When NBC announced on May 1, 2026 that it was cancelling its freshman comedy Stumble after just one season, something interesting happened online. Alongside the usual wave of fan frustration, a very different kind of comment started showing up – people saying they had never even heard of the show before, besides the people who had watched it, were upset.
People who genuinely did not know it existed until the moment it was announced as cancelled. That reaction alone says a lot, and it has opened up a real conversation about how NBC handled the show’s promotion from the very beginning.
Stumble was an NBC mockumentary comedy about a cheerleading coach who loses her job after videos surface of her partying with her team and has to start fresh with a new group of inexperienced athletes at a junior college.
The show’s lead was played by Jenn Lyon, with supporting roles by Taran Killam and a supporting cast member that included Kristin Chenoweth. The show received an 82% critical rating and a 96% audience score from Rotten Tomatoes, which are both signs of how much viewers loved the show when they had a chance to watch it. The issue was that not enough people had that opportunity to see it.
A timeslot that made discovery nearly impossible
Stumble had a Friday night time slot that followed Happy’s Place on the schedule. That is the most challenging timeslot for new shows debuting to build out their audience.
Traditionally, on broadcast television, Friday night has represented the lowest viewing hours and is thus a difficult time to get viewers to tune in to a show that is launching new with little promotional backing.
The debut of the show on NBC was on November 7, 2025 and had over 2 million viewers during the premiere and dropped to 1.7 million viewers in its second week. The ratings have been fluctuating since then but have never reached the premiere ratings again.
A few days before NBC made the official announcement of cancelation, Lyon posted a direct request to her fans on Instagram asking them to watch the show on Peacock, hoping that if enough fans watched, it would have sufficient fan interest to save the show.
It is a bad sign when a main actor attempts a last ditch effort like this, but it further proves to the audience that they also felt that the show did not receive its proper chance to succeed while it was still in a position of having the opportunity to continue.
What did fans say about the cancelation decision by NBC?
The comments flooding social media after the cancelation split into two very distinct groups. The first group was made up of people who had watched every episode and were heartbroken.
The second group, and this is what made the conversation particularly striking, were people who simply had no idea the show had ever aired. The “first time hearing of this” reaction to a show that had already completed a full 13-episode season and wrapped in March 2026 is a marketing problem more than anything else. There was a whole thread on Reddit that discussed the issue.
An user @spaceman_danger commented,
“If I was never on Reddit I never would have heard about this show. I feel like the marketing for it was bad. Where are the you tube shorts, flooding ad campaigns, and clever billboards that get picked up on Buzzfeed?”
Another user @jbrowder24 commented,
“I loved both shows and was holding up a small sliver of hope they might move Stumble to Peacock :(“
The user @monsieurxander commented,
“Stumble was set up to fail, airing on Friday nights and hitting streaming on Saturdays”
Another user @GrayPal184 mentioned,
“Stumble being canceled is one huge bummer.”
An user @StrictCelery commented,
“NBC you didn’t deserve Stumble! I hate it here! 🏃”
The user @floridorito commented,
“The only people pushing it are superfans like me who’re doing it for free on here. 🙁 I’ve never seen an ad for it.
I happened to “stumble” on it while scrolling through Peacock for something to watch back when it first started airing back in January. If I didn’t have Reddit or Peacock, I’d never have even heard of it.”
Another user @Fandam_YT said,
“I was hoping NBC would realise Stumble only did badly because it was in a bad timeslot and poorly promoted. I mean putting it after Happy’s Place was such a tonal mismatch, and premiering in November didnt help. St. Denis Medical was right there, but instead they paired that with repeats of a Peacock show that was already renewed”
NBC did try several scheduling adjustments during the season to get the show in front of more people, and the series had strong internal support at the network creatively, its cast was even invited to NBCUniversal’s television awards season luncheon.
But internal support and actual promotional visibility are two different things, and for a lot of potential viewers, Stumble simply never crossed their radar.
With the cancelation now confirmed, the only remaining NBC comedy still waiting to hear about its future is The Fall and Rise of Reggie Dinkins, starring Tracy Morgan and Daniel Radcliffe. As for Stumble, fans are holding out hope that a streamer will step in, but for now, its story ends after one season that far too few people got to see.
Stay tuned to Soap Central for more updates.
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Edited by Subho Mukhopadhyay