"Suits," a beloved series that first aired on USA in 2011, has captured the hearts of fans over nearly 15 years. The show experienced a significant revival in recent years, thanks to its full availability on Netflix, fueling countless binge-watching marathons. However, despite this renewed interest, the new spin-off series, "Suits LA," failed to capture the same magic and was canceled after just one season upon the release of NBC’s fall schedule. Jeff Bader, the president of program planning strategy at NBC, shed light on the reasons behind this decision.
“It’s so hard to talk about shows and which ones you bring back, and Suits had a very short run, but it really just has not resonated the way we thought it would,” Bader explained to Variety following the public release of the fall schedule. He further noted, “There can be many, many reasons why, people are speculating why it hasn’t resonated, but it’s just not really showing the potential to grow for us in the future, unfortunately.”
Suits LA was canceled after just one season. Photo by: Nicole Weingart/NBC via Getty Images.
Bader elaborated on the tough choices the network had to make, saying, “And it’s those decisions we had to make. We had to look at the performance of the shows, both on linear and on digital. We had to see the ones that looked like they had growth potential in the future. So we’re looking at how stable they are on their linear performance, how stable they are on digital, which ones are growing and which ones are declining. And we had to make some hard decisions.”
He also mentioned that NBCUniversal considered transferring canceled shows to Peacock, their streaming service, but "Suits LA" did not make the cut for this transition.
When discussing the criteria for keeping certain shows on the schedule, Bader highlighted the factors that make a show appealing to the network, especially with the need to accommodate sports programming like the NBA on Tuesday nights. “We looked at what their performance was week-to-week, episode-to-episode, on both linear and digital, to just try and glean which ones we thought had the best ratings story,” he said. “And then on the creative side, the creative teams did the same thing. Which ones have the most potential, or the best potential, to capture a new audience? And these were the two shows that made their way to the top.”
The original "Suits" series ran for nine seasons from 2011 to 2019. The revival series, "Suits LA," premiered in February and featured a cast including Stephen Amell, Lex Scott Davis, Josh McDermitt, and Bryan Greenberg, with appearances by original "Suits" cast members like Rick Hoffman, David Costabile, and Gabriel Macht. Aaron Korsh, the creator of "Suits," also served as the creator and executive producer of the spin-off, which aired its final episode on May 11, 2025.
