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UPDATED: FX has decided not to renew freshman boxing drama Lights Out for a second season. Lights Out was one of the most critically praised new series this season, punctuated by a breakout performance by Holt McCallany as the title character, a washed-out former heavyweight champion looking for a comeback. But, just like with FX’s now-defunct drama Terriers last fall, Lights Out never found traction in the ratings, leading to FX’s decision to cancel it after one season. It premiered in January with 1.5 million viewers and slipped further throughout its run, averaging 863,000 viewers per first-run episode vs. 2.7 million for Justified.
FX president John Landgraf praised the quality of the show and McCallany’s performance and said that in the end, it all came down to Lights Out’s subject matter “The audience didn’t want to watch a show about boxing,” he said. “We never got any traction” during the pre- and post-launch marketing and publicity campaign. Landgraf said that he is not concerned by having two new series in row, Terriers and Lights Out strike out. “That’s baseball,” he said. “If you put on 4 shows, two of them work, Sons of Anarchy and Justified, and the other two are Terriers and Lights Out, that’s pretty good.”
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Typical. Any good story/character driven show is scrapped, probably to make room for the next train wreck of a reality show.
good call, steve. FX… where I go for all my reality show train wreck viewing… get a clue, pal.
Damn shame. To me, this is the best show on television I have seen in a long time! Damn shame!
man that is crap because i really really liked it and as for me being a woman me and all my girls would get together on tuesday nights and watch this and now its just gone and god forbid we missed the tuesday night even then wed watch it on demand hahah loved it i hope they rethink this cause i want to know how they deal with his not remembering the fight
Best show i have seen. Just watched the entire season one in a day. Dissapointing news.
So sad. Literally one of the best shows on TV. Holt should be a household name
I LOVED Lights Out!!! I can;t believe there will be no season 2! I am so sad that I could totally cry. I am REALLY hoping another network picks up the show, I MISS LIGHTS LEARY!!
booooooo
DAMN, this thing was great. from the get-go it was damn good. great characters, great everything. dare i say, better than terriers.
Yeah, this was great. I never missed an episode. Maybe TNT will pick it up?
Was thinkin the same thing because it is kinda in their for-tey
Holt McCallany is one of the most underrated and talented actors out there. It’s a shame that audiences didn’t tune it to see his amazing portrayal of Lights Leary. He’s destined for great things.
Great show. And a testament to it’s fine producer — Ross Fineman — who shepherded this project from the very beginning. A truly good guy.
here here
or rather hear hear
Networks should be all over Holt for pilots right now!
Loved this show. It’s going to be hard to watch new series on FX if they keep doing this.
Agreed. With Terriers and now this. It sucks to invest in a show if you aren’t going to get to see it through.
Can’t blame FX, they have put some great shows into production…blame the awful tastes of the American public. I mean Jersey Shore, COME ON PEOPLE!
I wonder if the FX execs will acknowledge their mistakes or keep making shows that no one wants to watch. I doubt they would even make The Shield today if it were pitched in the room.
regardless of how many old timers feel about boxing being king… mma is the future. perhaps a show grounded more in what the young gunnin, multi faceted, technical brutes of the mma would make a show more would relate to currently.
i applaud Lights Out. A great struggle alas a bit beyond it’s prime generation.
it’s just an opinion.
A show about MMA would have the depth of a mud puddle, mirroring the mental capacity of the chin-strapped, Mountain Dew-guzzling, Affliction-wearing fan base of that sorry excuse of a sport.
Boxing has character and characters. MMA has neither.
Have you been reading the headlines about MMA fighters these days? Some guy just stopped a mugging right before his championship bout, and he won. Matt Hammil (Sp?), the deaf MMA fighter, come on…There are tons of stories and there is a ton of character in MMA, not to mention the vast number of dedicated athletes to this ever growing sport. I’m a boxing fan, but it’s a craft that’s getting a standing eight count. Sorry for the pun.
MMA is the future — for ex-WWE white trash fans looking for a new kick.
Boxing will always >>>> MMA.
Says you.
and a mud puddle is deeper than your pov.
thats bullshit
Ugh! I love this show. So disappointing… give it a freakin chance, FX!! Two seasons!
I LOVED Lights Out and I can’t agree more. I want another season, at least one more so I know at the end thats that. I have been waiting and waiting for season 2, I could not be more bummed.
Nooooooo! Say it aint so!!
‘
I am seriously considering canceling FX. Stupid Bastards!
This sucks. I enjoyed this show. Hard to believe that FX has been battling to get good dramas to stay on since The Shield and Nip/Tuck left. Major bummer.
Sad — this was the best show on TV. Props to Ross Fineman and everyone involved for making something great.
Such a shame. I am 32 so surely the demo. Best thing on TV right now. MMA is a fad not the future. These characters were also so real. People doing bad things with good intentions. Nuanced and interesting. Maybe Netflix can take it on?
