NBC Cancels Allegiance

After only five episodes, NBC has officially cancelled Allegiance and removed the show from the Thursday night lineup.  The fifth episode premiered on March 5th to a total audience in 18-49 of 3.28 million with a .8 rating/ 3 share which was pretty consistent with the numbers it generated in the first few episodes.  Although Allegiance is cancelled, they will continue to release the rest of the filmed episodes every Thursday online at NBC.com and the Twitter account remains active.  The cancellation was not surprising, TV By the Numbers has been predicting since the second week that NBC would pull it from the lineup.

The fate of NBC Thursday night is facing uncertainty and is struggling since it abandoned its traditional comedy format.  The Slap has been temporarily moved to the Thursday 10 PM slot from 8 PM.  NBC is trying to leverage the success of The Blacklist and will fill The Slap‘s former spot with Dateline: The Real Blacklist.  The two hour Blacklist themed programming block premiered on March 12th.  The program is hosted by Richard Engel and will be about real life conspiracy themed investigations, playing off the theme of the show. “TV By the Numbers” reported that Dateline averages 7 million viewers overall on its regular Friday edition.  On its Thursday premiere, Dateline came in fourth in its time-slot with 4.51 million total viewers in 18-49, less than its average, but not horrible.  Blacklist is the only savior for NBC on Thursdays– it has improved the time period by 9 million people according to Nielsen.  It will be interesting to see if the following of The Blacklist is strong enough to pull in a good audience for the Dateline themed series.

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