History Main / OnlyBarelyRenewed

* Ever since ''Anime/DeliciousPartyPrettyCure'', Website/{{Crunchyroll}}'s simulcast of the ''Anime/PrettyCure'' series went through this:

* While the first season of ''Series/TheOfficeUS'' only had six episodes, it struggled, with weak ratings and critics regarding it as an unfocused, watered-down imitation of [[Series/TheOfficeUK the original]]. The main reason it made it to a second season was Kevin Reilly, NBC Entertainment president at the time, had loved the second episode, "Diversity Day", and felt the series had enough potential to warrant another go.

** ''Anime/WonderfulPreCure'' was announced to be simulcast on Crunchyroll [[https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2024-02-02/crunchyroll-to-stream-wonderful-precure-anime/.207162 the day before its Japanese premiere]], though [[https://twitter.com/ToeiAnimation/status/1753132001522307096 Toei confirmed the series would be simulcast]] the day before Crunchyroll's announcement.

* ''WesternAnimation/JusticeLeague'' and ''Justice League Unlimited'' were the patron saints of this trope. Season one sparked some fears that the show was weaker than what the shows spun off of, largely because they ignored the canon of the Franchise/{{Batman}} and Franchise/{{Superman}} animated series that preceded them. At the end, they re-worked the show to reflect that canon better and felt that this was their swan song, so wrapped up with a big three-part season finale where they blew everything up. Then they got the call that they were renewed for another season and retooled the show into ''Justice League Unlimited''. The producers thought that this would be their last great story and wrapped up dangling threads from ''WesternAnimation/SupermanTheAnimatedSeries'' as well as some in the previous ''Justice League'', capping it off with a FullyAbsorbedFinale with ''WesternAnimation/BatmanBeyond''. Then they got the call that the series was so good that they got one more season, and the final finale was strong enough that fans think it deserved more. This makes it a case of what was supposed to be the GrandFinale actually saving the show both times it happened.

* WordOfGod states the second season of ''WesternAnimation/WabbitALooneyTunesProduction'' ([[NewSeasonNewName renamed]] ''The New Looney Tunes Show'') was produced as a direct result of the executives at Warner Bros. loving the pitch for the first season's final episode "Porky's Duck-livery Service", despite the show having seen middling success.

** Similar to ''Delicious Party'', the adult-oriented spinoff ''Anime/KibouNoChikaraOtonaPrettyCure23'' was announced to be simulcasting the night before the first episode was released.

* Due to poor viewing figures, ''Series/OnlyFoolsAndHorses'' was almost cancelled after two series. However, it was repeated in a low key time slot and achieved respectable ratings, which convinced BBC producers to commission another series. The show went from strength to strength thereafter and ironically was continually revived during the 1990s and 2000s owing to its status as a ratings winner.
* ''Series/ParksAndRecreation'' had relatively low ratings for much of its run, in some cases airing as a mid-season replacement. The show would often get renewed anyway because of the failure of many of NBC's new shows. As a result, almost all of the season finales can function as a SeriesFauxnale. Additionally, WordOfGod is that this led to the relationship subplots being resolved much quicker because the writers were unsure if ''Parks'' would run long enough to resolve them later.
* ''Series/ItsAlwaysSunnyInPhiladelphia'': The first season did not make a splash (even when FX attempted to air an edited-for-content cut on Fox proper), and the network straight-up told the showrunners that they would be canceled unless they could shake things up by getting a big name to join the cast. Ultimately Creator/DannyDeVito signed on (reportedly because his kids already ''loved'' the show), and the show quickly became one of FX's biggest shows. Ultimately one of the rare examples where ExecutiveMeddling ended up working ''far'' better than even the executive themselves may have thought.

* Similar to ''Delicious Party'', the adult-oriented spinoff ''Anime/KibouNoChikaraOtonaPrettyCure23'' was announced to be simulcasting the night before the first episode was released.

* Similar to *Delicious Party*, the adult-oriented spinoff ''Anime/KibouNoChikaraOtonaPrettyCure23'' was announced to be simulcasting the night before the first episode was released.

* Thirteen weeks into its run in 1963, NBC was about to axe ''Series/MatchGame''. Seeing nothing left to lose, writer Dick [=DeBartolo=] decided to juice up some of the fill-in-the-blanks as comical and lightly suggestive statements. Viewers picked up on it, and the show ran to September 1969. It was then revived by CBS four years later with the same host, and it got even more successful.

* Music/BobDylan's [[Music/BobDylanAlbum debut album]] sold around 5,000 copies in its original release, and he only really got a chance to do another album because John Hammond, who'd signed him, had a lot of clout at Creator/ColumbiaRecords and insisted he get another shot.

** ''Anime/HirogaruSkyPrettyCure'' [[https://www.crunchyroll.com/anime-news/2023/02/02-1/soaring-sky-pretty-cure-anime-joins-the-crunchyroll-simulcast-lineup was added to Crunchyroll's simulcast lineup]] just ''two'' days before its Japanese premiere.

* Website/{{Crunchyroll}}'s simulcast of the ''Anime/PrettyCure'' series went through this when it came time for ''Anime/DeliciousPartyPrettyCure'' to debut, as [[https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2022-02-05/crunchyroll-to-stream-delicious-party-precure-tv-anime/.182283 Crunchyroll announced their license of the season]] just ''hours'' ahead of its Japanese premiere.

* ''Series/{{Westworld}}'': While the first season was received well, the second season's viewer ratings and reception started to fluctuate. Though there were reports that the show was planned to have five seasons, the third season continuously suffered low viewer ratings and it's only before the last two episodes were aired that the show got renewed for a fourth season.

* ''Series/{{Mash}}'' performed incredibly poorly in its first season (placing ''46th'') and was almost guaranteed to be cancelled. Fortunately, the network had enough faith in the series to give it one more season (a possibly apocryphal story claims that the wife of the head of CBS was a fan). A combination of summer reruns gaining traction, and being given a primo time slot for season two (following the hugely popular ''Series/AllInTheFamily'') catapulted the series into the top ten, where it would remain for all but one of it's remaining ten seasons.[[note]]The fourth season would slip to 14th place, being the first season after the departures of McLean Stevenson and Wayne Rogers[[/note]]

* The teen GameShow ''Series/PeerPressure'' ran for three seasons, but the second and third season were just repackaged reruns of the first season with increasingly obtrusive editing; the "second" season applied PopUpTrivia and ClumsyCopyrightCensorship, while the "third" season changed the name of the show to ''Pressure 2'' (editing references to the word "Peer" in the title to try and RetCon it) to go along with its new InNameOnly SpinOff ''Pressure 1''.