Why did FX’s acclaimed detective series Terriers fail? Yes, the ratings were bad — FX president John Landgraf noted that even if it had doubled its numbers, it still would have been the channel’s lowest-rated freshman series — but many in the industry are blaming the show’s cancellation on its odd promotional campaign. Namely, why did the hype-savvy FX choose to sell the inscrutably named show with a snarling dog poster that looked like it should be advertising a totally extreme Sega Genesis game from 1993?
“From my standpoint, the marketing department of FX has taken a little bit of unfair knocks for the lack of performance of the show,†Landgraf told Deadline. “I don’t think there is anybody to blame … If I objectively believed that the reason the show didn’t launch was that we failed to tell viewers what it was about — a scruffy buddy detective show — that we had convinced them that the show was about dog fighting, I would’ve picked it up.†Landgraf also says the much-maligned Terriers art only appeared in Los Angeles and New York (forgetting, perhaps, that it ran on the Internet as well), so maybe it’s just a coastal mentality that made people think the show was on Animal Planet.
It Wasn’t The Marketing: FX Chief John Landgraf On Why ‘Terriers’ Didn’t Work [Deadline]