The first season of Pitch, a Fox drama imagining the first woman in Major League Baseball, showed some promise. The show was thoughtful and nuanced (if at times a little out of focus), with some occasional soap-opera intrigue to spice things up.
Unfortunately for Fox, the audience never fully materialized. The show, which aired Thursdays at 9 p.m. ET, averaged about three million viewers over 10 episodes, below average for a Fox scripted show. As a result, Pitch is very much on the bubble when it comes to getting renewed for a second season.
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Is The Exorcist coming back? Along with Pitch, Walden said, “Both are very much in the conversation. Not sure. Exorcist actually improved our time period on Friday night by about 35% and it’s an interesting opportunity. It’s never going to be a big ratings winner because of the serialized nature but I thought the show was really good and it was very consistent. Pitch? Bigger conversation.”
She had earlier called it “a great show. It’s a little bit of a tweener. It’s a female-skewing idea, but it’s about baseball and men watch baseball. So we’ve tried and the delayed-viewing is excellent. Now we have to make a tough decision which is in this environment is it possible to grow Pitch to 6 or 7 million viewers on a seven-day metric?”
That doesn’t sound super promising for Pitch. It sounds like Fox is worried the show straddles the line between being a show for women and being a show for baseball fans, who are disproportionately male.
The cast of Pitch seems to be preparing for another season, but it’s not clear at all that Fox is onboard.
About Alex Putterman
Alex is a writer and editor for The Comeback and Awful Announcing. He has written for The Atlantic, VICE Sports, MLB.com, SI.com and more. He is a proud alum of Northwestern University and The Daily Northwestern. You can find him on Twitter @AlexPutterman.