Yahoo is continuing its campaign to win over TV lovers everywhere with word that the company’s streaming service Yahoo Screen is angling to pick up the late, lamented Fox military comedy Enlisted for another season, as it did with cancelled cult fave Community last month.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, talks are under way between Yahoo and Enlisted producers 20th Century Fox Television. Apparently, such talks have been going on for more than a month, though financial issues remain unresolved, and those must be dealt with before any deal is reached. Earlier this month, we reported that fans of Enlisted were lobbying Yahoo Screen to pick up the series for a second season, and it looks like that grass-roots campaign has actually worked. Of course, nothing has been announced as to Enlisted‘s future yet, and it may be too early to start celebrating, but it’s tremendously exciting to hear that creator Kevin Biegel’s determination, along with that of the fans, has yielded a result.
One of the common complaints with fans of Enlisted was that Fox never really gave it a chance to catch on, pushing it into the Friday deathslot, shifting its premiere to the winter months while the Olympics were airing (with nearly no promotion on top of the terrible timing), depriving it of a solid lead-in show, airing episodes out of order and bizarrely opting to show reruns instead of new episodes. When the show finally kicked the bucket with four episodes left to air, it didn’t come as much of a surprise – but the cancellation still stung.
If Enlisted can stage a comeback, it would be both great news for the show’s fans and a bit of a kick in the teeth for Fox, which quickly canned the show without counting on much of a reaction. Let’s keep our fingers crossed – Yahoo has come through in the clutch before for fans of cancelled shows, and with Yahoo chief marketing officer Kathy Savitt’s recent statement that Yahoo is “open-minded” about where its new programs are coming from, chances seem good that Enlisted could pull through.
