The Lonely Island’s Party Over Here cancelled by Fox after one season
By Hector Cruz
The female-led sketch series Party Over Here, produced by the Lonely Island, has been axed by Fox due to poor ratings.
In March, Fox launched its first live-action late-night program on Saturday nights in six years with the debut of Party Over Here. Just five months later, the network has announced that the sketch comedy series led by UCB vets Nicole Byer, Alison Rich and Jessica McKenna has been cancelled after one season, Indie Wire reports.
The 30-minute show was created and co-executive produced by Paul Scheer (The League), as well as the Lonely Island’s Andy Samberg, Akiva Schaffer, and Jorma Taccone as part of the group’s development deal with the network. Samberg and the other members reportedly got their former boss Lorne Michaels’ blessing to produce the show by ensuring that it would not directly compete with SNL in most markets, unlike Fox’s previous efforts on the night, such as MADtv, Talkshow with Spike Feresten and The Wanda Sykes Show.
More from News
- Is Jeopardy! new tonight, July 31?
- Who won Jeopardy! tonight, July 27?
- Who won Jeopardy! tonight, July 25?
- Who won Jeopardy! tonight, July 24?
- Who won Jeopardy! tonight, July 20?
From the start, Party Over Here was plagued by poor reviews from critics and had modest ratings throughout its 10-episode run from March to May. It co-starred Marques Ray and Carl Tart.
“It was an effort to try to do something interesting at a low price point with content creators who we like a lot,” Fox TV Group CEO Dana Walden said in a statement. “We were hopeful that little elements of the show might go viral.”
Walden’s remarks show how much of the current late-night TV landscape is driven by the desire to produce viral hits, demonstrating why hosts like Jimmy Fallon and James Corden are dominating the format. Although the latter’s ratings are consistently lower than his less talked about time slot competitor, Seth Meyers, he’s already gotten two of his most popular segments — Carpool Karaoke, and, more recently, Drop the Mic — spun off into standalone series during his short tenure as host of The Late Late Show.
Next: Andy Samberg and Lonely Island's Popstar flops at box office
This marks the second straight failure for the Lonely Island, whose mockumentary film Popstar: Never Stop Stopping, received strong reviews, but turned out to be a box office bomb despite various marketing strategies, including debuting a music video for the film as a Digital Short on SNL’s season finale. It opened in eighth place after earning $4.6 million for its first weekend in May, and went on to gross just $9.5 million of its $20 million budget to date.