10 Almost Canceled TV Shows Saved By Fans

10 Canceled TV Shows Saved By Fans

27 May, 20

Hollywood is a brutal industry, and sometimes even the highest-quality shows are subject to unceremonious cancelation.

But even if your favorite niche show (that’s definitely the best thing on TV so how come nobody else watches it?) does get nuked, try not to lose hope. If enough people are as passionate about it as you are, band together and combine your powers. Persistence pays off, and if you’re loud enough, you just might manage to save your favorite show. After all, there’s a lot of precedence for fans saving TV shows.

Family Guy

FOX

Considering Family Guy‘s long-running status as a cultural icon of adult animation, it might be surprising to discover that Family Guy was actually canceled not once, but twice. After lackluster viewership during its first two seasons, Fox canceled Family Guy in May of 2000, only to revive it once again in July for another 13 episode run. Those episodes didn’t draw in viewers either, so Fox canned the show entirely and sold the re-runs to Adult Swim. Naturally, Adult Swim connected Family Guy with a proper audience who went on to buy 2.2 million copies of the first two seasons on DVD. Sales numbers like that caught Fox’s interest, so they revived the show again in 2005 and it’s been running ever since.