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Second Season Downfall

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Nail your second season and you’re almost certainly going to remain on the air for years to come. Flub your second season, like UnREAL (2015) did, and you’re in trouble. Fall somewhere in the middle and you might get renewed but fail to convince your viewers to emotionally invest at the level a great serialized story requires."

The vast majority of television shows don't make it very far. Networks order dozens of new series every year, launch the most promising ones in the fall... and almost immediately begin cancelling ones that don't live up to expectations, replacing them with the shows that didn't make the first string of launches, in the hope of eventually getting a schedule of hits. The network model simply isn't generous to shows that don't get off to a healthy start.

But for all the dozens of shows that fail in their first year, there are a few that survive this initial culling, complete their first season, and are renewed for a second. Smooth sailing from now on, right?

Well... not always. Sometimes nobody expected the show to make it, and so the writers and producers pulled out all the stops in the first year, leaving nothing to work with for the next season. Sometimes a show with a novel concept inspires imitators that either pull off the gimmick more skillfully, or are so ubiquitious that viewers become bored with both the original and the knockoffs. Sometimes Executive Meddling is to blame, especially if the second season coincides with a change in network leadership. Sometimes there's no clear cause at all; the show simply ran out of steam, and Seasonal Rot kicked in early. And perhaps most common of all, maybe the network just didn't want to commit to two more seasons of the show. Yes, two more seasons. Very, very few American broadcast network shows are canceled after their third season because a show usually needs about 4 seasons' worth of episodes in order to be viable for off-network syndication, which for producers is often where the real money is. So, if a network looks like it might be thinking about canceling a show after its third season, the studio that produces that show will usually offer the network some sort of incentive to keep it on the air for long enough to reach syndication; as a result, when network programming executives decide whether or not to renew second-season shows, they often do so based on whether they can see having that show on their schedules for another 2 seasons.

In any case, there are a lot of shows that successfully make it through a first season, only to fall victim to a Sophomore Slump and get canceled by the end of a disappointing second season. In the end, these shows are Short-Runners.

Emily St. James, writing for Vox, has gone into depth on this trope, referring to the second season as a make-or-break point for a TV drama. She argues that this has become especially common for the sort of big, high-concept premises that make up many "prestige" shows in the 2010s, which lend themselves well to great first seasons but are difficult to follow up in the second season, the point where "a TV premise becomes a TV show" and they need to expand the world and supporting characters rather than just rely on the basic premise to pull in viewers. Shows that fail to do so will inevitably be remembered as having only been good for one season, even if they manage to get renewed afterwards.

Note: This only applies to shows that end after their second season. If the show is believed to have declined in quality during the second season, but nevertheless continues for a third season or beyond, that would be a case of Sophomore Slump (if the show improves with its third season), or Jumping the Shark (if despite a third and/or additional seasons, the show does not improve in quality over the second). If quality varies during different seasons, you're dealing with Seasonal Rot.

Compare Jumping the Shark and contrast Growing the Beard. Contrast Long-Runners.


Examples:

