Breaking In Canceled… Or Is It? REPORT: FOX In Talks With Sony Pictures TV About Possibility To Bring The Show Back.

Breaking Back In?

As we reported here, FOX canceled the remainder of its scripted programming from the 2010 – 2011 season that wasn’t already canceled or renewed as of May 11th, including the Cristian Slater comedy, Breaking In. Well, apparently FOX is reconsidering that decision. According to Nellie Andreeva over at Deadline:

Fox is in discussions with Breaking In producer Sony Pictures TV about possible ways to bring the show back next season, though no decision is expected to be made until after the upfronts next week.

As we noted, out of all the shows to be canceled after the House pick-up, we were most surprised that BI was cancelled because it has been pretty successful for FOX with its American Idol lead-in.  If FOX does change their mind, it would please us to no end because as great as both Human Target and The Chicago Code were (Lie To Me was a pretty mediocre and vanilla procedural), BI is not only a great show, but its numbers actually should qualify for it for renewal.  To us, that’s equity.

In related news, FOX has also moved BI‘s season finale from its Wednesday night AI lead-out position on the schedule, to Tuesday night at 9:30, following Raising Hope.  The naysayers will say that BI wasn’t doomed before the move, it certainly will be by losing its powerhouse, lead-in.  We disagree for two reasons.  The first being that BI is much more appropriately scheduled after a another comedy than it is post-Idol.  The fact is that audiences are more likely to just leave a channel on after a thirty minute show that begins at the top of the hour and watch the lead-out if for no other reason than it’s easier to do and chances are the other networks are running one-hour shows opposite them.  Changing channels at the bottom of the hour would more than likely cause the viewer to go into a show that’s already 30 minutes into it on another network.

More importantly, regardless of how BI performs during its season finale, the show is canceled at this point anyway so you can’t get any worse than canceled and taking that a step further any negotiations that FOX is engaged that may possibly change that status will not hinge on one episode and it’s kind of silly to think that it will.

For what it’s worth, though, this may all just be a bunch of smoke and mirrors so don’t get too excited if it turns out that the unconfirmed reports regarding the aforementioned negotiations are nothing more than wishful thinking.  Still, though, this does give us hope and it would seem to make more sense that it was true than not.

Folks, don’t forget that the major network up-front media events are next week beginning on Monday, May 16th.  This is the day that we will find out the fates of all this season’s shows that haven’t already been decided and we’ll also find out what new shows will be on the schedules for the 2011 – 2012 season.  You can find out the schedules for all of the events, here.