.When Designated Survivor first entered ABC's platform of television series materials in 2016, the Tom Kirkman starred series showed promising reception and viewership numbers. Having over 10 million viewers per episode, it is no doubt as to why the series has become one of ABC's strong materials.
However, things took a huge turn when the second season of the show premiered. Sadly, the viewership records showed a 50 to 60 percent decline during its course. And when the second season finale aired, the total number of viewers was down to 3.5 million.
Based on numbers alone, this was already a bad sign to the network. And it was definitely a tell that the series might have lost its hype and gem to the viewers. Of course, the first course of action was to cancel the show. And indeed, after four months, ABC finally canceled Designated Survivor for another season.
Aside from the viewership decline, another factor that is being looked upon when tackling the cancellation is the fact that the series constantly changes their showrunners. In fact, in the course of two seasons, Designated Survivor had four showrunners in totality, replacing one after the other.
Whatever the reason for changing its showrunner is still unknown. But it was revealed that if ever the show gets a third season, a new and fifth showrunner will take place.
Certainly, there are internal concerns and issues that caused these events. But whatever the case, Netflix took a chance a year after and ordered a third season of Designated Survivor. And obviously, this made the whole fandom happy and delighted.
As of the moment, the new season is still on its way to its premiere date. With only less than two weeks left, it seemingly appears that many are already waiting for its arrival. And what made it so much more intriguing is because reports today suggest that the new season will feature new changes to the show. These changes, as it appears, are largely related to the restrictions that the show had when it was still airing on its former network.
As you may know, television networks have a wide set of restrictions when it comes to their materials. But unlike these networks, these restrictions do not apply for online streaming platforms. So, it is very much expected that the new season will be much closer to reality since the production and writers will take advantage of the loose restrictions.
And since politics is the main theme of the show, the new season will certainly bring more changes that will perfectly fit the course of the season.
Designated Survivor Season 3 is set to premiere on June 7, on Netflix.
