The freshman drama has struggled out of the gate, not even mustering 400,000 viewers in its most recent episode.
Life Sentence seems destined for capital punishment.
The freshman CW drama is being moved from the schedule after four middling episodes — and one especially lackluster showing this week. The network announced Friday that only one more episode will air on its Wednesday time slot, before taking a two-week break and shifting to Fridays at 9 o’clock on April 27.
The series, starring Pretty Little Liars alum Lucy Hale, could only muster a 0.1 rating among adults 18-49 and 400,000 on its most Wednesday night — easily ranking as the lowest-rated scripted hour to air on a broadcast network this season. Time-shifting has been minimal, with live-plus-seven day ratings for the premiere only lifting it to a 0.4 rating in the key demo.
It’s not a cancellation for the drama, but it does not bode well at all. Even with the network’s always-significant streaming lifts, it’s unlikely that enough viewers have been tuning into alternate platforms to justify keeping it around. It’s also been quite some time since the CW was motivated enough by a poor linear performance to yank something from the lineup this soon.
Executive produced by Bill Lawrence, the Warner Bros./CBS TV Studios show is not a typical CW drama. Neither comic book in source material, or a prestige comedy like Crazy Ex Girlfriend or Jane the Virgin, its more the kind of drama the network was known for earlier in its time on the air.
The CW, interestingly, has not made any big renewal news for the 2018-19 season. At this point in the TV calendar, it’s typically given the green light to most of its series.
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