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    Animation 
  • The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes has a first season bearing arguably some of the greatest pieces of Marvel-adapted animation. In contrast, the second season suffers from having more filler than the first, especially after Jeph Loeb and Man of Action Studios came on as executive producer and creative consultants, respectively. They created so much filler, that subplots the original writers set up earlier went unresolved and/or unexplored by the time the show ended. Their run also saw most of the Avengers get pushed Out of Focus, and Out of Character Moments become more frequent. Plus, the animation in this season sometimes seems cheaper, and the awesome theme song permanently got ditched in favor of recaps of old episodes and a promo for the Avengers movie. The show's low ratings among the target demographic, at least compared to the Periphery Demographic, prevented the green-lighting of a third season.
  • The Critic was pulled from ABC after its first season, then made a Channel Hop to Fox for its second. However, this season only lasted three months and proved to be the show's last.
  • The Incredible Hulk (1996) was a dark cartoon — its protagonist was a Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds, always on the run, attacked from all sides by hero and villain alike. The Hulk is alone. This trope comes along in season 2, and the earlier introduced character of She-Hulk is now in every episode, making it far more Lighter and Softer. Hulk wasn't even an outcast. This sudden shift in the series' tone led to a swift cancellation.
  • Legion of Super-Heroes was heavily retooled due to Executive Meddling in its second season, which ended up being its last.
  • Sonic the Hedgehog (SatAM), though this was more due to the simultaneous cancellation of all of ABC's then-current lineup in favor of Disney programming (as they had just acquired ABC) than the actual quality of the writing. It has been observed that was an increase in comedy episodes, but the season also delivered a well-received Story Arc.
  • The most prominent reason why Whatever Happened to... Robot Jones? never lasted long was because Cartoon Network aired the episode premieres of the second season at 10:30 p.m. and the only other reruns being on Sunday at 4 p.m., which led to the show being Screwed by the Network.
  • Sheep in the Big City was never particularly successful to begin with, its absurdist humor not understood by most of the viewers, and being aired particularly late on Friday nights meaning it had a pretty shaky first season. Cartoon Network, rather than bumping Sheep to an earlier time slot for a better chance of success, INSTEAD banished the show to the even WORSE timeslot of Sunday evenings, when nobody was really watching TV. Just when it seemed like Sheep was getting axed and thus becoming a One Season Wonder, outcry from the most diehard of fans meant a last-minute announcement of a second season... which was aired in the SAME Sunday evening slot, resulting in similarly dismal ratings, before eventually being moved to even LATER on Sundays, just before [adult swim] came on (when the target demographic would usually be going to sleep), thus killing any chance Sheep had of getting another season.
  • The second season of The Twisted Tales of Felix the Cat took a budget cut in the animation, attempted to take the series into a more script driven and less weird direction with more emphasis on the Joe Oriolo era of the Felix the Cat series, and the change was not for the better—the ratings for it tanked even harder than the first seasons underperformance. It only lasted eight episodes before the show was cancelled altogether. Even the production team considered the second season a complete disaster.
  • Jimmy Two-Shoes' second season experienced a decline in both animation quality (due to a production change from Toon Boom to Adobe Flash) and writing quality (producing some of the fanbase's most hated episodes and poorly handling its characters, especially Heloise and Saffi). There was also the lack of promotion by its international distributor, Disney XD, taking its toll, which ultimately killed the show despite announcements for a third season.
  • When The Mr. Men Show first aired, it won many viewers and was one of the best shows Cartoon Network had during its dork age in the late 2000s. But by the second season, despite having better animation, fans thought the show lacked the same impact of its first season thanks to Chorion trying to change it (this ultimately became karma for the company, as they shut down a few years later). Cartoon Network hardly advertising the show didn't help, leading it not to get renewed for a third season. The changes include:
    • Miss Calamity being absent due to Chorion's dislike of the character. This resulted in more focus on Mr. Bump, Quiet and Fussy, turning off a lot of fans due to them suffering a lot in the season (though mainly with Mr. Bump and Quiet).
    • Mr. Persnickety/Pernickety being renamed and recolored like his book counterpart because Chorion didn't like his original self. Not only did fans feel like the simpler name was a form of dumbing down, but they made him more one note, being a complete control freak instead of the gentleman he had been before.
    • The new characters introduced in the season. Some fans don't like how they were different from the books. But the main issue everybody agrees on is that they hardly used them as fans expected they would be used in many scenarios. Miss Giggles and Miss Magic were the only ones added onto the site a week after the show ended.
    • The second season didn't show off new character dynamics for either existing or the new characters. What makes the first season special to most fans is how the creators experiment with how the characters play off each other. In the second, the sketches repeat the same relationships, so fans felt a bit put off that the staff hadn't tried new relationships with characters that hardly interact in the first season. Mixing this with both Miss Calamity's removal AND the new season characters getting hardly any screentime makes it a bit hard to swallow the changes.
