Why is The Rookie: Feds canceled?

It’s sad news for The Rookie: Feds. After only one season, ABC has canceled the spin-off series, just one day after the end of the SAG-AFTRA strike. Why has this anticipated series ended so soon?

Introduced as a “backdoor pilot” on The Rookie’s fourth season, Feds starred Niecy Nash as Simone Clark, a former teacher and mother who, in her 40s, impulsively decided to join the FBI. The series showed Simone recruited into a unique team whose members included a former actor, a quirky profiler and a tough boss.

The show contained the same humor as The Rookie, with fun character touches and some good action to boot. It had wrapped up its first season when the combination of the WGA and SAG strikes hit, and while ABC made no decision then, there were hopes it could continue. So why has it ended after just one year?

Why The Rookie: Feds was canceled

The obvious reason for the cancellation would have to be ratings. While The Rookie: Feds had a good spot following The Rookie, its ratings were never as good as its mothership series.

The series averaged 4.3 million total viewers and a 0.5 demo rating, only besting the now-canceled Alaska Daily and The Company You Keep. It should be noted that on streaming/playbacks, the series almost doubled its viewership but still didn’t seem enough for executives.

More importantly has been the effect of the strikes. ABC now has to prepare for curtailed seasons of about 10-13 episodes each for its 2023-24 slate. The network also has to handle what was essentially half a lost season in ad revenue, which hits the pocketbooks.

That means that the network has to prioritize what series to continue with and sadly, The Rookie: Feds didn’t warrant the costs of saving with a new season, including the actor contracts (which had been put on hold when the SAG strike happened).

Can The Rookie: Feds be saved?

So, could the show be somehow saved? It’s tricky to tell as the online numbers show it did have a following. However, shopping it to another network could be tough, given you’d have a spinoff on a different network than the main show, as The Rookie will continue on ABC.

It’s also likely the cast probably saw the writing on the wall with the long delay and already have some new gigs lined up for when the decision was made final. While the producers may hope they can land somewhere else, by all accounts, The Rookie: Feds is over for good.

It’s a sad thing for fans of the series, but it was the bad timing of the strikes and other issues that ended the series as The Rookie: Feds joins the long list of short-lived spin-offs.

The Rookie: Feds is now streaming on Hulu.