At least one hit show was cancelled due to the McCarthy Hearings/House Unamerican Activities Committee: Stud’s Place, a sitcom starring Studs Terkel as a restaurant owner, ran for three years to decent ratings but was dropped like a flaming Chihuahua when Terkel was blacklisted. (The much more popular The Goldbergs had a choice of “be cancelled or lose your male lead” as Philip “Jake Goldberg” Loeb was blacklisted as well; the show’s owner/star/producer Molly Goldberg let Loeb go (but felt terribly guilty about it and continued paying him out of her own share of the show’s profits) and the show went on for years with a revolving door series of Jakes. (Loeb has been said to have killed himself over his recasting, but there were other factors that led to his suicide as well.)
Father Ted ended because of the death of Dermot Morgan. 
God, I hated her. Or still hate her. I dunno, does she still work at Sci-fi? If you google her name you’ll see that lots of people hate her. They’ve even got petitions asking for her removal.
Sports Night on ABC. A very well-written show produced by Aaron Sorkin, but it was “too intelligent” for them at the time and they kept bouncing it for The Drew Carey Show. I believe this caused the ratings to drop and although there was a farewell episode of sorts, where Aaron got his digs in at ABC (One of the characters said “If you can’t make money with Sports Night you need to get out of the money making business”) I still miss the show and regret its untimely cancellation.
I would talk about Joan of Arcadia, but that wound is still to fresh. I need time to heal.
According to the DVD interviews/commentaries it is true that Dermot died the day after they finished shooting the last episode, but they said it was already decided and the cast already knew that there would be no more seasons (or series as the Brits call it) of Father Ted. They felt it was just time to move on.
Sorkin having that other show to juggle didn’t help, either.
I would have brought this up, except I figured the reason wasn’t any more than ABC were idiots who didn’t properly showcase a brilliant show. Not much of a story.
Or give any special features to the DVD release, which some of us still watch way too often, making the resentment ever-fresh.
Leslie Neislen had two short lived series that were both comedies and pretty funny but shortlived
Police Squad (1982)
Shaping Up (1984)
Does anyone know what happened to them?
I recently saw a clip of Mary Tyler Moore saying the producers (of which she was one) decided to end the show because the writers said they had run out of ideas. That may be a bit of revisionism. MTM’s marriage to Grant Tinker was breaking up at the time, the co-stars all had shots at getting their own shows and MTM had learned something from Dick Van Dyke about quitting while on top.
Incidentally, I’ve also heard that DVD’s “let’s quit while we’re on top” reasoning only came after CBS said they wouldn’t renew the show unless it were filmed in color.
If you’re talking about West Wing, Sports Night was cancelled quite a bit before WW hit the air.
I never heard of Shaping Up, but all episodes of Police Squad! (the exclamation point was a deliberate part of the title) were made available on videotape as Police Squad! and More Police Squad! I haven’t seen them on DVD.
I’m sure that the show had a deliberate limit of six episodes – every show referenced every show that had preceded it, and that would’ve been rough to continue past six shows. A lot of the jokes got recycled in the Naked Gun movies, especially the third one.
One of the all-time great TV comedies.
That’s what I thought, and was about to make the comment in my post…
Until I looked it up on IMDB:
Sports Night 1998-2000 (RIP)
West Wing 1999-Present.
This is the only TV show I’ve felt strongly enough about to buy the DVD (although NYPD Blue is a strong candidate for a second purchase).
Partly that, but money was also a reason. The show had been on 5 years (enough to syndicate), all the actors’ contracts were up and CBS was pressuring them to film in color (which apparently was a damn sight more expensive than black and white at the time.) VanDyke’s wanting to do movies was just one more reason to quit.
I agree with everything you said, except Police Squad! was canceled.
Silenus and I discussed it not long ago.
Then, I stand corrected. Thanks!! 
What happened to Wonder Falls? Oh yeah, it was on Fox.
I loved Brisco County. It was also on Fox.
Firefly, never got a chance to see it because it got cancelled before I could. Fox.
Most of the good shows on Fox meet their demise because they are on Fox.
Did I miss it or has no one mentioned News Radio. Great program, but it never recovered from the murder of Phil Hartman. I’m not sure it really even tried.
I read somewhere (in a book that I can’t find right now) that it wasn’t until years later when they started looking at ratings differently that the network realized that it had actually been quite popular among males 18-34 – the magic group, dontcha know. Nothing to do with Shatner and Nimoy’s contracts at the time. In the sixties apparently they counted sheer numbers, and didn’t track what sort of people the numbers were counting. This is from one of the producers, who if I recall right says that if they had a show with those ratings now there’s no way it’d have been killed the way it was.
If puberty is what killed Pete and Pete, well that’s just a freakin’ travesty. That show was at it’s creative peak when it was killed.
Batman: The Animated Series was a critical and financial hit, but the network figured they had enough episodes in the can, and re-runs are cheaper than new episodes, and what the hell, it’s only kids watching and kids don’t care about re-runs, so they axed an enormously succesful show.
YOU BASTARDS!