This is true, but in Jericho’s case, it had about 9 million viewers. That’s a lot of viewers (plus it’s already a cult show), and I think it’s one of the very few times that a show got canceled with that many viewers. Usually, the cutting bar is at around 7 or 8 mil.

There’s a reason state-sponsored television networks such as the BBC and the Dutch public broadcasters produce higher-quality television than commercial stations. The former don’t have to worry about appealing to an as large an audience as possible. That’s why you can see, on the three non-commercial Dutch stations, shows and programs that target a very specific niche; i.e. a humanism network, muslim TV shows, or a documentary about a painter nobody has ever heard of. sure, these programs won;t reach a bigger audience than a few thousand people, but at least these people are served.

In The Netherlands, we have the best of both worlds: we have about 7-8 commercial TV stations, which please most of the general audience here. On to of tat, we have three “public”, tax-funded stations where small, independent networks and studios get the time to showcase stuff that is of high quality, but just less appealing to big audiences.

I have always found that a show like Dead Like Me should have been made by the BBC or something similar; there, it would have gotten the time and attention is deserved.

That’s not quite true for the BBC at least. Basically they have to justify the compulsory licence fee. If too few people watch there will be calls to scrap it, so the BBC do produce more than their fair share of second rate populist rubbish just to make sure there’s no chance of losing the TV licence fee.