CBS released their mid-season schedule and fan favorite sci fi series Person of Interest was conspicuously absent. Last season, that show received an eleventh hour renewal, but only for thirteen episodes and it was supposed to bow in the middle of the television year. But CBS apparently hasn’t found a slot for it just yet. That doesn’t mean that it won’t be coming back (they are already well into production on those thirteen eps), but it does indicate that the network may just use it as schedule spackle to fill up any empty hours across the week. If you look at the schedule that they published, you will notice it mostly focuses on Wednesday through Friday shows with no mention of Monday or Tuesday. I’m guessing that CBS will slot Person of Interest back into the Tuesday 10 PM EST timeslot while Limitless is on hiatus, but that won’t be enough time for it to cram in thirteen episodes. So it could then get kicked to another hour that is available later in the season or shuffled around the schedule each week to cut down on repeats. Or it could get pushed to a late start of April which would have it finishing off its fifth season in early Summer. None of these are scenarios for a show that a network is still trying to keep alive which strongly suggests that CBS considers this the final season of the series. And from what I heard, the producers approached this set of episodes as if it would be the show’s last. I don’t necessarily consider that a bad thing because Person of Interest has had a good run and this gives it a chance to wrap up most of its storylines, whereas a fourth season cancellation would have left us hanging. It is possible the Warner Bros. may be looking at shopping the series around, and since it is all just padding to the syndication run an additional season on another network or one of the streaming services is a possibility. We will have to see how that plays out, but the fact that CBS left it off their mid-season schedule definitely suggests that they have little interest in keeping it on their Prime Time slate for another year. But at least we get a final season and some closure and I will pass along the information as soon as I hear when it will be returning to the schedule.

Note that with the ratings delay due to last week’s holidays, the usual ratings round up post will not hit until later this afternoon at the earliest or more likely sometime tomorrow morning. In the mean time, keep an eye on theCancelled Sci Fi Twitter Site for the latest ratings news as well as any breaking announcements.