Americans, “The Great British Baking Show” as you have known it is coming to an end.

The season finale was broadcast in some markets last week on PBS, which has aired only the four most recent of its seven seasons. The broadcaster said it would air one of the three earliest seasons of the show — which is called “The Great British Baking Show” in the United States and “The Great British Bake Off” everywhere else — but after that, things will be different.

For one, PBS, which also licenses “The Great British Baking Show” to Netflix, said it had not yet decided whether to air future seasons in the United States. What is going on?

“The Great British Bake Off” has been celebrated as a cheerful vision of multicultural modern Britain and built its brand on the preternatural charm of its hosts and contestants, who compete in complex baking challenges without the lure of a cash prize. But in a twist perhaps fit for the show’s more diabolical cousin — American reality TV — it is cash that may lead to its undoing.

Last September, the show’s producer, Love Productions, set off a public outcry when the show left its longtime home at the publicly funded British Broadcasting Corporation for a rival network, Channel 4, that offered more money (and will air it with commercials, which the BBC does not).