A 32% drop in viewership during the third season of the American crime drama TV series “Graceland” vis-à-vis its Season 2 is all that the USA Network needed to confirm and make a decision not to renew the show for Season 4.
So amid a huge cliffhanger left by the show creators during the Season 3 finale, the truth of the matter is that 850,000 viewers watching every episode of “Graceland” during its third season are still not enough to bring money to the USA Network, according to When Will.
The TV series was apparently getting more than 1.2 million viewers during its second season and the sharp decline in the viewership the following year was quite untenable for the network that it finally decided to cancel the show for good.
So unless another network or streaming service rescues “Graceland” from cancellation, the cliffhanger of the show will no longer have any closure.
It was actually executive producer Larry Teng who became the bearer of bad news when he posted on Twitter on October 1 that “Graceland” shall no longer be picked up by the USA Network for a fourth season. He also tweeted his love to the cast members and fans of “Graceland.”
Co-creator Jeff Eastin also did the same by announcing the show’s cancellation on his Twitter account. He also lauded the cast members and crew of “Graceland” as the best there is. He added that the same holds true for the show’s loyal fans, to whom he expressed his gratitude for the overwhelming support.
Without any word about finding a network that would hopefully revive the show, or efforts to liaise with streaming services, it seems that the executive producers of “Graceland” have already given up the fight and let the TV series end just like that. After all, it is not the first TV series to have been cancelled with a cliffhanger during its previous season.
Enough creative juices
The show’s executive producers were actually confident of a Season 4 renewal for “Graceland” that is why they have intentionally included a major cliffhanger during the Season 3 finale, to give fans and viewers something to look forward to in the next season.
Apparently, they second-guessed the network wrong. The USA Network decided to look into the overall picture and saw that the figures were not as promising as it previously thought, thus making the tough decision on letting the axe fall on the TV series.
For a while, “Graceland” actually had enough creative juices 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 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.
False hopes
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.
Unfortunately, those hopes proved to be false as the USA Network decided the fate of the show based on its commercial value. While “Graceland” did fairly well with an average of 1.7 million viewers every week, 784,000 of those viewers were from the highly sought-after adults segment, 18 to 49 years old demographic.