ABC’s Channing Dungey: ‘The Mayor’ Soft Ratings Down To Political Fatigue

The Mayor‘s disappointing ratings could be down to plain old political fatigue, ABC president Channing Dungey said at TCA in Los Angeles on Monday.

The show depicts rapper Courtney Rose winning the mayoral election in his California hometown following a publicity stunt, and the personal crisis that follows. But with four episodes remaining unaired, the network yanked the show off air.

“One of my personal theories of The Mayor,” Dungey said “is that I feel like the show arrived on the scene at a time when people were feeling a little bit fatigued about anything that had to do with politics. I think even our title, The Mayor, maybe didn’t help us because when you watch the show, it was so much about that workplace family, as well as his relationship with his mom, and not so much about politics.”

Dungey said the response to the show had been disappointing, and “a little bit of a heartbreak for all of us,” especially since they had put so much into marketing. “It was a top priority for us in terms of the campaign,” she said. “It did not connect with the audience in the way that we were hoping that it would.”

But while the marketing was successful, as Dungey said, “the issue did not seem to be one of the audience not knowing that the show was there, which is sometimes the case,” the show simply didn’t take off. “People knew, they just didn’t come.”

The future seems very bleak going forward for the show following its recent drop from the schedule. “What was more disappointing for me, personally, was the delayed viewing numbers also continued to drop,” Dungey said. “And that’s the biggest signal that, ultimately, for whatever reason, it was not a show that’s connecting.”