Before March, reports have been rife that Season 5 of the American teen family drama “Switched at Birth” will return to Freeform in April.
While it had fans of the Peabody Award-winning TV show quite excited, it turned out to be very short-lived as bad news seemed to have sprung out of nowhere thereafter.
A couple of bad news came to the show last month. The first one is that Season 5 of “Switched at Birth” is going to be the last for the show as Freeform has already cancelled it even before its fifth season premiered on the small screen.
The second not-so-good news for fans and viewers of “Switched at Birth” is that the show will not premiere in April this year as previous reports indicated. It turns out that “Switched at Birth” will be aired next year but no exact date has been given by Freeform as of yet, details Crossmap.
Freeform made the announcement in early March that the fifth season of “Switched at Birth” would be the show’s last.
Series creator Lizzy Weiss confirmed the Freeform announcement when she posted on Twitter on March 12 that Season 5 is going to be the final one for the show. She also added that “Switched at Birth” will complete its amazing 103 episodes with pride, love, and gratitude, reports TV Line.
As if the cancellation announcement was not bad enough, the network also pushes back the show’s release date to next year. That had fans both sad and frustrated as they had to wait longer for their favorite TV series.
Lizzy Weiss also made the clarification on Twitter when she posted on March 25 that the April 2016 release date of “Switched at Birth” Season 5 was wrong. She confirmed that the show will air in 2017 and it was not her choice to make. But she promised fans of the show that “Switched at Birth” will deliver a kick-ass finale.
A huge surprise
The cancellation announcement by Freeform on “Switched at Birth” was a huge surprise for fans since the show was actually renewed for a fifth season as early as October of last year or even before its Season 4 ended.
“Switched at Birth” Season 5 episodes has been reduced to 10, down from the usual 20 to 30 episodes per season.
With the network’s decision to cancel the TV show, fans of “Switched at Birth” started a petition on both change.org and ipetitions to convince Freeform to reconsider its decision. The petition in change.org already has 2,600 signatures after two weeks, while the one in ipetition has less than a hundred signatures after a week.
“Switched at Birth” premiered in June 2011 to 3.3 million total viewers and a 1.3 demo rating. The Season 4 finale generated 840,000 viewers and a 0.4 rating.
A heartbreaker for the show creator
The decision of Freeform to cancel the show also came out as a heartbreaker to show creator Lizzy Weiss, who previously can hardly contain her excitement for the premiere of Season 5 of “Switched at Birth.”
Since December 26 last year, Weiss has been posting on her Twitter account the front page of the script for every episode beginning with the first episode entitled “The Call.” It appears that the showrunner is posting the episode’s script immediately after she and the writers have gone over them.
On February 29, Weiss posted on her Twitter account the title of the seventh episode of Season 5 of “Switched at Birth” and it is to be “Memory (The Hear).” However, episode 7 happens to be the 100th episode of the popular TV series, which is why Weiss became a bit emotional in her post.
She tweeted that they have made 100 episodes of “Switched at Birth” already and she is getting emotional already. She added that so much has happened for all of them since they started doing the TV series.
OMG I have waited for such a long time for season five now i have to wait until 2017 this is messed up
Oh man, you’re kidding, right? This has to be a joke, a very cruel joke. :( But I really like this show a lot.
Switched at Birth is my favourite show. I watched it when it first came out and I have rewatched the series many times on netflix. It is very upsetting that I now have to wait until 2017 just for a finial 10-20 episodes. :(
The best show on and you have to cancel it! Why not take off some of those other shows that suck and leave Switched At Birth alone!