Rise: Should NBC Have Cancelled This TV Show?

School is out — permanently — for the cast and crew of NBC’s Rise TV show. The peacock network recently cancelled the musical drama series so there won’t be a second season. But, did the execs make the right decision?

An NBC high school drama from Jason Katims and Jeffrey Seller, Rise stars Josh Radnor, Rosie Perez, Auli’i Cravalho, Damon J. Gillespie, Marley Shelton, Rarmian Newton, Ted Sutherland, Amy Forsyth, Casey W. Johnson, Taylor Richardson, Joe Tippett, and Shirley Rumierk. The series centers on Lou Mazzuchelli (Radnor), who is the fictional analogue to Lou Volpe in the Michael Sokolov book, Drama High. Although he is committed to his students at Stanton High School, Lou knows he needs to shake things up, in order to rekindle his passion for teaching. To that end, he petitions to direct the school’s theater program, but soon realizes he signed up for a whole lot more than he originally expected. Soon though, the faculty, student body, and even the town residents find themselves caught up in the new spirit at the school.

The Rise series debuted in March and got off to an okay start with a 1.23 rating in the 18-49 demographic with 5.50 million viewers. It was no doubt aided by following the season finale of NBC’s biggest drama, This Is Us.

Week two saw a small drop when it moved to its new 9pm timeslot, following The Voice. Week three saw a sizable drop and the show fell to a 0.80 demo rating with 4.32 million. The ratings have dropped a bit since then but have remained pretty consistent. NBC cancelled the show last week, likely because they expect a show like this to draw better numbers when it airs out of The Voice.

Some would argue that Rise had some stiff competition on the other networks, remained pretty consistent for the past several weeks, and the series had just 10 episodes in its first season.

Unfortunately, there hasn’t been any word of the show finding a new home for season two so tonight’s finale looks like the end of the road.

What do you think? Did NBC make the right call or, should the network execs have given this show some more time to prove itself? Would you have watched season two?