Bizarre Reasons These TV Shows Were Canceled

In early 2000, Fox was enjoying the success of some pretty over-the-top reality shows like The World's Most Shocking Moments Caught on Tape, When Animals Attack, and the hugely popular special Who Wants to Marry a Multi-Millionaire? Then in February it announced it was killing its plans to produce a follow-up to its multi-millionaire special because of some bad press about star Rick Rockwell, namely allegations that he was a) a jerk, b) a liar, and c) probably not actually a multi-millionaire.

According to the New York TimesAmong Rockwell's transgressions was an accusation by a past girlfriend of physical abuse, which led to a restraining order. The self-proclaimed real estate developer and motivation speaker also seemed to have lied about his past speaking engagements — several venues he claimed to have a history with revealed that he'd never actually performed for them. And perhaps most damning of all, People reports he wasn't really living the gold-plated lifestyle most of us associate with multi-millionaires. His 1,200-square-foot ranch home in Encinitas, California, was modest, and the backyard was decorated with an old toilet. The lucky bride, in case you're curious, had the marriage annulled just seven weeks after vowing to love, honor, and roll around in the piles of money he probably didn't really have.

Before Star Wars claimed the title of the greatest merchandising vehicle of all time, there was Batman, the unconventionally popular television series starring Adam West as the caped-but-campy crusader. The 1966 series appealed to a huge audience — Batman toys were on just about every kid's wish list, and adults loved the show for its silly humor. It was so popular that it had two weekly episodes (one each airing on Wednesdays and Thursdays) and according to CNN, both hit the top 10 most-watched list for the 1965-66 television season.

Batman and Robin spent more than two years fighting crime on television, but they couldn't save themselves from the most diabolical villain of all: the network. ABC decided to kill the show halfway through the third season, citing high production costs and falling ratings. The story doesn't end with those mundane and typical show-ending motives, though. Producers hoped that another network would pick up the series. NBC was willing, but nobody told the guys with the bulldozers to wait a few weeks before destroying the set. NBC balked at the idea of replacing hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of Batcave, and POW! – that was the end of the dynamic duo (for a while).

Fans of Joss Whedon's space western series Firefly still weep openly when reminded of the early demise of their favorite show in 2002. The show was really more like the mayfly of science fiction — it came crawling up out of the prime-time swamp to be only briefly appreciated before dying a hasty and withering death. Ultimately, its demise was a combination of different unfortunate factors, but from a distance, it almost looked as if network executives were maniacally conspiring to ensure its failure. They marketed it as "wacky genre comedy" (it wasn't), they put it in the infamous "Friday night death slot," and they inexplicably chose to air the episodes out of order, with the pilot appearing last.

While the show's small core group of fans forgave every misstep, the rest of Firefly's viewers were baffled by the inconsistencies and disappointed that the wacky comedy they tuned in to see was actually a dark sci-fi drama with a little bit of humor thrown in. The poor ratings were enough to convince Fox the show was a failure, and according to CNN, it declined to resurrect Firefly even after desperate fans organized a postcard-writing campaign to plead for a stay of execution. All was not in vain, however, and Whedon got the chance to tell more of the story in the 2005 feature film Serenity, which was largely possible because of all that fan enthusiasm.

Just in case old age isn't an insulting enough reason to cancel a show, how about gender? In a 2013 interview with Kevin Smith, writer Paul Dini accused Cartoon Network of canceling his popular series Tower Prep because it had "too many girls," both on screen and as viewer. Perhaps Cartoon Network executives are actually time-travelers from an era when curly white wigs were totally swag.

Don't misunderstand — it's not that the network wanted Dini to leave out female characters altogether, it just wanted him to make sure that female characters were "one step behind the boys, not as smart as the boys, not as interesting as the boys." So when Dini ignored their advice and penned some compelling backstories for his female characters, the show got the ax.

So why exactly did Cartoon Network want to exclude girls from Tower Prep's audience? Because they didn't think girls would buy the right toys. It all comes down to merchandising, right? It's not like entertainment is supposed to be entertaining on its own.

Network television's preference for certain kinds of viewers is not just limited to toy-buying boys and consumers under the age of 50. Television also follows the moods of the time because that's really the same thing as following the money. Ultimately the green is all that matters — unless you're talking about green things like trees and grass.

In the early 1970s, television stations were populated with rural-themed programs like The Beverly Hillbillies, Lassie, Petticoat Junction, and Green Acres. These were the big ones, the ratings darlings that kept people tuning in from week to week. But at some point, starting with CBS, networks decided that those rural-themed programs were over with, that modern viewers really wanted to see shows about city dwellers and lovable bigots instead. So, in much the same way a Walmart might tear down a neighborhood park so shoppers can save 12 cents on paper towels, ElliotWave says the networks axed "everything with a tree" and brought in replacement shows like All in the Family, Sonny and Cher, The Bob Newhart Show, and Maude. Of course, that's not to say that there were no worthy shows in the new lineup (M*A*S*H* was introduced after the "rural purge"), but it was definitely a case of, "We know what you like better than you know what you like."

It's hard to believe that there was once a time when "freedom of speech" in America meant "freedom of speech as long as you don't say anything good about Communists." The McCarthy era was almost as terrifying as the 1690s in Salem, Massachusetts, except for the part where they couldn't literally string you up if they thought you were guilty.

What they could do was "blacklist" you, and that's what happened to author and actor Studs Terkel (who would later go on to win the Pulitzer Prize) after Senator Joseph McCarthy and his cronies found out he'd once been nice to some people who didn't hate the Soviet Union. In the 1950s, Terkel was hosting Studs' Place, an unscripted drama about a greasy-spoon diner in Chicago. According to Emmy TV Legends, the show was a child of the Chicago School of Television, a school of thought acclaimed for its original story ideas and unique approach to the new medium of the airwaves. But not even originality and creativity could hold its own against the Red Scare, and Terkel's involvement with an organization called "Friends of the Soviet Union" got him blacklisted from television and subsequently canceled.

Megan Wants a Millionaire was a dating reality show not so very dissimilar to like a million other dating reality shows, including (Who Wants to Marry a Multi-Millionaire?, which also made this list). Here's the premise: Bikini-wearing Megan Hauserman looks hot, millionaires pursue her, she mercilessly rejects one per week until she finally decides which one she's going to marry, but totally not for the money or anything. 

Anyway, things were going pretty awesomely for Hauserman until episode number three aired on television, which is around the same time Hauserman learned that Ryan Jenkins, one of the show's former contestants, had just been accused of murdering his new wife and stuffing her body into a suitcase. And he wasn't one of the guys who got eliminated early on, either, according to People he was one of the final contestants, so it's not hard to imagine that if things had gone better for him on the show it might have been someone else stuffed into that suitcase. "I was terrified he was going to come looking for me," Hauserman later said. "I never left my apartment."

Jenkins evaded police for eight days before hanging himself in a motel room. Megan Wants a Millionaire was canceled shortly afterwards, because even tasteless reality shows have lines they won't cross.