Franchise Killer / Live-Action TV

• Battlestar Galactica (1978) was destroyed by its Sequel Series Galactica 1980, which met utterly scathing reviews and was hated by its own writers, to the point where they were actively hoping its ratings would fall far enough for ABC to cancel it (it ultimately took them ten episodes). Two attempts were made in the late '90s to revive the show, one by Richard Hatch with a thirty-minute Pilot Movie called The Second Coming that would've disregarded Galactica 1980, the other a feature film by Glen A. Larson that would've kept it in continuity; ultimately, the decision was made to reboot the show instead.
• Likewise, while Battlestar Galactica (2003) had already seen a fairly polarizing finale, what really killed any hope of it becoming a long-running franchise was its 2010 prequel series Caprica. Despite a much better reception than Galactica 1980 had, a steep ratings drop in the second half of the first season (in no small part due to Syfy jerking its timeslot around) ensured that it would be the only season. The Made-for-TV Movie Blood & Chrome, originally a pilot for a prequel series about a young William Adama in the First Cylon War, has been the only BSG-related work made since outside of comics.
• CNN's long-running (1982-2005) current events debate program Crossfire, by the admission of former co-host Paul Begala, was destroyed by a single notorious interview with The Daily Show host Jon Stewart in 2004. During that interview, Stewart accused Begala and his co-host Tucker Carlson of being partisan hacks whose confrontational attitude with each other served only to foster division and hatred rather than actually debate the issues, comparing the show more to the violent spectacle of Professional Wrestling than anything. While this interview is often held as one of the defining moments in Stewart's career and a key Growing the Beard moment for The Daily Show as a whole, it ruined Crossfire's reputation, especially after it went viral; Begala is quoted as saying that, as the interview went on, he went from hoping that his wife (a fan of Stewart's) was watching the show to hoping that she wasn't watching. Three months after the Stewart interview, CNN announced the cancellation of Crossfire and its intent to move away from what it called "head-butting debate shows". CNN later revived the series in late 2013, albeit toning it down to a less confrontational setting, only to cancel it again the following year after two lengthy hiatuses.
• Double Dare had a respectable seven year run and even continued for a few years afterward in re-runs. Then came Double Dare 2000, which was cancelled after two half-seasons and panned for having an overly loud overbearing host/announcer team who paled in comparison to the iconic Marc Summers/Harvey. The show wouldn't appear again for another 18 years, when Nickelodeon announced a revival effort for Summer 2018.
• The massive failure of The Fairly OddParents: Fairly Odder killed off any chance of future The Fairly OddParents! content. Specifically, Fairly Odder got a 2.7/10 rating on IMDb, was Quietly Cancelled after one season of 13 episodes, and was removed from Paramount+ and Nickelodeon's official website without any word of the announcement. However, this might end up subverted with the upcoming animated reboot, The Fairly Odd Parents! A New Wish.
• Although Get Smart was more of a Cult Classic than an actual franchise to begin with, the 1995 series, pulled by Fox after only six episodes, was the last hurrah for the series until the 2008 reboot. The signs first became evident in 1980, when The Nude Bomb lost $300,000 at the box office and was nominated at the first annual Golden Raspberry Awards for Worst Picture, and they were further exacerbated when Get Smart Again proved unsuccessful on TV in 1989. When the series resurfaced after nearly twenty-five years' absence, the action focused on Max's son Zach, portrayed by Andy Dick – not on Max himself, who was now chief of CONTROL. The "new" series wasn't terrible per se, but with its stale jokes and outdated humour, it detracted from whatever fans the series had and was listed at #6 on WatchMojo's Top 10 Worst TV Reboots of All Time.
• Heroes Volumes 3 and 4 (both making up season 3) qualify as such. The second season was a major letdown compared to the strong premier season, but people forgave it because half the season had been derailed by the 2008 WGA strike and The Powers That Be did the best they could. When season three came along, they expected a return to form; what they got was a Random Events Plot with characters acting wildly Out of Character as the writers seemed to change their minds on key plot points three times per episode. The best-known example is Sylar's Heel–Face Revolving Door, but it was like that with everything. By the end of that season, most of the fans had given up on it. There was a fourth season (Volume 5), and while it still had problems, many of the remaining fans felt it to be something of a return to form, but by that point few people cared about the show anymore. Not only was the TV series cancelled at the end of that season, but the graphic novels were also scrapped as well, and the writers and producers couldn't even get a greenlight for a miniseries to give Heroes a proper last hurrah. NBC rebooted it in 2015 as Heroes Reborn, which is set several years later and features Noah Bennett as the nominal main character alongside a mostly new cast... which was then 'concluded' after a single season that received low ratings and mixed reviews.
