all scrapped (though Night Court producer Warner Bros. says it will try to find a new home for the show). First-year dramas Brilliant Minds, Grosse Pointe Garden Society and The Hunting Party were still in limbo as of Friday afternoon; NBC will announce its 2025-26 schedule on Monday, ahead of its upfront presentation.
While NBC has been slow to swing the cancellation ax in recent years, the wave of cuts Friday isn’t a huge surprise. In fact, network has a couple billion reasons to pare back its scripted output next season — it’s when NBC Sports’ new NBA deal kicks in, and NBC is widely expected to devote at least one full night of primetime during the week to game broadcasts as part of its $2.5 billion annual rights package.
The difference from season to season in the number of scripted shows will be a noticeable one. At publication time, NBC had only six hours of scripted programming locked in for next fall, having renewed its three Chicago dramas, two Law & Order series and first-year comedies Happy’s Place and St. Denis Medical. It’s likely that at least one bubble series will get an 11th-hour renewal, so call it eight hours of scripted on the air in the fall. NBC has also renewed The Voice for a 28th season in the fall, which will take up two or three more hours (depending on whether it airs on one or two nights). That makes for 11 hours of entertainment programming, exactly half of NBC’s primetime real estate.
At the start of the current season, however, NBC had 13 hours of entertainment programming in primetime — all of Monday through Thursday and the first hour of Friday nights, with the remainder of the week filled by the Friday Dateline and college and NFL football on the weekend. In the spring, that total grew to 15 hours in most weeks as entertainment programming took over Sunday nights.
With the reduction in entertainment hours, NBC is betting that it can draw a similar-sized or larger audience with NBA games than it did with the canceled shows. And, to be fair, that might be a good wager: NBA regular-season games averaged 1.53 million viewers on ABC, ESPN and TNT in 2024-25 (across all time periods), with the vast majority of those on cable. ABC’s seven-game slate of Saturday primetime games from January though March drew a little under 3 million viewers; that might be a more apt benchmark for NBC’s primetime telecasts next season (those games will also stream on Peacock).
None of the five shows NBC canceled Friday averaged more than 2.2 million same-day viewers this season, according to Nielsen. Found and The Irrational performed reasonably well in streaming and other delayed viewing, but the vast majority of NBA viewers next season will be watching games live, which allows NBC to charge higher ad rates because marketers know their commercials have a higher likelihood of being seen by most of the audience.
That doesn’t make Friday’s scripted cuts any less painful for the crews and casts of the canceled series. But with NBC’s huge investment in the NBA, the (basketball) shoe was always likely to drop.
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