Alaska Daily being cancelled before season 2 wasn't surprising, but it was disappointing

It can be hard for shows to make it in the current TV viewing landscape. And this is especially true on network television, where it seems like a series has to hook you immediately or it is doomed to fail. In the case of Alaska Daily, it is entirely possible that they were doomed because of the writers and actors strikes. Then again, the fact that the series was about a journalist trying to find redemption in Alaska might not have been the draw ABC expected.

The reality is that while we did enjoy the premise of the series, it simply didn't connect with a lot of viewers. Even with an interesting cast and the draw of Hilary Swank, Alaska Daily wasn't able to bring in the viewers that it needed for ABC to keep the show around. Sadly, the series wasn't able to garner the support it needed, and considering the ever changing landscape of how people consume content it wasn't that surprising.

I can admit that I am part of the problem when it comes to viewership. For the most part, I don't watch shows the night they come out or even within a few days of them dropping on a streaming service such as Hulu. Instead, I might wait until the entire season is out and I will binge watch it all then. But in the case of Alaska Daily, that didn't even happen. I did not watch any of it, until I knew it was cancelled (and before Hulu pulled it off the platform at the start of July).

After binge watching the first season, I could both understand why it didn't grab enough viewers to convince ABC to give it more than just a single season and also feel extreme disappointment that it didn't. In the past, a network might have given this show a chance to gain more ground in the second season before deciding to axe it all together. But now it seems like we need to be watching anything we might be even remotely interested in. Otherwise those shows will get dropped like a hot potato.

According to Deadline, when they announced the cancellation news, "the freshman series was not able to establish itself and find a sizable following." And we can see that. It was a good show, but it wasn't great. And while it might have gotten better over time, the fact is that it didn't do what it needed to do right off the bat.

On a personal level, I found the color palette of the series to be off putting. It was hard to watch the show because of how dark everything was. I kept adjusting my TV color to try and make it brighter so I wasn't missing things. And at the same time, there were so many moments that I just wasn't engaged in the storyline, so I would be on my phone instead.

However, looking at the show as a whole, the series is fascinating. It is about corruption and redemption and trying to make things better in the world. And we need more of that. But maybe that is the problem. Maybe we don't want to watch a show that so effortlessly tells a story that we are already living. Then again, it could also be the fact that most people don't care about the work of journalists and they don't really want to watch a series about a hard hitting journalist trying to fight corruption and figuring out what happened to missing indigenous women.

Perhaps the only thing we can say about the show is that at least it didn't leave us on a cliffhanger. Instead, we got to see a resolution that was solid, if not necessarily satisfying in the end. If nothing else, we got a complete story, we just wish that there had been a chance for the series to do or even say more.

Whatever it was that kept people from tuning in to Alaska Daily or even coming back for more, it is sad that we won't get to see how things played out once a small portion of the corruption was stopped. While a murder was solved, there were more stories to tell.