Cancellation

This critics’ roundtable on “egregiously canceled shows” brings up the obvious question: what is an unfair cancellation? Most of the shows on lists like these (even shows like Frank’s Place and Firefly where network politics were probably a factor in the cancellation) failed the basic test for a viable show: they did not perform better than the shows they replaced, or the shows the network could replace them with. It’s hard to argue that a show was unfairly canceled when the network could slide in another show and get better ratings.