Fringe: Executive Producers Discuss FOX’s Season Four Renewal

Fans of Fringe got a welcome surprise late last week. After weeks of biting their nails each Saturday morning, waiting for the Friday night ratings to come out, FOX announced that the network was renewing the TV series for a fourth season — and a complete season of 22 episodes at that.

Executive producers Jeff Pinkner and J.H. Wyman spoke with THR soonafter and they revealed that the renewal didn’t come as a big surprise because FOX has continued to be very supportive of them and the show. They believe that the DVR numbers had a lot to do with the renewal and share that the cast and crew were, understandably, ecstatic to receive the news.

Regarding the fact that Fringe was renewed for a full 22 episodes, Pinker and Wyman believe that this move says a lot about the network’s commitment to the program.

THR: Did you have to push for a full 22-episode order?

Pinkner: It’s not really our job to push. It’s our job to tell the best stories we can in the best fashion we can. Trust the marketplace, trust that the fans are there, trust that the studio and the network recognize that. This is such a hard moment in time to get people to commit to anything. We were saying to each other a couple days ago, when you go to a movie, you already know that there’s an end. You might not like it, but you know when you leave the theater, you will have seen the end of the story.

So much TV these days doesn’t make it to “the end,” whatever the storytellers have in mind, or there is no end in place. It’s hard to get people to commit and showing loyalty to an audience, which is obviously what Fox is doing here, really gains a lot of value for Fox. It’s like, “Watch these shows we’re putting on the air because we’re going to stand behind as you do.”

Wyman: They’re saying, “Hey, we believe in this program and we want to be the purveyor of programs that are critically acclaimed and purveyor of programs that people are really responding to and really embracing,” which sounds obvious but there’s a lot of critically acclaimed shows that have gone by the wayside in the past. There’s something to be said about that decision. It’s gutsy.

You can read the rest of the interview here.

What do you think? Why do you think Fringe was renewed for season four?