I guess you must not watch anything these days.
I definitely watch less and less. Tend to read more or play video games.
Everything I can find says that the fan campaign was a decisive factor there, but I'm sure it wasn't the only one. Probably the Syfy execs liked the show enough that they were willing to continue it in some form even if the expense and ratings had made cancellation necessary.
One possible contributing factor is that Farscape was always a loss leader for Henson Productions. They were willing to go into debt making it an elaborate production with complex effects because it served as an advertisement for what they were capable of, which brought them profitable work doing commercials and industrial films and made up for the losses they took on Farscape. So the usual profit-and-loss calculations didn't apply there, and maybe that's why Syfy was more willing to continue the show than they otherwise might have been.
They're figuring out that rebooting old cult fantasy shows is a bad business notion?
X-FIles, can't say. It was something like a mainstream hit. BTVS was big for a low-budget show on two weblets that pitched their content to demos underserved by the so-called "Big Three." B5 was...fuck, it was a first-run syndication show that didn't pull numbers anywhere near Xena or even DS9.
Have they cancelled the Xena reboot yet?
Interesting Bluesky thread by Javier Grillo-Marxuach not on this cancellation in particular, but the new realities of TV production that allow it to happen in the first place.
Murderbot is a new (to tv) IP and a fairly excellent adaptation.
I do, because I love Stargate and Racing, they even had an Indycar #78 racing team or sponsorship - Team Stargate Worlds with Stargate Resistance back in the late 00s/early 10s...
I don't there there are any plans for one at all at the moment. One was cancelled in 2017.
Yup. Prefer something new and I'll watch the old if I want it.
I lack this drive for more of the same in media.
I think fan petitions were a hard sell in the past, and next to impossible now. These organisations have some of the hallmarks of old TV but in are more data driven, more focused, more ruthless. They come from a background of running a shipping company and scaling businesses.
That's not to say the networks weren't money focused before, of course they were. But at the end of the day they were entertainment people, they were there for the showbiz. I think there's a certain hard reality now that wasn't there before. An impatience. Networks gave things a shot, sometimes gave stuff time to breathe even if ratings weren't immediately great... now it's all about making decisions and moving fast.
A network I think you could reason with slightly. Amazon, not a chance.
Also in this case it's different. Amazon owns the rights. They know the market. If anything the decision will have been motivated by it not being right rather than not being viable as a concept. They'll likely want to get something out of the franchise in future.
I do, because I love Stargate and Racing, they even had an Indycar #78 racing team or sponsorship - Team Stargate Worlds with Stargate Resistance back in the late 00s/early 10s...
Probably should've used that money on the game.
The problem is this is what so many people say - and I'm not saying you're wrong - but then viewership says otherwise. People consistently flock to known IP. Paramount+ is making great hay right now out of "Yellowstone: Outsider Crapper" now or whatever spin off its doing. See Marvel and its universe. See people flocking to sequels. When you have a pre-built brand awareness it counts for so much.
Hence they also bolt Star Trek onto any tripe that crosses their desk these days.
Unfortunately, they've so ran it into the ground that people are finally tiring of it and moving on. The 2010's and early-20's were an era of nostalgia, now folks are looking for something new. Something that hasn't been beaten into the ground.
Netflix, for example, is laser focused on new subscriptions. They did the math and, according to them, cancelling shows prematurely doesn't cause people to drop their subscriptions. And this all comes back to the need to make the quarterly number go up, at the expense of long term strategic planning. We can actually blame the Dodge Brothers for this. They are the ones that sued Henry Ford and got a Supreme Court decision that said a publicly traded business's highest loyalty is to the shareholders not the customers.
If people actually cancelled when their favorite show got cancelled Netflix would actually have to concentrate on Customer loyalty.
I did after 1899. But I appreciate I'm in the minority. And there were other factors, but that was a major driver where I thought "fuck this shit".
I'm a bit shocked at times when I hear friends subscribe but say they haven't used in a while.
I don't understand the subscription market. I honestly thought Netflix was done for when other streamers popped up in particular I thought Disney and the Fox back catalogue would be near fatal for Netflix. And none of it happened.
I do think Amazon has bonded its TV with its delivery business, it's blended. And I think Netflix succeeds as it's Netflix.
When exactly did networks do that???? My childhood was littered with shows I liked that got cancelled after one season or less. That has always, always been the norm. Hell, it was worse in the commercial network days, because at least with streaming shows, the entire season gets released even if the show doesn't get renewed. The broadcast networks would often just pull shows off the schedule with episodes left unaired, so viewers might never see the entire run of produced episodes. This sometimes happened in as little as 3 weeks, occasionally even less. The idea that networks back then routinely "gave stuff time to breathe" is laughably wrong. When that did happen, it was the exception, not the rule. It only happened in cases where the network executives were particularly supportive of a show that was struggling in the ratings.
If anything, broadcast networks had more incentive to cancel shows ruthlessly than modern streamers do. Every time slot was a competition with the rival networks, and anything that wasn't holding its own in its time slot either got moved or got canned. Streaming shows aren't competing for time slots, because people can watch them whenever they want.
The problem is that the majority of shows that got cancelled quickly tend to be forgotten, and only the minority of shows that survived the competition ran long enough to leave a large cultural footprint. And that creates the illusion that long runs were the norm instead of the exception.
Oh so many pilots never saw the light of day then then the success rate after commissioning was horrific.
But there were many shows that looked as if they were done for but they gave them a chance. "On the bubble". TNG itself was a show that made it into season three with the smallest of margins.
And sometimes it was fan noise. Sometimes it was seeing something in a certain demographic. Or a certain potential in ratings. Or a certain synergy in the topic. Building a lead in for another show.
But my point was it was humans in the entertainment industry trying to read the data and just occasionally going on a hunch. Or nuance. Or a larger picture.
I don't think that's really the case now.
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