2024 in Review: The 20+ Dumb Things TV Did This Year

Matt Webb Mitovich, Vlada Gelman, Rebecca Iannucci, Dave Nemetz, Ryan Schwartz, Charlie Mason and Andy Swift

22 December 2024 at 1:00 pm·11-min read

This list is not about the unjust cancellation of certain TV shows, let’s make that clear from the start.

No, this installment in TVLine’s annual Year in Review package famously revisits the many other kinds of terrible, horrible, no good, very bad or merely questionable decisions made by network and studios execs, schedulers, casting directors, writers and marketing departments over the past 12 months.

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Listen, we at TVLine totally get it. Making TV is not easy! Especially in this highly competitive climate. Tough calls sometimes need to be made, about when to air a show, who to sacrifice to a wave of layoffs, and whether you want to be bothered with checking if that Bachelorette suitor has a(n easily confirmed) checkered past or not.

Which streamer still struggles to steer eyeballs to its top-shelf content? What was Netflix thinking with its marketing of its Menendez Brothers drama? And why did longtime NBA partner Warner Bros. Discovery let someone steal the ball?

Those are but a few of the more than 20 bad decisions made across all of TV in 2024 — again, not including any number of unjust cancellations detailed elsewhere on TVLine.

Review our list below, then weigh in with the worst non-cancellation decisions in your opinion!

1. ABC Scrimps on Scripted

ABC aired just four-and-a-half hours of weekly scripted programming this fall, with The Rookie, Will Trent and The Conners‘ (mini) farewell season all held for midseason.

CBS? America’s Most Watched Network served up 14 hours. NBC? Ten. Fox aired six, and even The CW for a hot minute was airing four hours’ worth of weekly scripted fare.

Just saying.

2. Apple TV+ Needs Promotion+!

Apple TV+ has been quietly curating one of streaming’s strongest lineups of scripted originals… but why is it happening so quietly? Just this year, big names like Cate Blanchett, Jennifer Connelly, Austin Butler and Vince Vaughn led some of the streamer’s most interesting programming — joining existing gems like Severance, Silo and Loot — yet we’ve encountered countless TV fans who have never even heard of the shows on Apple’s slate. Did you know Colin Farrell starred in a noir drama that featured the wildest plot twist of 2024? You probably didn’t! And should have!

3. All American Opts for Reboot After Perfect Finale

Perhaps we shouldn’t scoff that one of the last vestiges of the “old” CW still has some life in it. We can’t help fearing, though, that All American is forcing unnecessary overtime with a seventh season that will only feature three original cast members and in turn soft-reboots the entire show. Season 6, which had an air of finality all along (and married off its two main couples), would have been a perfectly satisfying swan song, allowing one of The CW’s best-performing shows to go out on a high.

4. The Bold and the Beautiful’s Taylor Recast

Daytime-TV vet Rebecca Budig is a fine, Emmy-nominated actress, to be sure. But she is so youthful that we have to remind ourselves every time she has a scene with Jacqueline MacInnes Woods, who is only 14 years her junior, that Taylor is not Steffy’s peer but her mother.

5. The Bachelor Franchise’s Security Issues

We need a bigger bouncer to stand outside the Bachelor mansion, because some unsavory types found their way inside this year. First, The Bachelorette‘s “winner” Devin was accused of repeatedly violating a restraining order filed against him by an ex — an accusation he denied, for the record. Next up this year, Golden Bachelorette contestant Gil saw his screen time reduced when a past restraining order filed against him came to light. Bachelor Nation producers, we humbly ask you: Take off the rose-colored glasses and vet these guys a lot more thoroughly before putting them on our TVs.

6. Bridgerton’s Emmys-Averse Scheduling

Antici…

…pation may work fine and well for Penelope and Colin, but Netflix’s decision to split the Regency Era sudser’s long-awaited Season 3 into two “parts” — and schedule them in such a peculiar way that delayed any and all Emmy consideration until 2025! — defies rationalization.

7. CBS Saturday Morning Sacks Jeff Glor

Two “inside baseball” data points underscore just how glaring a decision CBS News’ dismissal of Jeff Glor, amid a larger wave of layoffs, was: TVLine’s reporting on the CBS Saturday Morning co-anchor’s exit has garnered nearly 3,000 (!) reader comments to date. And every Saturday morning since Glor’s Sept. 28 on-air send-off, more and more viewers have sought out those months-old articles to lament the loss anew.

8. Days of Our Lives’ Soap-Within-a-Soap

Abe’s initial obsession with the soap opera Body and Soul was amusing. Cute, even. But having him take over the show as a producer, casting random townspeople (none of whom are actors) and filming it all in Salem is just too much to take seriously. Come on, what in the Fraternity Row are we even doing here? This would have been fun for a week, but it’s been going on for months with no sign of stopping — and we’re just about ready to tune out.

9. Fox Checks Its Rescue HI-Expectations

In April, Fox handed the Hawaii-set action drama Rescue HI-Surf a six-episode back order, guaranteeing 19 episodes on air a full five months ahead of its premiere. And in May, the network announced that an episode of HI-Surf would follow the 2025 Super Bowl — again, before audiences had seen a single frame.

After the show failed to make a splash, Fox quietly decided that HI-Surf would no longer follow the Big Game; instead, an episode of Rob Lowe game show The Floor will get the coveted time slot. Ouch!

