NBC is finalizing its 2026-27 season after canceling seven shows over the past several months, a sharp reset that now reaches from prime time to daytime. The latest cuts include Brilliant Minds and Stumble, both taken off the board on May 1, while The Kelly Clarkson Show will not return after this season.
The cancellations also swept up Law & Order: Organized Crime, which NBC ended in April after five seasons, along with Access Hollywood and Access Daily, both canceled in March. NBC confirmed on May 1 that Brilliant Minds was done after two seasons, making it the network’s lowest-rated scripted drama this season, and it also ended Stumble after one season. The freshman comedy followed a highly competitive junior college cheerleading coach who moves to a small Oklahoma college after being fired.
The scale of the cutback matters because NBC is not trimming one corner of the schedule. It is changing the shape of the lineup while the next season is still being assembled. Access Hollywood, which launched in 1996 as a rival to CBS’s Entertainment Tonight, will air its final episode in September, closing a long run in first-run syndication that also included Access Daily.
The human stakes surfaced most plainly in Christopher Meloni’s note to viewers after Organized Crime was canceled. He thanked fans for helping give Detective Elliot Stabler “life and longevity,” said they had stayed with the character and welcomed him back, and added that it was “a great ride” and that they had helped give him a career he never dreamed of, “nearly 17-odd years.”
Kelly Clarkson had already framed her own exit in personal terms when she told guest host Carson Daly in February that she was ending her show after this season. She said family life had changed, that the dynamic had shifted for a while, and that seeing how precious life is made the workload harder to ignore. Her show has won multiple Emmy Awards, which makes the decision to end it after this season more notable, not less.
Behind the programming changes, NBCUniversal is also reshaping its first-run syndication business. Frances Berwick said the company is making changes to its first-run syndication division to better align with the programming preferences of local stations, while continuing to distribute its existing program library and other off-network titles as it winds down production of first-run shows. That is the clearest sign yet that the cancellations are part of a broader corporate realignment, not a one-off sweep of underperformers.
The immediate next step is plain: Access Hollywood is headed for its September finale, and NBC’s 2026-27 schedule will be built without these seven titles. What remains to be seen is how much of the network’s daytime and scripted identity survives the overhaul once the new season is set.
