As we reported to you guys weeks and weeks ago, despite Fox ending the first season of Dollhouse one episode short, Fox executives decided to pick up the Joss Whedon show for its second season.  Let’s simply call this the Firefly-effect, meaning Fox execs were worried more about canceling a great show on the cusp of finding an audience more than they were worried about Dollhouse struggling for a second season.  Even though Fox tinkered with Whedon’s storytelling, I suppose we should be greatful they let him air the episodes in order.

Here’s the latest on the Dollhouse renewal from the Philadelphia Inquirer:

IF you’d been listening in on a conference call yesterday between Fox executives and reporters, you might have thought “Dollhouse” was the most important show on the network’s 2009-10 schedule.

But with the return of many shows already confirmed days, weeks and months before yesterday’s formal announcements to advertisers in New York, and most of the new shows still unseen, there didn’t seem to be much else to talk about than the renewal of “Dollhouse” and the cancellation of another sci-fi show, “Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles.”

“This is a bet on Joss Whedon,” declared Fox entertainment president Kevin Reilly, as he explained to reporters yesterday that the network’s decision to give the struggling “Dollhouse” a second season was more a vote of confidence in the creator of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” than in the numbers his latest show is drawing.

Sure, it probably didn’t hurt that “Dollhouse,” which averaged just 3.72 million viewers this season and ranked 149th in the Nielsens among the 18- to 49-year-olds advertisers target, is “one of the biggest time-shifted shows on the air,” or that “Terminator,” which drew 4.63 million and ranked 122nd in the target demo, “was not an inexpensive show.”

But first, insisted Reilly, “it’s a bet on creativity and that’s something that has never changed.”

Read the full story here.

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