While the series’s soft ratings performance pretty much rules it out as a in-season player on a major broadcast network, I hear the network offered a summer run, which comes with a reduced license fee. That economic model is very hard to make work financially on a high-end series that had been developed and budgeted for a standard network airing, so I hear the studio would not go through with that.
However, I hear ABC Studios executives, who have been passionate about the concept, developing it twice, first at ABC and then at Fox, didn’t throw in the towel and tried shopping the show to other outlets but couldn’t find a new home.
As a result, Red Band Society will end its run after 13 episodes on Fox. The final unaired episodes will run on two consecutive Saturdays, one hour on Jan. 31 and a two-hour finale on Feb. 7.