The producers and showrunners of the American crime drama TV series “Graceland” read the USA Network wrong after the Season 3 finale of the show was aired on September 17.
Apparently, the people behind “Graceland” were confident that the show would be renewed for its Season 4 next year that is why the final episode of Season 3 left a huge cliffhanger. They were obviously expecting to continue with the story for the next season.
Unfortunately, the USA Network had other things in mind. So exactly two weeks after the Season 3 finale airing, it announced the cancellation of “Graceland” for Season 4, leaving the show producers, creators, and possibly cast members surprised and distraught.
Viewership shows no promise
The USA Network decided to look into the overall picture and saw that the viewership figures of “Graceland” were not as promising, thus making the tough decision of letting the axe fall on the TV series.
For a while, “Graceland” actually had enough creative juice flowing through it to keep the network happy. That gave fans and producers of the TV series the likely hope that Season 4 was on the horizon, notes the Latin Post.
The move to cancel the series came after USA Network met with Fox 21 where the breakdown of the future of the show was projected. According to some reports, the decision of the USA Network has something more to do with contract issues rather than the show’s ratings.
However, USA Network has a track record in using a similar rationale when they previously decided to pull the plug on other TV series including “Complications,” “White Collar,” and “Burn Notice,” all of which met their own demise.
Delivering the bad news
Although series co-creator Jeff Eastin has remained hopeful of the show’s renewal for Season 4 right after the Season 3 finale, it was co-executive producer Larry Teng who delivered the bad news on October 1.
Larry Teng made the announcement via Twitter where he said that the USA Network decided not to move forward with Season 4, leaving fans of “Graceland” dismayed. It is certain that Eastin, the cast, and crew were likewise disappointed with the cancellation of the TV series, notes Variety.
While there is no official word yet about the fallback plans of the series producers or creators, it is likely that things are now moving in as far as transacting with other networks or a streaming service to rescue the show from cancellation. But until an official statement or announcement is made by either Eastin or Teng or the producers, everything remains speculation at this point.
Although it was saying otherwise, the bottom line of the issue is that the USA Network decided to cancel the TV series after three seasons due to a major decline in the ratings.
Season 3 of “Graceland” has averaged only 0.85 million total viewers per episode, which is a 32% decline compared to Season 2.
Assuming that another network rescues the show from cancellation and revived it for Season 4, it would be a big gamble on its part ratings-wise so commercially, the series producers and creators would have very little bargaining power or leverage to push the revival of the TV series.
However, there have been some TV series in the past that were not doing well in the ratings game but when they got cancelled and revived by a different network, they did better. It would be interesting to find out if “Graceland” would be able to join the unique roster of such TV series.
According to a source from the USA Network, “Graceland” was a great show in terms of creativity. It had a successful run for three seasons but the ratings did not justify bringing it back from a financial perspective.
Days after its Season 3 finale, hopes were actually high that “Graceland” will be renewed for Season 4 and it seems that Jeff Eastin was also quite confident of a renewal which is the reason why he left a huge cliffhanger at the close of Season 3.