Lifetime has decided to cancel their Sunday night drama, The Protector, after one season on the air. The decision doesn’t come as a surprise since the writing has been on the wall for awhile. While the Ally Walker series has some devoted fans, the ratings just weren’t high enough for a second season.
The Protector follows Gloria Sheppard (Walker), a single mother and detective in the LAPD Robbery-Homicide Division. A recent divorcee and single mother, Gloria has to perform her duties as a homicide detective while taking care of her young sons, Nick (Sage Ryan) and Leo (Thomas Robinson). They all move in with her brother, Davey Sheppard (Chris Payne Gilbert), and he helps her raise the boys. At work, Gloria works on some of Los Angeles’ most high profile crimes with her partner, Detective Michelle Dulcett (Tisha Campbell-Martin). They work alongside officer Ramon “Romeo” Rush (Terrell Tilford), Detective Buerge (Larry Joe Campbell) and Detective Van Stone (James Hanlon), while being overseen by commanding officer Lieutenant Felix Valdez (Miguel Ferrer).
The drama debuted on Sunday June 12th to 1.89 million viewers and a 0.4 rating in the 18-49 demographic. Viewership for the following episodes declined and the first six episodes averaged 1.37 million viewers and a 0.4 rating.
In August, Lifetime shifted The Protector to Monday nights at 10pm to make way for another new drama called Against the Wall. The first episode in that new Monday timeslot dropped to just 849,000 viewers with a 0.3 rating. The following week, Lifetime shifted Protector out of primetime to 11pm where the numbers (not surprisingly) dropped again to 600,000 viewers and a 0.2 rating in the demo.
Though there won’t be a second season for The Protector, Lifetime has indicated that they will air the two remaining installments, on September 12th and September 19th.
While The Protector has been cancelled, no decision has been made about the fate of Against the Wall. That freshman series has significantly improved on Protector’s ratings, despite a decline in Drop Dead Diva’s numbers.
What do you think? Will you miss The Protector? Was it worth watching? Should it have been cancelled or renewed for season two?
Image courtesy Lifetime.
Well that just blows. Lifetime finally gets a decent show and they cancel it. I really liked the chemistry of the characters. I really don’t get how in an age of technology tv is still using the Nielsons. I have watched more television in the last 3 years and don’t have a tv. I get all of my stuff from the internet. The ads are shorter and I get tv from around the world. Why aren’t they factoring these things into the equations?
This was a good show with good characters.
Who do they ask what they are watching ?
Jersey shores ! who watches that kind of crap
I am very disappointed in our choice of tv shows. I have never watched reality tv or care to watch it so it really makes me irritated that real shows don’t get a chance. I watched this show faithfully and really enjoyed it. I was really looking forward to it’s return.
I really liked this show! I don’t understand why it would be cancelled.
I really liked The Protector. It was a cop show but it was more humanized, I guess. I am sorry to see its been cancelled. It seems if a show doesnt show a lot of t*ts and a** then its cancelled quickly. Thats really sad.
I love Ally Walker and have been following her around for years. She was great on “Moon over Miami”. They should have given this show a chance. It was great.
We loved this show and we also found the time changes confusing. It’s almost like they wanted this show to fail. Who puts a show on at 11 o’clock, really!!!
They didn’t give this show a chance, changing the times, etc. I don’t think the network wanted to give it a chance, I loved this show, they should give it more time on the air at a decent time and maybe more people would have started watching it. This network has a rep for doing just this.
Really sad to hear there will be no season 2 I really liked this show 🙁
The Protector should have stayed on air because it was just getting to the best part and Tisha Campbell-Martin was at her climax. So was Alley Walker, I thought the show was awesome and terrific. It made me think. And I loved the way Alley Walker always found out the problems in her own corky way, and I especially loved the way Tisha was finally getting together with “Romeo”. But… I guess the show is all it is, just a show. It is not reality, but it was a really good down-to-earth show. The Protector made me feel like I… Read more »
Yes, I forgot, jersey shore doesn’t even interest me, I really don’t want to watch stupid people. I would rather watch protector, against the wall, they could tone that one down a bit, and what is this with army wives going so long without coming back, are we trying to lose our audience, another show like lost. Would like to see drop dead diva come back sometime in the future, come on, get with it.
This one had a bad time slot also, couldn’t find it at the regular time half the time, it wasn’t given a chance to succeed. Love the characters and the plots, and the stars are top notch, it’s to bad the networks can’t give these shows a decent chance, thanks for all the time screwups that occured, otherwise it might still be on, hate to see this one go.
I loved The Protector. Lifetime did a bad job of the time slots. They put it opposite some other shows. I also hate Army Wives went off air. Last seasons of Drop DEad Diva wasn’t as good as former seasons. There was to much exspict sex on Against the Wall. It looks like Forgetable is going that way to. I know so of the shows are on lifetime . There was a show called Womens Murder Club that was cancelled I thought it was a good show. AS far as I am concerned most of the new shows should be… Read more »
i agree with Steve, they must have been trying to kill the show by putting it on when they did. I also only found it by accident and not until Sept. Think Ally Walker is great, Profiler was my favourite show for the 3 years it ran-was really choked it was cancelled, feel so bad for A.W. that her new show hasn’t been given a fair shot.
I really liked the show… But I guess when jersey shore is the number one show in America, good luck to all the other shows that should actually be given half a chance… Very disappointing!