I don't know a lot about how those things work, but I watched the show during it's original run and remember its outrageously bad numbers showing up pretty regularly in reviews as it neared the end of its run and critics started waiting on a season two decision. The narrative eventually became "this is going to be the truest test of how much a network can commit to quality because everybody who watches it loves it but that's, like, a dozen people."

Lot of recriminations about the title too. I don't think that people were passing on it because they thought it was a show about dogs, but it definitely didn't help. Mostly, I think that a bit of hardboiled fiction as traditional and pure as Terriers is tough to sell as a TV show because it's not, in itself morally ambiguous so much as it crashes a detective's hard-earned moral clarity against ambiguous outcomes. Plus, working in the Raymond Chandler lane means that it shouldn't look gritty. These are stories about ugly truth in a beautiful, sunny setting. That seems hard to market without looking like Nash Bridges.

I realized the FX thing as I was writing too, and your list was even more thorough on that front. Good for those guys. It's a network that seems really committed to quality programming that isn't guaranteed to be popular. I remember Alan Sepinwall pointing out that this is actually what doomed Terriers - FX had a really deep bench, so they didn't have to chose between "popular" and "critically" acclaimed. They could easily have both. True in 2010. Truer as we head into 2020.