Terriers Canceled: Was Its Excellence Too Subtle For Today's TV Viewer?
FX will not be renewing the critically acclaimed (yet woefully undersampled) Terriers for a second season, which means we may never find out which way private-eye pals Hank and Britt turned as the season finale cut to black.
That Dec. 1 season-ender was the freshman drama's third-most watched episode, but it delivered just 784,000 total viewers. Even more damning to Terriers' longevity, the finale drew barely 400,000 viewers in the coveted 18-to-49 demo.
"Ultimately, we couldn't get enough people to watch," executive producer Shawn Ryan ( The Shield) said on Twitter Monday morning.
"I don't think there is anybody to blame," FX president John Landgraf said during a Monday afternoon conference call, explaining that the network had visited every possible scenario and commissioned reams of data before making the call. "We wish there was a perfect intersection between all that is good and all that is successful, but the reality is there's a relatively poor correlation [between the two]."
What did FX learn from its research into why Terriers didn't click as loudly with the same audience that relishes a ride with Sons Of Anarchy and eats fire with Rescue Me? "People thought that the show was compatible with FX's brand, but dissimilar to other FX shows," Landgraf reports. "They found it to be a little less edgy, a little less sexy, a little less suspenseful."
"The things that were really wonderful about [Terriers] tended to be relatively subtle -- [and] I don't know if 'subtle' is something the American public is buying in droves today," Landgraf said. "When I look at Jersey Shore and the Kardashians and Sons Of Anarchy and Walking Dead... I wouldn't say that subtlety and nuance describe the most successful pop content."
In the end, the numbers more than spoke for themselves. Terriers was pulling_ less than half the ratings of previous ill-fated FX fare such as _Dirt, The Riches, Over There and Damages. The drama was also shedding some 47 percent of its lead-in audience, then proceeding to lose 16 percent of those viewers over the course of the hour. (In comparison, Sons Of Anarchy built on its lead-in by 48 percent during its first year, and gains viewers across the hour.)
"This isn't the first really good show that we've had to cancel," Landgraf said. "And it won't be the last."
Subscribe to the new Movieline on YouTube
Comments
I loved Terriers. I never watched it live though, always waited until the next day to catch up on the DVR.
I loved Terriers! I had to DVR it and watch it the next day though. I thought it was smartly written and had an excellent cast.
It was the only great new show of the season, and FX, of all networks, had it. It should have been on AMC, they seem to understand quality.
This makes me want to cry. I knew it was inevitable but I was hoping for some kind of a miracle. The best show nobody watched.
The problem is they had a terrible advertising campaign. Who's gonna watch a show where the bus ad is a bizarre picture of a tiny dog, with the stars in the background? I thought it was a show about competitive dog shows.
I'm done with FX. They get quality shows like Terriers and Damages and cancel them. I am tired of investing my time to have someone else decide I can't know the end of the story. The promotion of this show absolutely stunk. Most of the people I spoke to about it had never even heard of it. The title certainly didn't give people any idea of what they would be seeing.
I'm really sorry the show is gone. It was a favorite, as Damages was. I'm done!
PS- Was it as hard for you as it was for me to not include the phrase "Screwed the Pooch" anywhere in this article?
I watched TERRIERS on HULU. This a sad day to hear of the cancellation. When I spoke to friends to see if they were watching it, I learned that people didn't watch because they thought it was a show about dog shows or dog fighting. Bad marketing, FX. Simply awful, misleading, ineffective marketing. You doomed this show. It will be missed.
Bad name. Worse marketing.
Another vote for "Too Many People Were Disappointed to Find Out It Wasn't About Tiny Dogs."
Petition to BOYCOTT FX http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/boycott-fx-in-protest-of-terriers-cancellation/
This blows.
TERRIERS was one of those rare shows that got better and better with each episode all the way up
till the finale.
People suck for not watching this.
But FX marketing people suck more for convincing the world that this show was about fucking dogs.
I read this blog daily and also vulture and I HAD NEVER HEARD OF THIS SHOW until it was canceled. Maybe that was part of the problem.