Summer TV 2016 Winners & Losers

WINNER: PRETTY LITTLE LIARS

The long-running Freeform drama is getting a much-needed second wind this summer thanks to a hot new mystery. If this turns out to be Liars' final season, it'll no doubt go out with a bang.

With the Liars likely going bye-bye, Freeform needs to cultivate new hits — and yet both Guilt and Dead of Summer are dropping a full half of their lead-ins' numbers, with the former averaging a scant 300,000 weekly viewers. Their lack of buzz on the social media front doesn't help matters.

WINNER: THE LAST SHIP

TNT's action-thriller rebounded from a very wobbly sophomore run to deliver compelling weekly nailbiters and a great deal of passable-for-TV sea battle CGI, all while sustaining the loss of Rhona Mitra's Dr. Scott.

LOSER: WAYWARD PINES

When this "limited series" was unexpectedly renewed after exhausting all of its source material, many wondered: What will Season 2 be about? And... we're kinda still asking that, even after the sophomore run aired. Any possible Season 3 would be an especially neat trick!

Season 2's creative missteps — deplorable versus audacious antics, Jeremy's continued existence — coupled with racial tensions that went nowhere and the abrupt change in Coleman's personality suggested there had been some incorrect takeaways from what informed Season 1's success.

WINNER: THE BACHELORETTE

Sure, the actual romance of Season 12 was a total snooze, given that former football player Jordan sealed his fate as the winner from Night 1. But producers knew they had a legendary villain in Chad, and the drama that unfolded between him and his fellow suitors returned the aging dating show to appointment television.

LOSER: SO YOU THINK YOU CAN DANCE

So you think we wanted the gorgeous, gut-wrenching artistic core of our favorite summer reality-competition staple made sickeningly saccharine with a shift to pre-teen contestants and their contrived sound bites? Sorry, Fox, you thought wrong — and series-low ratings mean you get low marks for both technical merit and artistic impression.

It might have started out as the top-rated summer comedy premiere in seven years (after finally being taken off the shelf), but viewers tuned out once they realized this Mike Epps-fronted remake had few laughs and even less heart.

The drama's fourth (and arguably best) season did a masterful job reflecting the Black Lives Matter movement (with Poussey as the Litchfield equivalent to Eric Garner) and exploring mental illness amongst the prison population.

LOSER: AQUARIUS

Some crazy next-gen math (broken down here by TVBTN) played into the low-rated series' Season 2 pick-up. Yet even in this era of reconsidered/ reversed renewals, the Peacock stuck with its plan, only to see the numbers crater further. As such, the back half of Season 2 has been sent to the Saturday burn-off zone.

Rebooting tried-and-true game shows $100,000 Pyramid and Match Game, to air alongside Celebrity Family Feud, gave ABC a reliable Sunday slate while viewers enjoyed lively, star-studded (and often-saucy) summer fodder.

LOSER: THE SUMMER OLYMPICS

Shamelessly scheduled tape delays, momentum-squashing ad loads and a conspicuously involved Ryan Seacrest's stealing of airtime added up to ratings that ran a distant second to the previous summer games.

For a show designed to appeal to America's nostalgia for music of yesteryear, nothing about this live-action jukebox was particularly memorable — Hanson's instantly viral performance of "MMMBop" aside.

The streaming outlet became the first of its kind to create a must-see TV lineup courtesy of the Tuesday twosome Casual and Difficult People, a perfect blend of East and West Coast comedy about similarly self-involved, yet oh-so-lovable jerks.

Though we deemed him a winner of summer 2015, the Apprentice boss-turned-GOP presidential candidate has taken a beating these past few months: In addition to being a piñata for late-night TV, the Republican convention — his coronation ceremony — got hijacked from go by a "plagiarist wife" narrative. To add insult to injury someone who really likes to insult, Trump's onetime NBC boss reportedly called him "demented" and "pompous" — then mocked Celeb Apprentice for "consistently" running "LAST in its time period, by the way."

WINNER: THE NIGHT OF

The engrossing, eight-episode drama about a Muslim college student accused of murder following a drug-fueled one-night-stand proved to be taut, twisty and occasionally traumatic — the polar opposite of True Detective's turgid second season, if you will — and, in the process, helped HBO regain some of its prestige-cable cred.


Not only did AMC's surreal new comic-book series deliver some of the summer's most eye-popping fight scenes, it was also a ratings knockout — the already-renewed show ranks among the year's Top 10 cable dramas.

More so than fellow CBS freshman American Gothic, this horror-comedy boasted top-shelf auspices — in no less than The Good Wife's creators as well as a solid, recognizable cast — and yet it stumbled out of the gate. Ultimately relegated to Sundays, it now draws fewer than 2 million viewers. (Not even the super-catchy musical recaps can flip its unexpected "Loser" status.)

The Starz drama has never had a bigger season than its third, which opened to record ratings and tons of buzz — validating the premium cabler's decision to move its original fare to Sunday nights. Is it any wonder Starz quickly rewarded the crime story with a quick two-season renewal? (Now, if only Ghost were having as good a year...)

LOSER: MR. ROBOT

By far the toughest call of this bunch, the fact remains that USA Network's acclaimed drama saw a chunk of its already modest freshman audience get "wiped," while Season 2's storyline 1) cordoned off Elliot from most everyone else and 2) has been slow to get out of the gate.