Why Must The Good (TV shows) Die Young?

List of cancelled and renewed shows for 2015-2016 season here

It's happened to all of us. There's a show you just fall absolutely in love with, the characters, the plot, the writing, a certain actor, whatever, but just as soon as you're really and truly hooked, your show gets cruelly cancelled by its network. "That's ridiculous! How unfair!" you might say, outraged that those executives would dare cancel such quality programming as your ~show~. So, if the show is as good as you think it is, why did they cancel it?

                                     Look at this #deep dialogue. Who could possibly cancel this?

                                           
  The answer, like all things apparently, inevitably traces back to economics. While showrunners, writers, and actors are often (or less optimistically at least occasionally) more invested in the quality of the craft than the income it makes, producers and networks have essentially one incentive: money. Does Mr. Bigshot Executive at ABC give a single heck about how much that one line from an episode of Wicked City or Hemlock Grove touched the life and soul of some random guy they've never met? Nope. Not a single one. What executives do care about is business and economics, particularly the two economic principles of scarcity and incentives.
First let's talk about scarcity, because scarcity is always the answer. So because life is unfair and there's no infinite money and time, all networks have a scarcity of both of those things. Each network has limited broadcasting hours. There's only 24 hours in a day and 7 days in a week, and networks don't broadcast different shows for every time block of every hour of every day. Because of the scarcity of time available to broadcast shows (and the range in viewership among watching times, like the Friday Night Death Slot), networks have to be selective about which shows they produce and air. Networks also have a scarcity of money. They can't afford to renew every old show and keep picking up new pilots, so if there is a new show that seems promising as a substitute for an old show that isn't doing as well, the network will choose to fund that instead, resulting in cancellations.

  So how does a network decide which shows are "good" enough to renew and which shows are "bad" enough to cancel. Well, it definitely has very little to do with personal taste for the executives or quality of the shows in question. If it did, terrible shows (like, I don't know, The Bachelor for example) would have been cancelled long ago, while quality shows (that often make fun of The Bachelor) like The Soup would still be airing. (R.I.P The Soup, you will be missed).

How is this show still on. How are these people even real.

This show dedicates itself to mocking terrible TV like The Bachelor.

It's a shame it got cancelled, Cade could have had a career in this.

   Instead networks make decisions based on certain incentives. Well, one major incentive really: money. Networks want their shows to be profitable, and a show's profit comes from the money advertisers pay to have their ads shown during certain shows. Advertisers in turn have their own incentive of having their product marketed to either large numbers of people or certain targeted audiences. Viewership totals and viewership demographics are vital to a show's ability to stay alive. If a show is extremely popular, advertisers will be incentivized to pay for ad space during them, and due to higher demand networks can charge more for ad space or product placement. If a show is not popular overall but is immensely popular with a target demographic, it could also be enticing for companies with a product that needs to be advertised to that same demographic. Sometimes good shows just have low viewership, either due to lack of awareness that the show exists or by having what is referred to as a "cult following." 

Bring back Community #sixseasonsandamovie

Now with the rise of new companies like Netflix and Hulu, where profit comes from paid subscriptions instead of from companies paying for ads, this trend is changing. However, it is too early to tell what exactly this will mean for why exactly shows are cancelled.  It will still be linked to scarcity (duh) of resources, but incentives of viewers will be more about making shows people want to watch that are exclusively on Netflix or Hulu, meaning they have to pay for a subscription. 

Anyway, next time a show you love gets unfairly cancelled and you're asking God why such a tragedy has occurred, remember: scarcity and incentives.