As renewal and cancellation season rolls on for the television industry, one of the most high-profile cancellations (but perhaps not that surprising) was Rescue HI-Surf. The show was one of FOX's big new additions to the schedule in 2024 and it looked poised to become a staple of the network's procedural content, but it didn't quite take off in the way that they had hoped.
The show filmed in Hawaii and it was also set there, as it focused on a team of lifeguards led by stars Robbie Magasiva and Arielle Kebbel. Being that first responder dramas have performed well on FOX, it was hoped that this one might inherit the 911 audience after the network moved on from both shows in that franchise (with ABC picking up the original and spinoff Lone Star ending after five seasons) but that simply didn't happen.
It appears that this played into the network's decision to cancel the show. FOX Entertainment President Michael Thorn spoke to the press about the show's demise, saying that it "just didn’t catch on like we had hoped". He doesn't rule out working with producer John Wells and Warner Bros. TV again, adding that Recue HI-Surf just wasn't the project they needed it to be:
"We love our partnership with John Wells and Warner Brothers and hope to do more with John and are doing more with Warner Brothers, but it just didn’t resonate with our audience the way we needed to be able to return it."
The series did have a tough time holding onto its audience. Although it premiered to a very solid 4.7 million viewers back in September, its sophomore episode held onto only half of that audience. By the fourth episode, it was dipping into the 1 million territory - where it never managed to pull itself out of for the remainder of its 19-episode run.
The show was also on the expensive side of things. Although FOX Entertainment CEO Rob Wade told the press that the show's budget was not the reason for its cancellation, Deadline reports that Rescue HI-Surf was on the high end of FOX's $3M-$4M-an-episode model, which was in part due to the fact that it filmed in Hawaii.
We've made the comparison to 911 already but it does carry a lot of weight here in gauging Rescue HI-Surf's success. The Ryan Murphy-procedural was among FOX's most-watched shows, but the network opted not to renew it after a very successful six season run as part of the collective movement of studios now looking to produce their own shows (ABC produced 911, which made it an easy pickup for that network when FOX renewal talks fell through). Its spinoff Lone Star was also a big ratings hit for Fox, but it suffered the same fate (only ABC didn't have the room to save that one).
Lone Star was used as a lead-in for Rescue HI-Surf in its final season, but that wasn't enough to build it its own audience. Many had predicted the inevitable sad outcome for the series when FOX decided to replace it as the Super Bowl lead-out back in February with The Floor season 3 premiere. It was a very rare move for a network to make but it showed a lack of confidence in the show, with many expecting its eventual cancellation from that moment on.
In another life / in a different year, Rescue HI-Surf might have thrived, but it simply wasn't to be.