    • Mr. Rude's fart sounds changed from silly cartoony honks to more realistic sounds, which turned off some fans on how gross it became, not helped by how there are considerably more jokes centered around it.
    • The number of shorts was reduced to only four (one always a minute long, usually used for in-universe commercials and adverts), which only padded out some sketches for longer than expected, eating up time that could've been used for another sketch. Some countries only got three sketches, meaning they lost out on a longer show. The only episodes that retained at least five segments were "Airplanes", "Sun and Moon" and "Sand and Surf".
    • The narrator being used more for every opening sketch. While this is a nice tribute to Little Britain and trying to use that character more like in the original, some fans felt like the sketches had been dumbed down.
    • The changing schedule on Cartoon Network. When the first season started, a brand new episode would air at 9 in the morning and repeat again in 1:30 in the afternoon. But in the second season, they pushed it to 11:30 and only aired it once. It felt like Cartoon Network wasn't giving the show a chance compare to its first season. This was around the same time some shows like Foster's Home, Ed, Edd 'n Eddy and Transfomers Animated were ending.
  • Similar to The Mr. Men Show, Olivia (owned by Chorion at the time with some of the staff who worked on the same show), suffered some changes that fans disliked that likely caused the show to be canceled. With Olivia and Ian going through Vocal Evolution, Julian being Demoted to Extra, Daisy taking a a level in jerkass, the addition of songs (especially the one Olivia sings Once an Episode) and the O gadget, plus the switch from a realistic tone to Denser and Wackier from the show, people were unhappy with the changes.
  • Harvey Beaks had a relatively successful first season on Nickelodeon, before getting hit HARD with Screwed by the Network in the second. Less-than-stellar viewership of the "Steampunks" two-parter as well as the other early second season episodes meant the show getting banished to Nicktoons, cancelled shortly thereafter, and burned off its remaining episodes there.
  • An In-Universe example in the Rocko's Modern Life episode, "Wacky Delly"; Ralph Bighead ends production on Meet the Fatheads to create his artistic masterpiece. However, his network contract states that he has to make one more show, so to get it over with, he hires Rocko, Heffer, and Filburt to make a pilot for the new show, hoping their inexperience will cancel his contract. Thanks in part to Heffer and Filburt's creative differences, the pilot for Wacky Delly is a poorly-drawn and poorly-edited mess. Unfortunately for Ralph, his plan backfires, as both the network executives and general public love it. Ralph's attempts to sabotage Wacky Delly, such as having one episode show a jar of mayonnaise for ten minutes and another episode consisting of overexposed film only make the show even more popular. After a brief speech from Rocko on how he should make Wacky Delly better instead of trying to sabotage it, Ralph takes over writing the show, which gets it cancelled. Ten years later, Ralph is seen in the desert after completing his masterpiece. A yokel walks up to him and asks him if he's seen Wacky Delly.
    Yokel: The first season, that is. Before that new guy ruined it!
  • Star Wars Resistance Season 2 is considered to be weaker compared to Season 1. While Season 1 slowly built up to the events of The Force Awakens, many feel that Season 2 doesn't carry the momentum, with the characters no longer having a tangent end goal and not being allowed to further connect with the films due to the writers not knowing how the Sequel Trilogy was going to end. As such, fans pin Season 2's weaker writing on the films rather than through any fault of the show's staff. Word of God says that a Post-Script Season 3 that would've connected with the sequels again was considered if the show was a success, but combined with the aforementioned Troubled Production, a late Sunday night timeslot on the dying Disney XD block while also being released in the midst of Disney's transition to streaming, being widely dismissed by the general fanbase for being a Force-less, more children-oriented cartoon set during the divisive Sequel Trilogy era, and being overshadowed by the revival of the more widely acclaimed Star Wars: The Clone Wars, it hardly stood a chance.
  • The first season of the anime adaptation of The Promised Neverland was one of the Winter 2019 anime season's big breakout hits, carried by its memorable First-Episode Twist and its unique focus on young children in a Shōnen/horror hybrid. The second season, on the other hand, burned a lot of fans by being a heavily Compressed Adaptation (adapting 144 chapters into 11 episodes; by comparison, Season 1 took 12 episodes to go through 37 chapters) that Adapted Out both fan-favorite characters and story arcs, culminating in an alternate ending widely viewed as inferior even to the already divisive ending of the manga.
  • Genlock: Season 2 is widely regarded by fans as a massive step down, thanks to the show downplaying the slick mecha action and character moments (widely regarded as some of the best parts of the series) in favor of half-baked political drama, having various characters take several levels in jerkass, dropping bridges on characters like Kazu and fan-favorite Cammie for shock value, and its unrelentingly bleak tone. Much of the problem likely came as a result of the Channel Hop from Rooster Teeth selling the property to HBO Max, as well as the replacement of a substantial chunk of the staff for the first season with people who didn't value or understand what made Season 1 worthwhile.

