Taking out a full-page ad in The Hollywood Reporter, "Sons of Anarchy" creator Kurt Sutter has announced he's pulling the plug on his ambitious medieval drama "The Bastard Executioner."

"The audience has spoken," he wrote, "and unfortunately the word is, 'meh.'"

Between its Sept. 14 premiere, which drew 4 million viewers, and its Tuesday finale, the FX series lost more than half of its audience.

"It's fantastic to get a good review [or] an award, but at the end of the day the only thing that matters, really, is numbers," he told The Hollywood Reporter. "I'm not the guy sitting in my ivory tower spitting shit out and not caring if anyone is watching. … I don't want to write something that nobody's fucking watching."

Sutter is already looking to his next project, beyond the planned "Sons of Anarchy" spinoff, teasing, "I can't tell you yet. Nobody knows! It's contemporary, I'll tell you that. And there are no horses involved."