Fad? Doubt it. It’s on a ton of networks, including ESPN, Showtime, Spike, and is getting attention from CBS. Not to mention it’s big in North and South America, Europe, Asia, and Australia.
You are so right. MMA is great, but boxing is totally different and it has alot to do with respect and I want LIGHTS LEARY back!
FX was SOO STUPID for cancelling this show!
FX missed the ball with this one. Should have given it a second season, paired up with S.O.A. In my opinion this is the biggest tragedy of the season.
That’s too bad… but Ross will come back with a huge hit soon.
FX is slowly going the way of regular network television. And here I thought, it had better standards.
I guess I’m in the minority, but I find this cancellation justified. The characters were all stereotypes, there was no inside look about the world of professional boxing, and it was boring. The writing was way too on the nose. The directing was so awful that scenes resembled acting class exercises. Poor Holt had the same reaction to everything whether he was winning a fight, going broke, or going to the bathroom. Why would an audience invest in this? Please tell me what I’m missing?????????
I think you’re missing that it’s not about the world of professional boxing. It’s about boxer, certainly, but the human side of his profession. It’s about his family, his hometown, his ego, his struggle, his life. It’s not about his job.
And this is where this show failed miserably for the reasons I previously listed. As far as your points are concerned. His family was unlikable. His hometown status was barely touched on. His struggle wasn’t that intense. Twenty something pro-comments on a message board do not a good show make.
How many episodes of this show did you watch? His status in the community (and that of his family) is a large part of the season: his father owns the “champion’s” gym, his sister the popular town diner, his wife is a well-liked med student and resident at the hospital, etc).
His struggle isn’t that intense? He is combatting a degenerative disease, trying to pull his immediate AND his extended family out of bankruptcy, working for a gangster to make ends meet, training for the first time in years for a fight he’s likely never going to be ready for, and doing it all while coming to grips with his age and balancing the art of being a loyal husband and father.
It was a horrible show. It wasn’t that the show was about boxing.
The writing was tired and cliched, the characters were unlikable and Holt had all the charisma of a damp towel. This is why we get 5 million cops and medical shows. Because if something makes a crappy show about anything else they blame the subject matter. Even though The Fighter just missed going over 100 million at the BO and Million Dollar Bay did in fact go over 100 mil. Because people don’t want to see stories about boxing.
Does the term tone deaf mean anything to you?
Your missing your BRAIN!!!
This was a great show. Boxing is a classic sport and this showed the drama and the fight.
This was the ONLY show me and my bf would agree to watch together at night. It had the drama for me and teh fighting for him. FX IS STUPID
WOW! That’s too bad, Such a shame. I really, really liked this show and so did many in my demo – 35-45. Even older demos, my parents’ age, loved it. Maybe, perhaps adding a younger demo “boxer” who trains in gym, don’t just outright cancel show!!! Rework it, perhaps a younger nemesis (as another poster said doing MMA boxer angle) would have been interesting. Maybe the older daughter could have dated this guy, etc. I do remember one scene in an episode that alluded to the fact straight up “boxing” was older person’s sport.
But, truly, this was a fine show, and fault could be that it simply wasn’t promo’d enough by studio. I didn’t see the posters, trailers, etc. bombarding media outlets for this show. While many crappy shows seem to spend so much $$ on advertising rather than hiring quality show runners. This one could have had legs, it just needed more waaay more promo’ing.
Maybe it’ll get saved like Southland did, I hope another network picks this up SOON, this show rocks!! I hope there is a write-in campaign to get this back on the air.
Amazing show. Its failure tho is on Fx’s part. The show was marketed as a boxing drama when in reality it was more of a family/crime drama with boxing in the background.
I agree 100% with you on all of your points. I can only hope that is gets picked up by another network, and after Terriers and Lights Out, I am essentially done with FX. Can’t decide if I want to give Wilfred a shot because it will likely just get canceled if it is original in any way.
Very Disappointing as the show is brilliant.
I think they are making a mistake, but very hard to be critical of FX, as they have always championed the smaller shows (like the first 3 seasons of Damages and It’s Always Sunny…). I just hope the cancelation of Lights Out and Terriers isn’t a sign of the new ways of FX, which doesn’t give shows a chance to grow.
My daughter said it best, this was finally a show that a couple could watch together. An intense drama with twists and turns, sports action, and at the core of it all a family who really cares about each other. Our friends all asked why isn’t this show getting promotion? If it had it would have grown the audience. I’ll hope another venue picks this up. We need to see these characters come back!
A very good show, one I caught with my wife every week. A bummer it’s going away. Literally the only series not on HBO that’s watchable week after week.
Only one complaint: the bad dye job for Holt’s hair.