    Live-Action Comedy 
  • Angry Birds on the Run: Season 2 was much more poorly received than Season 1, due to the massively lowered stakes (e.g. being able to order food from a restaurant despite previously being unable to communicate with humans, and no threat of being replaced), as well as getting Lost in Medias Res between the seasons.
  • AfterMASH was cancelled in the middle of its second season.
  • B Positive had an unusual premise mixing Screwball Comedy with Medical Drama: recently divorced Drew needs a kidney transplant and finds a donor in his party girl childhood friend Gina, who he reconnected with by chance. The first season ended with the two going in for surgery. After it got renewed for a second season, show creator Marco Pennette (who based it on his own kidney transplant experience) stepped aside, and to try to maintain interest post-transplant, executive producer Chuck Lorre switched Drew and Gina from a Like Brother and Sister vibe to a Will They or Won't They? situation, and had Gina suddenly inherit a multi-million dollar fortune. Fans had a They Changed It, Now It Sucks! reaction, the already marginal ratings slipped a bit, and CBS decided against a third season.
  • Breaking In had a well-received but extremely short (only seven episodes) first season. Viewing numbers were low but enough fans caused a loud-enough ruckus for Fox to un-cancel it for a second season. Unfortunately, the second season dropped the two of more intriguing characters, brought in two hated replacement characters, had to write out the primary love interest (her actress had been cast in House after the original cancellation), changed the concept from a weekly heist show to office comedy, and neutered the Magnificent Bastard into an ineffectual afterthought. The show couldn't even finish its miraculous second season.
  • Car 54, Where are You? went directly up against the second half of The Ed Sullivan Show (Sundays at 8:30) in both of its two seasons.
  • CBS originally aired The Good Guys, Bob Denver's first series following Gilligan's Island, on Wednesdays during the 1968-1969 season. The fall of 1969 saw the series moved to the Friday Night Death Slot against The Brady Bunch, and The Good Guys disappeared in January 1970.
  • Kevin Can Wait: Between the first season and the second season, executives decided to fire Erinn Hayes, kill off her character, and turn the show into a The King of Queens ripoff. Fans of the first season were livid and the show got cancelled after the second season.
  • The Monkees was highly appreciated during its first season, providing the Fake Band with three hits and two #1 albums by the season's end. In the second season, the timeslot (Monday at 7:30) stayed the same but its competition became Gunsmoke, and the series' cancellation at the season's end caused the group to go downhill.
  • Room For Two, an ABC mid-season replacement in 1992, overperformed in its short first season, ending as one of the top 20 shows on network television. Its second season saw its ratings plummet, though.
  • The Ropers, a spin-off of Three's Company, did great as a six-episode tryout on Tuesday nights following its parent show. But once it was moved to Saturday nights for Season 2, the ratings fell and the show limped through the year.
  • Time Gentlemen Please, Al Murray's sitcom, got a second season, and was so poorly received that neither full series was released on DVD until 2009.
  • I'm Alan Partridge (Series 2) killed the series until it was revived a decade later. The second went overboard on the sitcommy elements, particularly Alan's Ukrainian girlfriend Sonja, and whilst the first one could have you feeling sorry for Alan, the second made him wholly self-centered and unlikeable. The travel tavern in the first series was a much better setting than the caravan, because it allowed Alan to interact with more characters. The second series is certainly watchable, just a step down.
  • Sledge Hammer! is an interesting case. It looked as though the show wouldn't survive its first season, so the final episode ended with a nuclear explosion with the cast at ground zero. The ratings were surprisingly up for that episode, so a second season was approved by the network (with the season premiere claiming all future episodes take place five years before the nuke, despite obvious continuity issues that created). However, for the second season, the budget was cut (most shows get a budget increase with a second season), meaning the episodes looked cheaper, and fewer episodes entirely were produced. Even more damaging, ABC put the show up against ratings juggernaut The Cosby Show. The second season would be its last.
  • On Disney Channel, Phil of the Future, Cory in the House, Sonny with a Chance, Jonas LA, I'm in the Band, Crash & Bernstein, Mighty Med, I Didn't Do It, and Best Friends Whenever all got the boot after their second seasons.

