Deadline reported this a day or so before my wife and I caught up on the two episodes that have (and apparently ever will) air.
The Assets started off with a dismal 0.7 rating for its premiere last Thursday and managed to fall even lower last night, to a 0.6, which qualifies as the lowest rating for an hourlong original on the Big 4 networks this season and likely ever. In its defense, The Assets does not hail from ABC’s entertainment division but from ABC News as it is based on real events. The Cold War spy drama doesn’t have stars in it and didn’t get any marketing. There is no plan yet for the six unaired [e]pisodes.
Blaming the show's failure on Nielsen ratings is a smokescreen. Nielsen ratings and their longstanding inaccuracy and corruption only matter in the fantasy fiction world of network meeting rooms. After all, the Nielsen family is dead.
The Assets told the "based on true events" story of CIA mole Aldritch Ames in the early 1980's. I enjoyed what I saw, and the notion of it as an eight-part limited series made it digestible and marathon-able once it was all done, even if we didn't do old-school appointment viewing.
So, what happened? The series was a product not of ABC Studios, but ABC News, as stated above. My unfounded guess is that in the very, very political world of television brinkmanship, I have a feeling the entertainment division didn't want to let the News division edge in on their turf. In TV, one exec's pet project failing is seen to help the success of someone else's.
I hope someone broadcasts it somewhere. ABC already spent the money on it, so they might as well give it to Netflix for a small pile of cash or in a larger package. That a major network would cancel a miniseries and instead air reruns is a sign of the impending death of the current broadcast model.
Below, a 1997 Nightline interview with one of the agents (portrayed in the miniseries) who caught Aldritch Ames:
…and an hour-plus presentation by Sandy Grimes at the International Spy Museum: