Cancellation nowadays isn’t quite as catastrophic for TV shows as it once was. With streaming platforms such as Hulu and Netflix to potentially pick up series, the end is not always nigh just because a network said no more. One show that was rescued from cancellation was NBC’s Community, much to the delight of its small butintensely loyal fanbase. Unfortunately, Community was rescued not by Netflix or Hulu; rather, the series came back for a sixth season thanks to Yahoo Screen. Yahoo Screen is now officially shutting down, though, so it looks like Community and the service's other original series have officially come to an end for the forseeable future.
Yahoo Screen was never the most popular video streaming platform, and Variety reports that costly experiments with original content created a huge financial mess. In fact, the service’s ambition backfired rather spectacularly, forcing Yahoo to write off a whopping $42 million. Yahoo Screen turned out to be not quite as fantastic a community for Community as many had hoped.
Community was certainly not the only original on Yahoo Screen to cause a financial flop, but Yahoo Screen shutting down will cost fans more than just the hope for another new season. Yahoo Screen has been the home of old episodes of Community as well as the platform responsible for the newest. Fans who have been touting “six seasons and a movie” ever since the original cancellation in 2014 are out of luck for anything else from Yahoo Screen. And the same goes for those hoping for subsequent seasons of Paul Feig's sci-fi comedy Other Space and the basketball-centered comedy Sin City Saints, although it's unclear if Yahoo will broaden its relationship with the NFL for streaming games.
Of course, Community wasn’t likely to come back for a seventh season even without Yahoo Screen imploding. The show succeeded largely on the chemistry and dynamics of the cast; with the contracts for the actors who made Community happen expiring, there was no feasible way that Yahoo Screen would shell out the big bucks for new contracts on the off-chance that a Season 7 would be less financially disastrous than Season 6. Still, Community’s savior going belly-up has to be a big bummer for fans. Luckily, the cast has kept busy since making their small screen big breaks on Community, so fans can still see the likes of Joel McHale and Yvette Nicole Brown and Donald Glover in other projects.
Who knows? Community fans got their six season; maybe the movie will someday become a reality. CW series Veronica Mars came back several years after its cancellation in a fan-funded feature film, and Arrested Development was picked up on Netflix for a fourth season well after the end of the third. There’s almost always a way for fans to get more of what they love nowadays; Yahoo Screen shutting down is definitely bad news for loyal Community viewers, but there’s no saying what could happen in the future. Besides, even without a seventh season or movie, the six seasons of Community are definitely worth rewatching, as are Yahoo Screen's other original shows.
