ABC Cancels 'Extreme Makeover: Home Edition' As Regular Series, Will Air Specials

ABC has canceled long-running reality series Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. The feel-good/tearjerker series will end its nine-season run with two episodes on January 6 and January 13, including the show’s 200th, in which the team builds 7 homes in 7 days for tornado victims in Joplin, Mo. ABC plans to keep the Extreme Makeover: Home Edition franchise alive through specials after this season. The series, produced by Endemol USA and hosted by Ty Pennington, was a long-time staple in ABC’s Sunday 8 PM slot. Following a steep ratings decline in the fall of 2010, ABC benched the reality veteran in the spring for rookie Secret Millionaire. And this fall, the network found a new Sunday 8 PM anchor in freshman drama Once Upon A Time, moving EMHE to Fridays. Pennington, who will segue to ABC’s new daytime show The Revolution, commented on the end of EMHE in a post on his Web site titled The Greatest Job Of My Life. “I am incredibly grateful for having been part of a television show that changed the lives of so many people,” he wrote. “It has been an honor to work side by side with the EMHE families, builders, and thousands of volunteers who have proven that good hearts can and do change the world.”