Save Our Shows 2025: See how your TV favorites fared in USA TODAY's exclusive poll
CBS' "The Equalizer," a fifth-season revival of a 1980s drama starring Queen Latifah as a mysterious guardian angel, is the big winner in USA TODAY's exclusive Save Our Shows poll.
You've made your voice heard: "Equalizer" dominated the 28th annual poll, which asked readers which of 17 endangered broadcast-network comedies and dramas deserved another season, and which should face the chopping block. About 47% of voters want the show to return for a sixth season, the highest percentage of any show, followed by NBC's "The Irrational," starring Jesse L. Martin as a case-solving behavioral-science professor, which 44% want to keep.
At the other extreme, Fox's animated comedy "The Great North," the same network's new Denis Leary military sitcom "Going Dutch" and NBC's "Lopez vs. Lopez" earned the lowest support among the 17 series, with 60% of voters – the most of any series – wanting to drop "Lopez," which stars comedian George Lopez and his daughter, Mayan.
"Lopez" is unlikely to continue, while the fates of two other series on the poll was decided after it was published on April 2: ABC's latest Tim Allen comedy, "Shifting Gears," which debuted in January, has been renewed for a second season. It placed third in the poll, as 34% of voters wanted it back. And CBS' "Poppa House," another multigenerational family sitcom starring Damon Wayans and Damon Wayans Jr., was canceled after one season (just 23% of poll respondents wanted it back, while 53% hoped to bury it).
Networks will make their final choices between May 7 and June 30, as they announce schedules for the TV 2025-26 season and decide which shows to cancel.
Status report: Save Our Shows: What's renewed, canceled or 'on the bubble' in 2025?
More than 36,000 readers participated in this year's poll. Save Our Shows has been credited by NBC with "saving" sci-fi drama "Timeless," first for a second season and the next year, for a finale moive, after it led two consecutive polls. Another top vote-getter, "Zoey's Extraordinary Playlist," was renewed for a second season on NBC despite low ratings and then for a Christmas movie to wrap up the series on the Roku Channel.
The poll returned from a hiatus in 2024, when monthslong actors and writers' strikes in Hollywood disrupted the rollout of new and returning shows and delayed renewal decisions.
In 2023, rescue drama "9-1-1," then on Fox, led the poll, but was canceled due to cost concerns; ABC, owned by Disney, which produces the series, snapped it up, and this fall is planning a new spinoff set in Nashville. Other top winners were ABC's "The Good Doctor" (renewed for one more season) and "Alaska Daily" (canceled), and CBS' "S.W.A.T.," which was renewed but canceled this year.
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USA Today
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July 4th fireworks on TV: Bigger NYC show to fire 80,000 shells around Brooklyn Bridge
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Before Saving the Shop in ‘Tires' Season 2, Thomas Haden Church Hadn't Heard of the Show
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And I had a connection with an executive at Rough House Pictures, Danny McBride's company (and a Tires production company), because I had another project that they were considering doing like three years ago — something that my partner and I had written. But I got to know this executive Brandon James, and he just reached out to me — it would have been, let's see, probably early September, because I was in London all last summer shooting a film for Netflix. And Brandon reached out to me, and he said, 'Hey, you know, we're doing this show Tires, and we're ramping up for the second season. Would you be interested in playing Shane Gillis' dad?' I knew who Shane was. I thought Shane was hilarious. And so they sent me some scripts and asked me to watch the show, which I did, and I really, really liked it. I really liked the chemistry. I read the scripts and then I jumped on a call with John McKeever and Steve Gerben — two of the guys that created the show with Shane — and we just had a great first meeting. And they just straight-out said, 'Look, dude, if it's going to be you, then we want to build the character of Phil with you — and Shane, obviously — but we all want to do it with you. Not for you, with you.' It was of the highest order of collaboration. I got there two weeks in advance, and every time they had a script meeting, I was there just pitching ideas and listening and really just becoming a cohesive gear in the machine. You came in for season two as Shane's dad, Phil. You dress great, you look great, you buy out Valley Forge Automotive to keep your son and nephew employed — how rich is Phil? He's got the kind of money where he can just show up and be like, 'I want to open half-a-dozen mattress stores, and I want you to manage them.' He's that guy. 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Sam immediately got me with a wrangler friend of his who lived out there in the desert, and I started— every spare minute I had while I was shooting another movie, I would go out riding with this wrangler friend of Sam's. Then after I finished shooting that, Sam had a really good friend in West Texas who had a big ranch, and Sam, he literally told me, goes, 'You're going to go out there and you're going to work as a cowboy for them, because they're doing their their spring roundup — they're marking calves.' And that's what I did. I went out to cowboy on this huge ranch for a month, and then, literally, the day I finished, I drove back to Dallas, and I flew directly from Dallas to Tucson and went to work on Tombstone. When I showed up, I was pretty seasoned in the saddle. But we didn't do a lot of riding in Tombstone, that was always a little bit of a disappointment to me — because we were cowboys. This conversation has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity. 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'ER' Icon, 58, Stuns With Ageless Beauty in Rare Photo 20 Years After Show
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