FOX had high hopes for their Utopia reality series but the ratings were anything but perfection. The network has now cancelled the show after less than two months on the air — 10 months short of the network’s social experiment plan.
Utopia follows a group of regular people who are relocated to a remote area and given limited resources. They must figure out how to survive and create their own society. Those who are dispensable can be voted out and replaced with newcomers.
The series started out airing twice a week, on Tuesday and Friday nights. Utopia had a decent debut thanks to a special post-football debut on Sunday, September 7th. The ratings dropped about 50% a couple days later with its first Tuesday night. The Friday airing did even worse.
After a handful of showings, FOX dropped the Tuesday episodes and now they’ve dropped the dismally-rated Friday ones as well. The live-streaming feed will be shut down today and the participants — who committed to spending a year in this social experiment — will be sent home.
Utopia’s Friday night timeslot will be filled with repeats of MasterChef Junior starting this week. Season two of the young cooking competition launches a new season this Tuesday — filling Utopia’s former timeslot.
What do you think? Did you like Utopia? Why didn’t it catch on? What should have been changed?
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74 Comments on "Utopia: Reality Series Cancelled by FOX"
I loved
I loved this show
It was actually a great show and my wife and I loved it.
It was hard to reconcile the narrator with his Groucho-disguise looking glasses and commentary with the nature of the show. Plus, the participants relied on their exposure from the show to make money off of gimmicky ideas like “win a date with Josh” instead of ways that would emulate the outside world. It also didn’t help that there wasn’t one character that was lovable enough to get attached to. It was set up for failure from the start. Good idea but terrible execution.
I was so disappointed that it was canceled. What the heck happened? I don’t think the rating numbers could have been that low! What can we do to bring it back?
agree with most folks – bummer that it is gone!!
It was a terrible show ,glad its gone ,was a waste of time!!
The show was stupid, good call,fox
The show was doomed from the beginning. Fox’s casting was the problem. They were looking for “characters” (AKA weirdos). I think people would have loved to have seen normal people. The other problem was that the cast relied on their “celebrity status” to earn money, not hard work and innovation.
The participants spend there first two months is disarray, which i felt like contributed to the ratings, who wants to see “the perfect society” only argue and ***** and moan, it was great concept but the wrong people.
I spent a lot of time stressing about that baby and how it would affect the rest, i thought i was very selfish to expect 11 other people to put up with your baby
so much for a year..all the work all the drama and hope …gone..no warning..I liked the show..alot
I love the show! I’m so bummed that its off the air, It was my favorite show. Did they all go home?
I really liked the show but I think a lot of the commenters are missing the fact that it didn’t get high enough ratings to keep. Yes, it is because of money. FOX is a business, not a charity. Yes, it was a social experiment but not a real study. It was a tv show intended to generate revenue. You’re all forgetting that reality tv is still tv and manipulated on some level to maximize revenue.
Two times a week was to much. Friday was a good place to put the show. I watched it, it was far from being my favorite show. I still watched it to see how the people would make it on their own.