• The Wubbulous World of Dr. Seuss was shoved in awkward time slots and premiered in 1996, the same year as two other Nickelodeon shows ^note Blue's Clues and Hey Arnold!, which were higher-rated and publicized. It faced some competition with Bear in the Big Blue House as well. It lasted two seasons and was the only show based on Dr. Seuss' works after it ended until The Cat in the Hat Knows a Lot About That! premiered in 2010, twelve years later.
• In 1986, ABC decided to have Lucille Ball star in a third spiritual successor to I Love Lucy, Life with Lucy, in which Ball's character helped run a hardware store she inherited after her husband died. ABC was so confident of Ball's track record—even though she was now 75 years old—that they gave her full creative control, and greenlit it without any pilots or market research beforehand. With Ball and a slew of I Love Lucy alumni among the cast and crew, what could possibly go wrong? Firstly, ABC scheduled the series on Saturday nights at 8 p.m., which had recently become a death slot for the network. An executive also insisted on incorporating the slapstick comedy that was a trademark of her earlier sitcoms; rather than fuel nostalgia for I Love Lucy, the notion of the 75-year-old Ball performing comedic stunts made critics and viewers fear for her life instead. Ratings for the premiere were fairly good, but when ratings began to steadily fall, ABC cancelled the series after 8 episodes; 13 were produced in total, but Ball was not informed about the cancellation until production wrapped. She was emotionally devastated, believing she was no longer wanted on TV. She died three years later.
• Lingo was one of GSN's most popular original shows (albeit a revival of an obscure 1980s show), lasting from 2002-2007 with popular host Chuck Woolery, and seeing a hefty amount of reruns after that. However, in 2011, they decided to revive it again with comedian Bill Engvall as host — with multiple pointless gameplay changes that diluted the format, incredibly dumb contestants, and an overall Hotter and Sexier approach (the Engvall version was TV-14). Negative reception killed not only this incarnation, but also reruns of the Woolery version.
  • The suddenly popular game Wordle is a suspiciously similar substitute for the basic game of Lingo—and both are versions of the pencil and paper game Jotto.
  • Perhaps due to the sudden craze of Wordle, CBS has greenlit a revival of Lingo with RuPaul set to host and executive produce later in 2022.
• By 2008, Little Britain was already suffering badly from Seasonal Rot and the Ricky Gervais-led backlash against classic Brit Coms and sketch shows. However, the Little Britain USA series proved to be the final nail in the coffin, getting awful viewing figures and critical reactions on both sides of the Atlantic, and being heavily criticized for worn-out characters and situations, the new characters being even less funny than the existing ones had become, and over-use of the Laugh Track.
• Although Kamen Rider has avoided this fate,^note While there was a hiatus for the franchise on TV during the 90s, there were movies released during that time period, and the franchise was on hiatus because Shotaro Ishinomori did not have any plans for a new TV series at the time; since he never left the production of Kamen Rider, unlike with Super Sentai, he was in charge of it's production, and it wouldn't be until after his death that it aired yearly on TV Asahi. the same cannot be said for the show that used to hold the position of airing alongside the Sentai series on TV Asahi, Metal Heroes.^note The audience demographics for Metal Heroes resembled that of the one for Kamen Rider today, with many teen and young adult viewers. Tetsuwan Tantei Robotack, which increased the Lighter and Softer elements that had been introduced with B-Robo Kabutack and was aimed more towards kids, had such low ratings that Toei ultimately decided to pull the plug. While the series has seen new movies as of late, said movies are revivals of already existing shows, and no new TV series have been made since.
