Movies - TV
Dan Harmon Had His Doubts About Community's Move To Yahoo
By MICHAEL BOYLE
The beloved TV show “Community” never drew large ratings and each season NBC placed the show on the chopping block for a possible cancellation. The firing and rehiring of showrunner Dan Harmon midway through the show's run and the loss of two central characters in Season 5 hurt the series, and NBC finally decided to give “Community” the ax.
Yahoo! Screen picked up “Community,” but Harmon was wary as Netflix and Hulu dominated the streaming wars then, and Yahoo had fallen from its early 2000s prominence. However, Yahoo convinced Harmon by showing him data indicating the site’s still-high daily visits.
No longer bound by network constraints, the show was free to increase episode runtimes while it explored weirder and darker plots infused with numerous F-bombs. Many of the original characters departed the show by this point, a fact reflected in Jeff Winger’s story arc and his struggle with his friends moving on with their lives and, with them, the show's death.