Well they're too scared to do anything 'adventurous', so I guess it's better for them long-term if they just don't show it one year than kill it off entirely.

I think they'll go further into 'different' with the regular series than they would have had to if things had been different - but that means that the show would have had more tension, and more people probably would have watched it, so they wouldn't have needed to change it so much. At least they say they're doing something about it.