Originally Posted by MoreTears:
“It was clear there wouldn't be a second season the day after the first episode premiered. The ratings were low enough that it was a certainty. Also, keep in mind that the Fox executive who ordered Gracepoint, Kevin Reilly, lost his job over the summer. There was no way the new regime was going to give any slack to a project of the guy who was replaced. Gotham will likely be the sole series from Kevin Reilly's last batch to make it to another season.”
It's certainly the case that they'll killed off the majority of this season's new shows, pretty much anything that was greenlit by Reilly has been canned. Utopia was a giant fail, Hieroglyph was binned before it even got to air, Gracepoint has been kept on air by the skin of it's teeth (I think they've decided to avoid the bad press and see it out despite horrible ratings, it's only for a few more weeks). Mulaney has effectively gone - although it's seeing out it's remaining episodes in a new timeslot - and all signs seem to be that they seem to have cancelled another comedy, Weird Loners, before it gets to air as well.
The only thing left currently on air is Red Band Society - Fox ordered more scripts, at a time when other networks were doing this and it basically signalled the end of them. However, I've read that RBS is doing pretty solid numbers in the DVR ratings, so I wonder if this one will survive to the end of season 1 (highly unlikely to renew though) despite all the classic death knell signals! Their winter schedule should be announced within the next week (not over the Thanksgiving weekend though) - in fact, I'd expect most of the networks, who haven't already announced, to release their schedules very soon.
BTW, the other new shows - Empire, Backstrom - I wonder if they'll be more invested in making these ones work, despite them coming from the same fired exec's tenure? Both of these shows are fully owned by Fox (network and 21st Century Fox) - so they have an increased motivation to see them succeed - given the new network presidents are covering both of these arms now!