"The Bastard Executioner." He did it himself, posting an ad in various entertainment magazines to announce the end of the mostly unwatched show.

This is the ad he posted in The Hollywood Reporter:


The "Sons of Anarchy" creator told THR he sent an e-mail to the cast and crew of "The Bastard Executioner," so they weren't blindsided by the ad.

"It's fantastic to get a good review [or] an award, but at the end of the day the only thing that matters, really, is numbers," Sutter told THR. "I'm not the guy sitting in my ivory tower spitting sh-t out and not caring if anyone is watching. ... I don't want to write something that nobody's f—ing watching." And not enough people were watching the 14th century drama, which co-starred Sutter's wife, Katey Sagal. As THR reported, the show fell from 4 million combined weekly viewers for its September 15 premiere to 1.9 million for episode six. Season 1 ended on November 17.

"Oh, I'm heartbroken," Sutter admitted to THR. "Beside the obvious — pride and all that sh-t — it's an epic mythology, and I really love the themes and every place that we were going to go with it. So I'm going to miss that. But creatively, there is a lot of stuff I want to do."

In terms of what went wrong, Sutter speculated that "the mythology was a little too dense for some people" and there's "a glut of period pieces on right now, and I'm sure timing has something to do it." But he figured that, a year from now, people will be wondering why he didn't make more episodes. "I mean, I get so many people telling me they're on episode four of 'Sons.'"

Yeah, maybe it'll become a cult hit, leaving fans wanting more. That's not a bad way to end a show's run.

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