It's not looking too bright for Sunnyside as NBC cancels the show and dumps it online
All the cancellation-hungry animals out there better start sharpening their knives, because the cold and unflinching fall TV season has just made its first kill. According to USA Today, NBC’s Sunnyside won’t be living past its first season and is getting pulled from the network’s schedule, but in what is either a cruel insult or some kind of ill-conceived parting gift, it will finish out its run online. Sunnyside’s time slot will be taken up by an early premiere for Will & Grace, which was supposed to launch at some point next year, and the remaining episodes of Sunnyside (plus one surprise bonus episode) will be dumped on to NBC’s website. Basically, it’s like getting outright canceled, but kind of better… and also kind of worse. The unaired episodes aren’t getting thrown in the garbage, which is good, but how many people even know that there are things to watch on NBC’s website?
That might not really matter anyway, since Variety notes that Sunnyside had the lowest live/same day ratings of any new across the main networks and the lowest average rating and total viewership of any show on NBC this season. The ratings for digital views were supposedly better, which is probably why it’s getting dumped to NBC’s app and website, but they evidently still weren’t good enough to justify the show’s continued existence.
Joel Kim Booster, who played Jun Ho on Sunnyside, made his feelings about the cancellation (and the timing of it) pretty clear on Twitter: