Why was it cancelled ?

It was on NBC and ratings dropped pretty steadily after the pilot. There was talk leaked from NBC about cancelling at the mid-point of the season. I would argue that's when Sorkin became disillusioned with the show, and the writing deteriorated after that.

I heard that it was an expensive show, and the ratings were just not good enough for NBC to keep it on the air.

Was wondering all that myself. It was a good show. By the way, if English is your second language, you write it very well. Your sentence structure is better than many Americans, (which doesn't cast us in a very flattering light). Good for you :-)

The shows' ratings declined all season long as it was up against the NFL on Monday nights. I have read where even though it was not doing well in "live" viewings, it was the number one DVR show. In other words, people like me were recording it to watch later so they could watch the NFL live. This is important because shows make money via advertising, so if people are recording it and skipping the commercials, advertisers won't buy ad times. The DVR rating idea was new in 2006 and was not considered a good thing. Nowadays its being taken a bit more seriously. Had Studio 60 been on the air today, it might have survived another season.

Another issue is that the year Studio 60 premiered, the comedy 30 Rock started and had Tina Fey as the head writer. Both shows were based on how a show like Saturday Night Live is produced and Ms. Fey used to be the head writer on SNL. I think people were expecting both shows to be outright comedies and since 30 Rock WAS a comedy (and in a better time slot) it got the better ratings. Not that two shows should be compared to one another, but 30 Rock was killing on Thursday nights while Studio 60 was languishing on Mondays.

Both of these things combined to kill Studio 60. Personally, I loved the show. I think the writing was terrific and the cast was excellent. I just think it couldn't compete with the NFL and having another similiarly-based show hurt it.

My understanding is that it was canceled because of the writers strike that yr. Several shows lost their momentum and then when the strike happened, they dropped some good shows I think the should have given anger chance

All the things people are writing here are true, but if the show had been truly great it would have weathered those things. The real thing was that somehow it just never gelled enough. Perhaps it was too personal to Aaron Sorkin. I mean, he's writing a show about writing a show. He didn't have the position of a dispassionate observer. Matthew Perry in a lot of ways represented Aaron and Brad Whitford represented Tommy Schlamme. The trials and tribulations on the show must have been somewhat similar to the ones they had on Sports Night and The West Wing, the first cancelled and the second abandoned by them after the fourth season, neither one a happy ending.

if you compare to The West Wing, which was very successful, TWW had the notion that everything in it was extremely important. The presidency and the country's future was at stake, week after week. But on Studio 60 obviously that's not the case. Nor should it be. But if you want to have the same impact, you need to replace that aspect of the show with something else. Humor would have been the natural one to choose, but it was only occasionally funny. They tried serious drama, but only at the end when it was too late. Maybe if that had come sooner.

It ended up being a "sort of" a show. Sort of comedic, sort of dramatic, sort of meaningful, and so on, but it failed to grasp any of these options strongly enough to grab a big audience. You more admired the show than really enjoyed or obsessed over it. America didn't take it to heart. It didn't endear itself to us in that same way.

STUPIDITY.