Kim Possible

So here's the stitch: Kim Possible was a rarity. An action/adventure comedy with a strong, capable female lead, produced with enough sophistication, charm and wit to be enjoyable by kids of any age and their parents. And Kim wasn't just capable. She was a relatable, positive role model - confident, independent, kind, smart, and made good decisions (insofar as one can as a teenage super-spy), or at least learned from the bad ones. In a media world where 'tween girls are encouraged to grow up in all the wrong ways, way to fast, that bare-belly short shirt was relatively tame.

It was The Disney Channel's most watched, highest rated show. For good reason.

So of course, they stopped production on it after three seasons.

Apparently, Disney had an attitude that once you had enough episodes in the can to survive syndication, you hung it up and moved on to the next franchise. Perhaps the feeling was that you're audience grew up too quick to bother putting in the cash to stay with them too long. Or maybe their was no substantive audience gain between three season's worth of content or five, kids will just happily watch the same thing over and over, ad infinitum, right? If it weren't a standing policy at the time, I'd have guessed they just couldn't figure out how to effectively leverage the lucrative toy merch--how do you sell action figures to girls, or action toys with a girl protagonist to boys, etc.?

Whatever the case, I'd say the powers-that-be had their heads shoved someplace unpleasant.

The powers that be did make one concession. A grass roots fan campaign convinced them to go ahead with one more season. They gave Kim a senior year, let her and Ron deal with all the high-school fun of a teen romance and prom and graduation. At least I think that's how it turned out. I'd go check, but the third and forth season have never been released on DVD.

Because the powers-that-be have yet to fully relocated their heads

Kim Possible and Ron Stoppable (and Rufus)