Back when American Idol first took the world by storm, Ryan Seacrest was the epitome of the reality TV host: Suave, well-dressed and polite, but also able to keep a live show running on time. While Idol has one more season left in her, Seacrest’s newer reality TV projects haven’t gone nearly so well, however, and this week Fox announced his latest series has been cancelled after only two episodes. Knock Knock Live has been pulled from the schedule, effective immediately.
Since only 1.6 million total viewers tuned in for the second episode of Knock Knock Live, I’m guessing you may not even know what this show was all about. The goal of the series was bringing goodwill to the homes of random individuals. In the series, Seacrest would send out celebrity guests to knock on a random person’s door and deliver prizes, including but not limited to money. Ariana Grande, Lea Michele, Bubba Watson, Meghan Trainor, Rob Gronkowski, David Beckham, Martha Stewart, Common, Rita Ora, Florida Georgia Line, Mike Holmes and Justin Bieber were all supposed to appear during Season 1. However, after the Justin Bieber episode hit such epic lows, the show was yanked and axed.
Normally, it's amusing to poke fun at the Biebs in a situation like this, but the show didn’t really do well during its premiere episode, either. Instead of new content, USA Today mentions repeats of The Last Man on Earth and Brooklyn Nine-Nine will air in the reality series’ slot for the remainder of the summer. Of course, new programming is coming this fall, and if you’d like to see what Fox has coming in on Tuesday nights this fall, you can head here.
Knock Knock Live’s cancellation comes just a couple of summers after Seacrest’s Million Second Quiz also failed to capture the adoration or attention of audiences. The NBC reality competition series was a 10-night trivia event, and thus made it through 10 whole nights on the network, but sadly did not do well enough for the network to want to attempt a second season of the series. Seacrest also had another series, Dream Date, at Fox that never made it to the air.
It’s not like Seacrest is floundering. The man is still the main face of American Idol, his radio show is still popular and he has his hands in a lot of pots over at E!, where he produces the likes of Shahs of Sunset and Keeping up with the Kardashians. He’s obviously not going anywhere anytime soon. Yet, it would still be nice if he could find another TV project that works for him, so that we get to see his live TV interview skills at work for more than the red carpets at the Academy Awards.
We’ll let you know if Seacrest signs on for a new series anytime soon. In the meantime, American Idol is expected to premiere its final set of episodes at midseason this year.
