FX sold “Terriers” with the tagline “too small to fail.” It’s a line that has sadly proved ironic, as FX has decided not to renew the show for a second season, due to ratings that could only charitably be called “small.”
The finale drew 784,000 viewers, which was one of the show’s bigger audiences. Many episodes averaged around 500,000, and that number just isn’t viable, even on basic cable. Even when I wrote my Save “Terriers” piece, I feared deep down that even FX president John Landgraf, one of the business’ biggest champions of quality TV, couldn’t rationalize keeping the show around.
Landgraf is actually doing something fairly rare in the business: he’s doing a conference call later this afternoon to discuss the cancellation – and no doubt to lament the fact that it didn’t do well enough to stick around. Because as you and I have said many, many times, the show itself was fantastic, and deserving of a much better fate and bigger audience.
I’ll have a second write-up after the Landgraf call, and possibly with some comment from Shawn Ryan and/or Ted Griffin if they’re available. But like I said in my review of the series finale, we still have these great 13 episodes, and we’ll still always have Hank and Britt in the pickup, waiting to decide whether to go straight or turn left. And that’s something.
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