    Live-Action Drama 
  • Bracken's World had so bad a first season (1969-1970) that NBC had to change it significantly. Nothing helped — not even with the addition of Leslie Nielsen — and by the end of 1970 the series was history.
  • Buck Rogers in the 25th Century went off the rails when the second season had the series premise changed to a retread of Star Trek: The Original Series with Wilma Deering suffering major Chickification.
  • CBS' expensive Prime Time Soap Central Park West was heavily retooled after an under-performing Season 1, missing half the original cast. The retooling only alienated the show's dwindling fanbase, and it was canned at the end of Season 2.
  • Dark Angel spent its first season as a fairly gritty and down-to-earth Post Cyber Punk series where the villains were criminals and corrupt authority figures. Thanks in part to the 9/11 attacks taking place between the seasons, portraying the government as evil fell out of fashion and had to be toned down. The second season abandoned that for a Genetically Engineered Creature Of The Week formula and an ongoing plotline involving an Ancient Conspiracy and the heroine being the Chosen One. It did not go over well, and the series was cancelled, with its slot taken by...Firefly, which didn't even survive its first season.
  • Dirty Sexy Money was seen as a sharp and fun dark comedy of a rich family with critics loving its shots at the "nighttime soap" genre and sharp writing. Its first season was cut short by the 2007 Writer's Strike and by the time it ended, ABC decided to hold the show for the following fall. When it returned, it was under new showrunners who decided to play the satire totally straight, losing the humor amid nonsensical plots and bad character turns. The show was then axed for good after just 13 episodes.
  • Joss Whedon's Dollhouse survived its first season but was cancelled at the end of its second. Fans love to argue over whether or not Fox really felt the show deserved a second season, or were just trying to avoid a repeat of the situation with Firefly.
  • Gabriel's Fire (1990) was a serious drama starring James Earl Jones as a former police officer, wrongly convicted of murder, who becomes a private detective after his release from prison. In its first season, it won three Emmys (Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series (Jones), Outstanding Supporting Actress (Madge Sinclair), and Outstanding Guest Actor (David Opatoshu)) and an NAACP Image Award. Going into its second season, the show was re-tooled into a Lighter and Softer Dramedy, adding Richard Crenna as Jones's white partner, and changed the name to Pros and Cons. The new version was cancelled after 12 episodes.
  • Human Target was on the ratings borderline even in its first season, but that season had a solid reputation for its strong action sequences and compelling characterization. With a somewhat surprising renewal for season two came a boatload of Executive Meddling, the introduction of new female characters who ultimately contributed little and took focus off the original trio of Chance, Winston and Guerrero, the firing of composer Bear McCreary in favor of Tim Jones, whose compositions were considered ill-fitting and hollow, and the elimination of any ongoing storylines from the first season. Fans were not impressed and left the series in droves, while casual viewers sensed that the show was most likely being used to fill space until the premiere of The X Factor and also stayed away. Thus, the show was eliminated along with the rest of Fox's drama underperformers from this season (excepting Fringe) in May 2011.
  • Joan of Arcadia, thanks to heavy Executive Meddling to make it more marketable to teens, eliminating the premise of Joan rescuing lives and helping her father solve crimes, and centering it around high school drama.
  • Kamen Rider Amazons: The show's second season is widely-considered by most to be the side-project's death knell. The first season was lauded as an intriguing take on Kamen Rider as a whole, emphasizing a Darker and Edgier setting and the Gray-and-Gray Morality that stems from the tragic circumstances of the Amazon monsters. The second season aimed to do this by taking all of these aspects too far. Chihiro isn't seen as intriguing enough to carry the show on his own; defined by a nebulous Tragic Backstory and a Battle Couple dynamic with Squicky implications.note  Established favorites do return to carry the story, but only in a tangential way. The vendetta between the show's two primary Riders isn't settled (with one of them heavily-battered by The Worf Effect after getting an upgrade), none of the series' over-arcing villains are ever meaningfully confronted (in fact they spend the whole show gloating or being cruel), no outstanding narrative change is enacted by either side despite the numerous grim twists employed, the one event that could have led to somethingnote  ends before it can begin with the heroes just leaving and the ending sees Chihiro murdered VIA jump-cut to set up a Sequel Hook. People were getting progressively fed-up while Season 2 was airing, but the lack of any definitive conclusion to the tragic events at-hand made people question what, if anything, even happened. When Last Judgement was announced, fans weren't hyped but mad the senseless tragedy was still going. Said movie came out to pittering reviews and Amazons has since silently faded away into the ether.
  • Popular had a strong enough start as a straight drama. The second season became... well, definitely not an Affectionate Parody, but more like a Cliché Storm of everything that was on The WB. One episode even went so far as to unleash a torrent of standard sweeps period stunts, in what ended as an inversion of the She Spies case downward.
  • She Spies started off as a successful Affectionate Parody of the whole Spy Fiction genre (it originally had a production team consisting of veterans of Moonlighting, and made similar use of Fourth Wall abuse). In the second season, the production company changed (to the company that produced Baywatch,) and the show underwent a massive retooling (the only things that remained were the three lead actresses and the general Boxed Crook premise.) The tone shifted from light-hearted parody to straight drama, and it became a lukewarm retread of Charlie's Angels, quickly losing its audience and any chance for a third season.
  • Smash was already a victim of deteriorating ratings (the term "Hate Watching" was popularized by this show) during its first season. NBC fired creator Theresa Rebeck, replaced her with the show runner from Gossip Girl, and heavily retooled the cast, ditching most of the more infamous scrappies. However, the network also stranded it on Tuesdays in between cycles of The Voice, where its lead-in was the incredibly weak rookie comedy The New Normal. Smash predictably collapsed further in the ratings, and continued to be unliked by critics, but without the same level of cultural awareness from the first season (when it aired behind The Voice). NBC eventually banished it to Saturdays partway through its second season to quietly dispose of what was once believed to be their future franchise drama.
  • Although the first season of Space: 1999 faced some criticism for the physical improbability of its setup, it was still well-received for the most part and often compared to 2001: A Space Odyssey. The second season, on the other hand, was an entirely different story, seen by many as one of the most egregious examples of this trope in sci-fi. For its second half, the series was retooled into a Lighter and Softer action series with much less cerebral plots and several characters removed without explanation. These changes went over very poorly with the established fandom and even some of the cast members (especially Martin Landau) and the series was swiftly cancelled soon after.
  • The second season of Top of the Lake got much more negative fan and critic reactions due to Shoot the Shaggy Dog issues. (The two main suspicious deaths were probably suicide, a lot is left vague, and the Hate Sink villain pulls off his last-minute-reveal real evil scheme, does a Villain: Exit, Stage Left, and gets away scot free with the proceeds.) Campion and Moss were also accused of exploiting and insulting actual Asian-Australian sex workers, after it was reported that they had interviewed them about personal details of their lives and the series then rarely rose above Asian Hooker Stereotype cliches.
  • Touch (2012) is similar to previous Fox series Dollhouse in that it only got two half-length seasons of 13 episodes each, with one first-season episode not even airing during the regular season (it was aired as a bonus in September 2012, six weeks before the intended second-season premiere). Weak ratings for the bonus episode were probably the reason why Fox chose instead to postpone the premiere for nearly four months until it could take over the Friday Night Death Slot following the ending of Fringe, and the new season's ratings were as poor as those of Fringe - a huge shocker, considering it had the strongest debut of Fox's four freshman series of 2011-12. Unlike Fringe, however, Touch sadly didn't have the benefit of a large and devoted fanbase to keep it alive, even with the Darker and Edgier, more Myth Arc-oriented turn the second season took.
  • Twin Peaks. David Lynch explicitly stated that he never wanted to bring the Laura Palmer story to a close, preferring to use it as a frame for the sub-plots and span it over several seasons, but ABC didn't think the audience would stick around. As a result, her killer was revealed halfway through Season 2 and the show became nothing but sub-plots. Lynch justifiably backed mostly out of its production to continue with his film career, directing only a few episodes with others directed by filmmakers of various skill levels.
  • Most diehard fans of War of the Worlds (1988) tend to hold the opinion that the changes from the first to second season (which included the deaths of several major and supporting characters - including the villains of the first season, the world flipping over 20 Minutes into the Future and most of the first-season plot threads dropped in favor of standalone episodes) caused the show's death.

