Musical drama The Big Leap has been canceled by Fox following its first season. The show, with Scott Foley in the cast, premiered September 20. A show within a show, it is about a group of down-on-their-luck characters attempting to change their lives by participating in a reality dance program that builds to a live production of Swan Lake. 

Inspired by a U.K. reality format, The Big Leap is about second chances and chasing one’s dreams. 

Foley played Nick Blackburn, a producer who takes on the show’s Big Leap docuseries filming in Detroit. 

Simone Recasner, Ser’Darius Blain, Jon Rudnitsky and Raymond Cham Jr. are also in the cast. 

The Big Leap’s 11-episode run ended in December. Before it launched, Fox president of entertainment Michael Thorn called it “incredibly emotional and very funny and overwhelmingly positive.”

The executive producers are Liz Heldens, Jason Winer and Sue Naegle. ■

Among the wide array of casualties related to COVID is a batch of TV shows that, due to pandemic-related restrictions, could not get cast and crew together to shoot a new season. Several of the recently canceled shows, including Netflix’s Glow and Showtime’s On Becoming a God in Central Florida, received a renewal, but ultimately, the network decided it no longer made sense to produce a new season. 

“The pandemic has continued to challenge schedules across the board, and although we have made every effort to reunite the cast and crew for a second season, that has become untenable,” said Showtime in a statement about On Becoming a God, which debuted in August 2019. 

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The spate of “un-renewals,” as Rolling Stone referred to them, includes wrestling dramedy GLOW, which was set to produce season four when the virus hit; Netflix teen show The Society, which lasted for one season; ABC’s Cobie Smulders drama Stumptown, which was poised to produce season two; and truTV’s Andrea Savage comedy I’m Sorry, which the network had renewed for a third season. 

“With all of our episodes already written and partially shot, we are all still in shock and don’t have the answers,” Savage said on Twitter in late August. 

While they had not received renewals, Netflix’s I Am Not Okay With This and Showtime’s The President Is Missing, based on a novel by Bill Clinton and James Patterson, were canceled for reasons related to COVID.

COVID has laid a significant cost upon production, between PPE equipment, testing and figuring out social distancing on set. As a result, veteran showrunner Neal Baer is not surprised to see the high number of surprise cancellations, calling it a “pure financial algorithmic decision” for the networks. “Does the show make enough money for the network in light of the cost increases?” he said. “It’s always a financial assessment at the end.”

Baer, whose credits include Law & Order: SVU and Designated Survivor, estimated that COVID costs might add 20% to a budget. Alex Kurtzman, executive producer on the Star Trek series, speaking on the podcast TV’s Top 5, said it tacked on an additional $300,000-$500,000 per episode. 

“A bubble show may have been OK in the past,” said Chris Becker, associate professor of film, television and theater at Notre Dame. “But with a 20% COVID cost, that can be a bridge too far.”

Peaked TV?

No one knows when the vaccine arrives and when shows get back to the pre-COVID way of doing business, or if they ever do. It’s likely more series that may have been on the renewal bubble get axed. “Once it seems like a trend, the stage is set for it to keep happening,” Becker said. “It is established as an excuse.”

Network executives did not want to discuss the thought processes behind cancelling the series they’d renewed. More than just a new virus, an array of factors goes into such a decision, such as the budget increases for cast with each new season of a show.  “I don’t think they just willy-nilly cancel a show,” Baer said. “The networks are in it because they want to make shows that people like and are successful under the many measures of what makes something successful.”

Time will tell what the COVID cancellations mean for the peak TV era. There are around 500 scripted shows on television, and for years, people have wondered when that number will decrease. "This is simply too much television," John Landgraf, FX Networks chairman, said back in 2015. 

RELATED: ABC Cancels Drama ‘Stumptown’

Some networks, such as Pop TV and A&E, began cutting back their scripted slates before COVID. Others are likely to follow. “For a number of years now, people have said the bubble will burst, this can’t be sustained,” said Becker. “Everyone wonders what the catalyst will be. Maybe this is the excuse — we’re going to dial back now.” 

Having a series that a producer or cast or crew member has poured their heart into get cancelled is a soul-crushing experience. Having a series canceled due to an unforeseen enemy such as COVID is even more wrenching. 

But a hardy TV veteran moves on. “It’s disappointing, but there’s a lot of disappointment in life,” Baer said. “When you engage with Hollywood, there are no guarantees.”

In just a three-year, three-season span, GLOW went from being notorious hit-making producer Jenji Kohan’s latest cheeky Netflix smash to being tossed out of the ring altogether.

With this latest abrupt cancellation of a Netflix fan favorite, before its producers can even craft a coherent ending, and without its loyal audience even having a chance to say goodbye, Vulture’s Josef Adalian posted an interesting question this week: Is Netflix harming its viewer loyalty and hurting its brand?

“I think it is underestimating the potential damage to the Netflix brand when series such as GLOW or Santa Clarita Diet or One Day at a Time are killed before getting a chance to finish things up,” Adalian writes. 

Season four of GLOW (full preamble “Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling”) had already been ordered—and in fact, shooting had started, before the pandemic interrupted production. As Netflix spins it, reconvening an intimate, ensemble show like GLOW will be too difficult in the current masked-up, socially distanced production environment. And by the time GLOW can resume normal production and debut season four on Netflix, viewers will have moved on, the Los Gatos Calif. media-tech giant further reasons. 

