FX Renews 'The Americans' for Season 2

        FX has picked up its critically-acclaimed drama The Americans for a 13-episode second season, it was announced today by John Landgraf, President and General Manager, FX Networks. The most recent drama to join the network's coveted roster of hit original series, the renewal comes just four episodes into The Americans freshman season. The first season finale is scheduled to air on May 1.

        Created by Joe Weisberg and starring Keri Russell, Matthew Rhys and Noah Emmerich, the series premiere episode of The Americans was the most-watched debut of any FX series ever with 5.11 million Total Viewers (Live+7, 1/30/13). Through three weeks, time shifted viewing of The Americans is the highest of any first-year series on FX with weekly gains of +44%, +58% and +63% respectively. On Live +3 basis through three weeks, the series is averaging 3.63 million Total Viewers and 1.87 million Adults 18-49. After declines in each of the previous two weeks, last night's fourth episode rebounded to week two levels.

        "The Americans has quickly established itself as a key part of FX's acclaimed drama line-up," said Landgraf. "Executive producers Joe Weisberg, Joel Fields and Graham Yost and their collaborators are telling riveting and deeply emotional stories and the performances of Keri Russell, Matthew Rhys, Noah Emmerich and the entire cast are simply outstanding. The show is truly worthy of its widespread critical acclaim and we are confident that its quality will continue to yield a robust and passionate audience.

        "We're very grateful to John Landgraf, Nick Grad, Eric Schrier and everyone at FX for their unwavering support of our show," said Weisberg. "We're thrilled to be able to continue writing stories for such an incredibly talented cast led by Keri, Matthew and Noah. This has been an amazing experience for me and it couldn't have happened without the tireless efforts of our cast and crew. We appreciate the support of the audience and we believe they have a lot to look forward to the rest of this season."

        Fields added, "Working with Joe Weisberg, Graham Yost, Josh Brand, Adam Arkin, our writing staff and the brilliant cast and crew has been a blast and I'm delighted we get to keep doing it. We couldn't have made it happen without the constant support of Justin Falvey and Darryl Frank at Amblin TV, David Madden at Fox Television Studios and Eric Schrier at FX Productions and their wonderful teams as well."

        In celebration of the series renewal, FX will air a marathon of The Americans, showing the first five episodes back-to-back on Friday, March 1 beginning at 10:00 PM E/P.