• Series 7 of Robot Wars is often considered to be what got the show canceled. It replaced the popular pit reporter Philippa Forrester with Jayne Middlemiss, whom the fans saw as clueless and annoying. The producers also managed to alienate the fans even further with Executive Meddling, doing everything they could to keep the Boring, but Practical Storm 2 from winning. Storm 2 made it to the finals anyway, whereupon they lost to Typhoon 2 in a controversial judges' decision that the producers pretty obviously rigged. The show wouldn't get picked up for Series 8 until 2016 (with an entirely new cast) and the judges later apologized to Team Storm. The Revival lasted three seasons before being cancelled due to declining ratings. The reasons for this are mixed but generally the criticism focuses on the lack of Craig Charles and his replacements just not being as interesting - whatever led to him not returning appears to have been a central cause to killing the franchise for a second time.
• Ninja Turtles: The Next Mutation was made in 1997 as an attempt to save the franchise when the Turtlemania wave that started in the late 80s and early 90s started to die, but it lasted for only one season and its failure ultimately marked the end of Turtlemania and the franchise as a whole. Eventually, the franchise co-creators Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird went separate ways and Laird and the Mirage Group purchased all of Eastman's ownership in the TMNT property and the corporations, except for a small continuing income participation. It was not until 2001, when Laird relaunched the Mirage comics with volume 4, the success of which led to the 2003 animated series that the franchise was revived.
• Stargate Universe was a Soap Opera IN SPACE! that couldn't be less like Stargate. Unlike many of these examples, it had a nice little fanbase, but not enough to keep it afloat, and with its failure came the official announcement of the indefinite hiatus of the awaited Stargate SG-1 and Stargate Atlantis projects - the kind of 'hiatus' that means you start dismantling sets.
• Star Search ran in syndication from 1983 through 1995, launching the careers of many celebrities in its 12 seasons on the air. Several years after it ended, American Idol became a smash hit in response to the exploding genre of reality television. CBS brought back Star Search in 2003 with Arsenio Hall hosting, much fewer talent categories, celebrity judges and home viewer voting. Idol pummeled it in the ratings, and no attempt has been made to revive the series since its 2004 cancellation.
• The extremely poor reception of the 1990 revival of Tic-Tac-Dough (which had previously run from 1956-59, and again from 1978-86) seems to have killed that particular franchise, as no attempts to revive it have been made since. Points of contention include a cheap and ugly set, unnecessary and often tacky or budget-saving format changes (including a Totally Radical rapping dragon in the Bonus Round), and a cheesy theme song which was a total waste of Henry Mancini. But worst of all was the memetically execrable hosting job of Patrick Wayne; he would hold most of the game in a dry insincere monotone, and then scream "YOU WIN!" or "YOU BLOCK!" out of nowhere, coming across more like an actor playing a game show host on a bad sitcom. Finally, the show made the decision to hold a Divorced Couples week, which had divorcees competing against each other; at the end of this week, Wayne made an extremely tactless comment about how "divorced couples can still have fun together, riiiiiight?"
  • It was announced in September of 2021 that a new revival was in the works at NBC, with Tom Bergeron set to host. A pilot was filmed but as of this writing (March 2022) no further news about it has been revealed, possibly sending this revival into Development Hell.
• Star Trek: With the 1987 premiere of Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Trek was once again a TV staple, and thanks to Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and Star Trek: Voyager, the franchise was still healthy in 2001. Then came Star Trek: Enterprise. Plagued with Executive Meddling, a title ambiguous to the general public,^note For the first two seasons, unlike literally every other TV series in the franchise, including the later Paramount+ revival shows, it did not have the Star Trek moniker and was instead simply titled Enterprise, meaning a number of people didn't realize it was Star Trek. a horrible theme song that only comparatively improved when it was remixed, and two rather weak seasons, the third and fourth seasons, though drastically improved, couldn't keep the show on the air, and it was cancelled in 2005, meaning there was no new Star Trek television for fans to anticipate for the first time in 18 years. And on top of that, Enterprise ended on the episode "These Are The Voyages...", which received an infamously cold reception by fans, who saw the finale as an outright insult to both them and the cast via making it a nonsensical tie-in to The Next Generation instead of any sort of actual ending to the Enterprise story. "A Night in Sickbay" is seen by many as the breaking point for both Enterprise and the franchise as a whole. It received fairly high ratings when it aired, but the show's overall ratings started plummeting after its airing and never managed to recover from this downwards spiral, despite attempts to retool the show, and the otherwise well-received fourth season would turn out to be the last. Following the end of Enterprise, it would take 12 years for Star Trek to return to the small screen with the premiere of Star Trek: Discovery in 2017.

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