Maybe. But Stranger Things, another Netflix hit series, isn’t going anywhere, and it won’t be back for its fourth season until at least the better part of 2021 because of the same pandemic reasons. And the SVOD service went five years between debuting the seemingly un-killable comedy Arrested Development on its platform in 2013 and bowing a second season in 2018. 

Netflix notoriously hordes viewer data, so it’s hard to tell how much audience slippage, if any, GLOW suffered in season three. The show’s Rotten Tomatoes score, an aggregate figure roughly encapsulating critical reception, did slip from the 90s to 86%. 

TV pundits attributed GLOW’s surprising scuttling to Netflix’s notorious habit of post-season-two-or-three bloodletting. What is now the biggest entertainment programming force in television has a ruthless reputation for cancelling water-cooler shows after only their second or third season. The list of Netflix shows that started out with a bang but didn’t last long includes the Drew Barrymore comedy Santa Clarita Diet, the Washowski-produced sci-fi drama Sense8, the remake of sitcom classic One Day at a Time and the fantasy drama The OA, just to name a few.

The attrition is jarring to viewers who grew up with TV production studios signing loss-leader contracts with broadcast networks that encouraged the latter to sustain hits for at least four or five seasons, so that the former could recoup and profit from their investments via aftermarket syndication and cable licensing sales. 

That model better enabled producers to “wind down” shows with narratively coherent endings. It also allowed viewers who had their fill to emotionally let go of fictional characters and concepts they’d grown attached.

Traditional networks also form lasting partnerships with specific producers and will keep a show on longer to keep their creative partners happy. 

Netflix, of course, as an expressed point of pride, has always done things differently from Hollywood and linear TV. And that starts with its production contracts, which generally involve paying for content upfront and are designed to keep shows from later popping up on rival programming services.

“I hear there is a standard clause in the deals for Netflix series from outside studios that prevents the shows from airing elsewhere for a significant period of time, said to be two to three years, making a continuation on another network/platform virtually impossible,” wrote Deadline Hollywood TV editor Nellie Andreeva last year. 

Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos, the company’s top entertainment executive, famously told a Produced By Conference of TV creatives in 2017 that his company’s calculus is simply, “Relative to what you spent, are people watching it?”

Shows like GLOW and Santa Clarita Diet maybe hadn’t yet, at the time of their cancellations, jumped the shark—the TV business colloquialism for a show that’s exhausted its creative assets and needs to go.

But perhaps from the limited business insights provided by Sarandos, we can infer that these shows at least had stopped growing their viewership, and had begun to ebb, audience-performance-wise?

“Netflix’s scheduling needs and budget realities are probably different now than they were in August 2019, when GLOW was initially renewed,” writes Vulture’s Adalian, who also noted that Netflix is trying to do a better job managing the expectations of creative partners as to when a show might end. 

And Netflix, he adds, isn’t the only powerful company in the TV business that walks the line between bloodless business concerns and the emotions of its creative partners and viewers. 

Still, it should be asked, what is the long-term impact on Netflix for becoming the programming most known for making, in the words of the company’s other co-CEO, Reed Hastings, “making tough calls”? 

Are viewers going to continue to emotionally invest in Netflix shows, knowing that they’re likely to be driven off a narrative cliff after only a day or two of binging?

“Individual cancellations might not matter that much, but the cumulative effect is audiences trust Netflix less, and may even be less willing to sample a show for fear of being left hanging,” Adalian writes. 

The Vulture writer recommends a “middle ground,” which includes Netflix committing to finale movies that allow producers to wrap up their stories. Netflix did this with Sense8, he notes, GLOW co-star Marc Maron has been publicly lobbying the SVOD service to do the same with his show. 

“Given Netflix’s size and how much it spends on content overall, I think shelling out a few million dollars to guarantee stories get a proper conclusion would be a wise investment—and another way to disrupt how things are done in Hollywood,” Adalian says. 

Discovery, Inc. is the latest in a growing line of programmers that have decided to cancel their upfront presentations to advertisers in the wake of the coronavirus, saying it has prepared a digital alternative to showcase its content lineup. Details, it said, will be announced at a later date.

Discovery had planned to hold the event May 12 at Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Frederick P. Rose Hall in New York. In a statement, the programmer said the decision to cancel the event was “made out of an abundance of caution and care for the health and safety of employees, talent and business partners.”

Discovery joins several programmers that have canceled their upfront event as the coronavirus COVID-19 has continued to spread. Earlier today broadcasters CBS, NBC and Fox said they would cancel their upfront events, as have smaller programmers like AMC Networks, A+E Networks, Freewheel and Fox News.

“With Discovery’s increased scale and reach, we were proud and excited to showcase our expanded portfolio of beloved brands and talent, for the first time, during the traditional broadcast Upfront week. The decision to cancel is bittersweet but unequivocally the right one,” Discovery chief U.S. ad sales officer Jon Steinlauf said in a statement. “We have a terrific story to tell and more opportunities and products than ever for current and prospective advertisers. We will just tell that story in a way that best suits these unprecedented times.”

Comedy Central has cancelled The Nightly Show, the network announced Monday. The series, hosted by Larry Wilmore, will air its final episode on Thursday, Aug. 18.

“We thank Larry and The Nightly Show staff for their tireless efforts across the past two years and the conversations the show generated by addressing social issues of great importance to the country, always challenging people’s attitudes, perceptions and bias,” the network said in a statement.

The show filled the spot held by The Colbert Report in January 2015 when Stephen Colbert departed to host The Late Show on CBS. The Nightly Show, which initially had a lead-in from The Daily Show With Jon Stewart, struggled alongside the Trevor Noah-hosted Daily Show.

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