I don’t know how much everyone was getting paid. The show took a big hit in the ratings with the premiere of Blindspot. I am sure that the salaries on The Good Wife were much higher than the salaries on CASTLE. This wasn’t the main reason Paul Lee was fired. Was the money the network was getting from commercials not enough to cover the show? I don’t know. Nobody remembers what a loss leader is? Nobody knows what loyalty is? This is a network making BILLIONS of Dollars. ABC decided to end it, but they kept shows with ratings I consider unacceptable for renewal, just like they did last season. I can deal with the end of Castle. I can’t deal with the lies and the B.S. Thanks for writing.

Look, financially Castle was unsustainable. Both NF and SK were given sizable contract increases for S8. The out look for S 9 would most likely have been more. The fact that Paul Lee had given Sk a contract that was more than ABC had wanted lead to his firing and SK’s as the only way to salvage a S9, that failed.

Thanks for responding! I didn’t get into the series because of my dislike of commercials. I had the same issue with NCIS, though I did watch many episodes before I ended my addiction to Team Gibbs.
I prefer movies. Indeed, I have over 500 store-bought and over 200 computer files.

“Loksat” was the name that was handwritten into the margin of a redacted memo from Senator Bracken. This memo was flagged by a query Beckett had initiated when she was at the AG’s Office (trying to dig up dirt on Bracken). Vikram was the IT guy who received the memo and brought it to Beckett’s attention. Presumably, this is the name (in whole or in part) of the money laudering system Bracken was using to fund his presidential campaign. I don’t know that they ever told us definitively what the acronym stood for.

Nawh, the wedding that didn’t happen angered fans who felt MilMar had jerked them around one time to many. It was the most catastrophic episode ever penned it literally sank the Monday golden goose. It was the start of the death spiral from which the series never recovered . The number never stopped dropping till S8 where they languished at all time lows.

I don’t know about steady, but Hawley/Winter averaged 1-2 million fewer viewers over the whole season. S7 started north of 10M viewers as viewers returned, expecting to see the wedding fiasco corrected in 8×01. When it didn’t happen, frustated viewers began to leave, bringing the average viewers/episode down to 7-8M. Season 8 started low (6.8M) and dropped to a low of 4.2M. It wasn’t until they finally got Castle and Beckett back together again that it started to rise again. The S8 average was closer to 5-6M. Neither of these seasons was stellar. As I mentioned above, if they had let them evolve naturally as a couple, fans would have stuck around. Finding new and more contrived ways of keeping them apart just frustrated viewers and made them lose interest.

How fortunate for them.

You realize the ratings under the Winter/Hawley stewardship was more steady than that of Amman. S8 numbers were flat, very little Fluxuation up or down. Where as S 7 showed a dramatic drop from ep 1 to the hiatus. The second part began with three consecutive episodes that hit all time lows.S8 began with terrible numbers and more or less stayed there . 6.23 has to go down as the most catastrophic episode ever written, it literally sank the franchise.

In their latest press release, the showrunners referred to Castle as “A love story for the ages” (http://cartermatt.com/206827/abcs-castle-series-finale-show-bosses-alexi-hawley-terence-paul-winter-release-statement/). Seriously? For the past 2 seasons, this “Love story for the ages” has been anything but. In fact, it has been quite the contrary. The Castle-Beckett relationship was deliberately sabotaged by the showrunners in season’s 7 & 8. They spent more time thinking of creative ways to keep Castle and Beckett apart than they did keeping them together and evolving them as a happliy married couple.

Whatever the “behind the scenes” reasons for keeping them apart, the net result was the same. It ruined a once great show. Castle didn’t lose fans…they were driven away. The dimise of the show can be attributed to a series of self-inflicted wounds, beginning with the botched wedding in 6×23. Although the showrunners certainly weren’t blameless, I put the majority of the blame squarely on the network. This show was a fan favorite and a financial juggernaut for ABC for 6 years. To allow an actor, a showrunner or a budget to dictate the evolution of the show is either complacency or just plain poor management. No matter how you slice it, someone at ABC clearly fell asleep at the switch, allowing all the things that made the show great, to simply deteriorate to the point where more than 50% of their audience walked away. I honestly believe that if Andrew Marlowe had been allowed to evolve his creation in the manner he originally intended, this show could have easily eclipsed the 12+ Seasons Bones has enjoyed. No one benefited from this shows demise. Not the cast, not the crew, not the network…and certainly not the fans.