Fox Broadcasting Co. has declined an option to continue production on the period drama "Roar," the linchpin of the network's summer slate of original programming.
Production on the 13-episode order has been completed, and eight episodes have aired. A Fox spokesman says the five remaining episodes will air at some point mid-season.
"Roar" was a risky endeavor for summer given license fees exceeding $1 million and low summer viewing levels. While Fox was happy with the show creatively, it never made a huge dent in the ratings on Monday nights, making it tough to justify the cost.
Even so, Roar helped improve its time period from last summer by 10%, and Fox is the only network among the Big 4 that showed overall year-to-year summer increases.
For both Fox and other networks, though, cheaper reality programming and newsmags appeared to be the brightest spots this summer.
A Fox spokesman said the network still has an option to bring the Universal TV drama back into production later this season.
