Does anyone know why this show ended?
I was a regular viewer and I was shocked when I watched Vince Vaughan give Miller a going away speech...albeit a brief one (Miller didn't want to end the series on a sappy note).
Was it canceled or did Miller want to do different things?
I miss seeing him on a weekly basis on an uncensored network.
Tony
On the off-chance you see this, he was canceled, and rather suddenly.
It was probably a combination of waning ratings and his increasingly conservative bent. He was replaced with the increasingly liberal Bill Maher.
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http://www.loadedshelf.com/
Get loaded.
Xyzzy, to what would you attribute the waning ratings--the first part of your 2 part answer?
Carpe Noctem
I don't know. I don't know how serious they were. Networks have a lot of leeway when it comes to what they want to do, so unless something's a breakout hit, they might cancel it despite moderate success or a building fan base. (For example, FOX's treatment of "Futurama" virtually guaranteed failure. Or their cancellation of "Family Guy", possibly due to the occasional controversy not seeming worth the ratings--but which ended up popular enough to be brought back after a few years.)
HBO canceled their promising Friday night animation block just because the new guy in charge didn't want to go that direction.
But Miller's ratings may have been on the way down anyway. That happens for most shows, and the late night talk format has claimed many victims. Hard to say without really studying the numbers and actually asking people.
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http://bitmaelstrom.blogspot.com/
Fight the storm.
Miller has far more than a "conservative bend". He's a total shill for the GOP, with maybe a couple of token, left leaning-libertarian views. Anyone who still supports the Iraq invasion has zero credibility with me, especially since all of the reasons for it have now been proven to be misguided, at best, if not outright fraudulent.
shareDennis Miller was profoundly affected by the events of September 11th, 2001. In his words, "9/11 changed everything." What it changed that led to the demise of his show was his political leanings. Dennis had always been a liberal (though he seemed to be on the moderate side), and so his audience was largely comprised of liberals.
Season 8 had ended a month before 9/11 happened. When Season 9 premiered in February 2002, the first show was titled "Life After 9/11/01." From this point forward, Dennis was leaning heavily to the right. This conservative stance alienated most of his liberal viewers, so the viewership rapidly started to dwindle. (Imagine if you were a big fan of The Daily Show, and then one day they replaced Jon Stewart with Rush Limbaugh. You probably wouldn't stick around to see how things worked out.) It was also rumored that the shift in politics didn't sit well with the powers-that-be at HBO. To their credit, they let him finish the full 26-episode season. I was still watching right up until the end (somewhat incredulously at times), but apparently I was one of the few. I'd been watching Dennis since 1985, so he wasn't going to shake me that easily.
HBO didn't completely sever ties with Dennis though, as they produced three of his comedy specials after canceling the series (The Raw Feed, All-In and The Big Speech).
His good friend Dana Carvey has remarked that Miller always had a conservative vein that never became conspicuous until 9-11. Miller himself alluded to his conservative bent as early as some interviews in the mid-90's.
Like chazzer above, I had also been a longtime Miller fan going back to his Weekend Update days in the mid-80's. Unlike chazzer, post 9-11 Miller so irritated and infuriated me that after one of the early '02 episodes I totally wrote him off. This may've been the civil liberties episode-- it was some female civil rights lawyer and she and Miller argued about torture, and it was almost torture to watch Miller. He was a totally rude pompous horse's a$$ and at the end I vowed to never watch again-- and didn't. HBO announced the cancellation the following week.
(I'm thinking ABC canned him within a couple months, too, but probably for wholly different reasons. 2002 was not a good year for Miller)
Miller was one of the cultural heroes of the 90's. His show was the only one that I actually took the trouble to learn to program my VCR for, and don't forget this was the Seinfeld era. It was mildly disappointing to see him turn more conservative. It was heartbreaking to watch him turn into a flaming douchebag.
The most pathetic aspect of the whole 'Dennis goes conservative so we won't watch' thing?
All these left-wing wisenheimers with gray ponytails who chortled at republicans' expense with Dennis Miller sounding the charge throughout the '80s and '90s...? They never once stopped to think 'Hey, wait a minute. I've been watching this guy long enough to know he isn't full of *beep* maybe I'm the one who's wrong!'
It was like this guy they knew to be intelligent? Suddenly couldn't be considered intelligent any longer. Because the very idea of someone right of center being not only intelligent and articulate... but more intelligent and articulate than they are... shattered far too many psychic glass houses for them to remain viewers.
His insights were no less penetrating, his punchlines no less well-crafted, his delivery no less passionate. He was simply directing his vitriol at your heroes, now, so off with his head.
For a political movement renowned for its 'open-mindedness', leftists certainly slammed their craniums shut on that occasion.