Frasier Revival Series Canceled By Paramount+, But There's Still Hope For Season 3

The doctor is out — at Paramount+ anyway. Deadline reports that the revival series of long-running sitcom "Frasier" has been canceled after two seasons. This isn't necessarily the end for the show, though, as production company CBS Studios is currently shopping it around to other potential platforms. If does get picked up, "Frasier" season 3 is still a possibility.

Reports of the cancellation don't include any specific reasons, and since the "Frasier" revival was exclusive to a streaming platform, there's no reliable data available about season 2's viewership. The first season also aired its premiere on CBS to 2.2 million viewers back in October 2023, and Paramount+ reported that it was the "No. 1 original comedy premiere" in terms of reach (somewhat stretching the definition of "original"). There have been no press releases about season 2's viewership, though, and this latest news indicates that the numbers weren't much to brag about.

The original 264-episode run of "Frasier," plus the 20 episodes of the revival series, will remain on Paramount+ for now. The original series is also available on Hulu and Prime Video, and Deadline speculates that those streamers will be potential targets as CBS Studios takes "Frasier" to market.

Sitcoms occupy a unique place in the business of streaming TV. The success of Netflix wasn't built on its original programming or movies, but on people endlessly binge-watching episodes of "The Office" and "Friends." When the end of Netflix's license deal for "The Office" was looming in 2019, the streamer offered $90 million per year to keep it but was outbid by NBC, which made an offer of $100 million per year to stream the show on Peacock. In an effort to fill the hole left behind by Michael Scott and co., Netflix paid $500 million for the global rights to "Seinfeld." So, you might think that "Frasier" would be an easy sell.

What those other shows have in common, though, isn't just that they're sitcoms but that they're old sitcoms. The likes of "Friends" and "Seinfeld" have already gone through the battle to survive and emerged victorious. What's more, a big part of their appeal lies in the fact that they're largely being rewatched rather than seen for the first time; you don't need to pay attention to follow the plot if you already know the plot. A show being streamed doesn't necessarily mean that it's being actively watched, with many people simply choosing to put sitcoms on merely as background noise. (In that sense, perhaps it's fair for Paramount+ to label the "Frasier" revival an original series.)

The other big difference, of course, is that all the episodes of those older shows have already been made. With licensing-only deals, there's no need to shell out for more seasons. Sitcoms have been rescued by streamers after cancellation before — "One Day at a Time," "The Mindy Project," and "Arrested Development," to name a few notable examples. But those examples date back to when companies were aggressively growing their streaming libraries, whereas now the trend across the board is one of cutting back on both licensed content and originals. In the current landscape, "Frasier" may struggle to find a new home.