The movie may be a cult favorite but the Napoleon Dynamite TV show wasn’t popular enough for FOX. They’ve cancelled the animated series after one season.
Napoleon Dynamite follows the continuing mis-adventures of “America’s most awesomely awkward teenager” and his quirky family and friends in rural Idaho. The voice cast includes Aaron Ruell, Diedrich Bader, Efran Ramirez, Jon Gries, Jon Heder, Sandy Martin, and Tina Majorino.
The series debuted on January 15th with a very healthy 4.4 rating in the 18-49 demographic with 8.31 million viewers. It benefited greatly from a lead-in from The Simpsons and an NFL game before that.
The second episode dropped like a rock by 25% in the all-important demo. The next two weeks fell a whopping 36% and then another 14% after that — to a 1.8 in the demo with 3.81 million viewers. Had there been more episodes, the numbers likely would have kept falling.
That downward trend likely concerned the FOX execs quite a bit and was likely the deciding factor in the show’s fate.
All six episodes have aired and, according to TVLine, there won’t be any more. The last was broadcast on March 4th.
What do you think? Did you think the Napoleon Dynamite series was worth a season two renewal? Would it have been more popular if it had been created a few years earlier?
Image courtesy FOX.
I am so sad that there is no season 2. This is a cartoon I would have followed for life. It was available on Hulu – that’s how I found it. It had nothing to do with TV for me. Please trust Hulu or Netflix to bring it into a staple cartoon. PLEASE! Don’t do this to me!!
Definitely wished they would’ve made more episodes or seasons. We found it randomly on Hulu as well!! Why did they choose fox! Probably should’ve been on some other network