10. General Hospital‘s Jaggerectomy

It was random enough for the ABC soap to bring back a character (originated in 1992 by underwear model Antonio Sabato Jr.) who has ties to barely a few characters currently in Port Charles. But to then strip him of his infamous Jagger nickname and instead saddle him with the utterly vanilla “John Cates”? Kid brother Stone (still named Stone!) must be rolling over in his grave.

11. Hallmark+ Adds Up to Confusion!

We give Hallmark props for listening to upset The Way Home fans and reversing its decision to premiere the drama’s upcoming season exclusively on the nascent streamer. But we still think it was a missed opportunity to send so many original new series directly to Hallmark+, with no second window on the linear channel (which could have promoted subscriptions). For that matter, wasn’t it kind of confusing to have the competition series Finding Mr. Christmas stream on Hallmark+, while the winner’s movie airs on the cable network?

12. NBC News Employs Ronna McDaniel for Four Days

Ronna McDaniel, former chair of the Republican National Committee and a well-documented election denier, made her debut as a paid contributor for NBC News on the March 24 edition of Meet the Press, two days after her publicly questioned hire. Another two days later — after numerous NBC News journalists sounded off, on-air, about her hiring — NBC News walked back the decision and let McDaniel go. “No organization, particularly a newsroom, can succeed unless it is cohesive and aligned,” NBCUniversal News Group chairman Cesar Conde told his staff. “Over the last few days, it has become clear that this appointment undermines that goal.”

13. The Penguin’s Name Game

“A Penguin by any other name would smell as fishy.” Hmm, we’re not so sure about that. The Batman’s oft-tuxedoed adversary has through the ages famously answered to Oswald Cobblepot, but for HBO’s offshoot of the Matt Reeves film, it was decided that Cobblepot “wasn’t a real person’s name” and “kind of a silly name back in the day” (though that was, ahem, “OK for comic books for kids”). Ergo, his rechristening as Oz Cobb. Know what’s just as “silly”? A crime boss whose name evokes a vodka-and-cranberry cocktail.

14. Prime Video Hides What My Lady Jane Is Really About

While we certainly understand wanting to preserve the element of surprise, the decision to completely hide a fundamental aspect of My Lady Jane’s plot in the trailer was oddly misleading. And we can’t help wondering if the marketing and promotional materials had been more upfront about the show’s fantasy twist, the series would have attracted more genre viewers.

15. Sexed-Up Monsters…?

We can’t argue that Nicholas Alexander Chavez and Cooper Koch don’t make finer than fine eye candy. But it was still beyond tacky for Netflix to promote Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story with homoerotic images that made the brothers seem more like red-hot lovers than survivors of sexual abuse.

16. Skeleton Crew Blasts Off… After a Long Holiday Weekend

Skeleton Crew arrived with built-in appeal to two audiences: Grown-ups who are Star Wars fans, and their kids/grandkids/wee kin who were raised right (meaning, also as Star Wars fans). Meaning, it is perfect fare for families to sample together! So, when did Disney+ decide to launch this light-hearted, Goonies-style adventure series? After the Thanksgiving holiday weekend, of course. Oh, and episodes drop at 9 pm Eastern time each week. The Force is not strong with the scheduling department.

17. The View Says ‘Boo, Humbug’ to Halloween

“Take a little time to enjoy The View.” That sentiment ends every episode of ABC’s daytime staple, yet the show’s co-hosts apparently refused to take their own advice, opting not to dress up for Halloween this year. The official “reason” was that the holiday fell only days before the 2024 presidential election, and the topics they were discussing were too serious to be done whilst dressed as, say, Agatha Harkness. How silly of us, thinking that daytime TV was supposed to be an escape from the madness of the world.

18. Vanderpump Rules: The Next Generation

Sure, the stars of Bravo’s zeitgeisty hit aren’t the spring chickens they once were, but replacing the entire cast after 11 seasons in favor of a totally new crew feels shortsighted at best. So much of what made this show a hit was its lightning-in-a-bottle cast, and we doubt it’ll get that lucky again. Has Bravo learned nothing from its revamped, ratings-challenged Real Housewives of New York? If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

19. Warner Bros. Discovery’s Costly NBA Turnover

After three decades of NBA coverage, Warner Bros. Discovery let the valuable pro sports package slip through its fingers like an errant pass, with the pro hoops league signing a long-term deal with NBC and Amazon instead. With live sports becoming increasingly valuable in this era of fractured viewership, WBD’s failure to secure NBA rights — especially when they had an exclusive negotiating window to nail down a deal — was a humiliating black eye for an already reeling media company. There’s a silver lining, though: TNT’s venerable Inside the NBA studio show will live on, via a licensing deal with ESPN.

20. Yellowstone Adamantly Denies Itself a Farewell Tour

As far back as the Season 5B press tour — in which the cast discussed, as Luke Grimes put it, “the end-end” — Paramount Network seemed to know that Yellowstone, at least in its current form, was d-o-n-e. So it made less-than-no sense for the powers that be to pull a Ted Lasso and hype the conclusion of the “season,” rather than series.

21. Young Sheldon Spoils Older Sheldon’s Cameo

We never thought we’d see Jim Parsons and Mayim Bialik in character as Sheldon and Amy again — at least not so soon after The Big Bang Theory’s 2019 series finale. But five years later, to the day, there they were, back in character as part of Young Sheldon’s grand farewell. We were thrilled to see them, to be sure, but we can’t help but think how great a surprise it would have been had CBS not used their returns to promote the prequel’s sendoff. It’s not like TV’s No. 1 comedy needed a ratings boost!

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