Fox's schedule has featured a lot of new shows premiering at midseason this year. Among these is the highly touted 24: Legacy, a spinoff of the original show. The series kicked off in the coveted post-Super Bowl slot, but its numbers have only been decent in the time since. Recently, Fox's CEO Dana Walden spoke out about the future of 24: Legacy and while the prospect for a second season isn't totally grim, I wouldn't call it hopeful either. Here's what she had to say:
We're going to see. I would love nothing more than to bring it back because I thought it was great but we're just going to have to see how our pilots come in, how it continues to perform and weigh all of the information we have in May.
That's about as wishy-washy as you can get. While a lot of Fox shows have gotten early renewals this year, Lethal Weapon and Lucifer included, we haven't heard a peep about 24: Legacy. Because the show first hit the schedule after the Super Bowl, the ratings average for the season is actually pretty high. However, the last episode of 24: Legacy actually dipped below a 1.0 rating for the first time, pulling a .98 rating. If the numbers continue to drop lower and lower, that really doesn't bode well for the series over the long haul.
Although Dana Walden's initial comments seem at least slightly on the positive, she also noted at the INTV conference (via Deadline) that the show has definitely been underperforming, which is making her a bit sad, especially given the advantages that Fox gave the series.
I'm a little sad because I feel like it's a really good show. We're doing about 7-8 million viewers over seven days per episode. It's not terrible. We had really high hopes for the show. Perhaps our launch strategy was a little over-ambitious.
Currently 24: Legacy is doing roughly 4 million total viewers the day of, which is far fewer than the 17.6 million viewers who caught the pilot after the Super Bowl. (Although Walden did note a higher seven day total.) That's not a horrible number for a Fox show, but it does mean that a lot of viewers did not stick with the series after the pilot. Which means that most people don't seem to be latching on to it, as Fox was likely hoping they would.
24: Legacy has already aired five episodes, and its sixth is set to hit the schedule on Monday night. If you haven't checked out the Jack Bauer-less version of 24, you can catch new episodes on Monday nights at 8 p.m. ET, only on Fox. To find out what else the network has coming up, you can take a look at our midseason TV premiere schedule. You can also take a look at what is cancelled and renewed already with our network rundown.