    Live-Action Other 
  • The Wubbulous World of Dr. Seuss had a good first season, but underwent a drastic shift in the second season to try to compete with Bear in the Big Blue House. This change resulted in multiple flanderizations- for example, the Cat in the Hat became more of a host rather than The Trickster who likes to push the stories along (as well as being recast with a new puppeteer). Unsurprisingly, the attempt to compete with Bear failed and the show was cancelled.
  • The Frank Sinatra Show was a musical variety show broadcast on CBS for two seasons from 1950 to 1952. While the first season did well on Saturdays at 9 against Your Show of Shows on NBC, the second one faltered on Tuesdays at 8 against Texaco Star Theater (Milton Berle's show) on NBC and the surprise hit Life is Worth Living on DuMont, which debuted in mid-season. The show's popularity was also hurt by the scandals surrounding Sinatra's affair with Ava Gardner and his musical career being at a low point commercially and artistically (his late Columbia-era output being notorious for gimmicky novelty tunes). note 
  • The Pat Sajak Show was an attempt by CBS to challenge Johnny Carson that put the host of Wheel of Fortune through massive changes while in late night. It didn't help, and Sajak was yanked off near the end of Season Two.
  • The American version of That Was the Week That Was was hit hard with this in its second season, especially because it conflicted with the 1964 Presidential election, and until the election was over it was shown only on a monthly basis. By the time it went back to a weekly program, most of its viewers had switched to its competition, Petticoat Junction and Peyton Place.

Alternative Title(s): One Season Wonder

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