FX says Terriers cancellation had nothing to do with horrible title and promo campaign
In the public autopsy of recently canceled FX series Terriers, there seemed to be one agreed-upon cause of death: The network’s baffling promotional campaign—namely billboard and Internet ads featuring stars Donal Logue and Michael Raymond-James relegated to the background behind a teeth-baring terrier with a bone-bedecked business card locked in his jaws. Thanks to that very literal translation of the title, after all, anyone unfamiliar with show would be forgiven for thinking Terriers was about, say, two down-on-their-luck dudes who start a dog-walking service (or dog-fighting ring), and thus play second-string humans to a series of animal-related misadventures. Also not helping matters: that title, which (pleasant Bruce McCulloch associations aside) says absolutely nothing.
Not so, says FX president John Landgraf, who spoke with reporters yesterday in the wake of the show’s cancellation and—while noting that even if the show had doubled its numbers, it still would have been the network’s lowest-rated freshman series ever—averred that no one should be blaming his marketing department, saying, “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.”