Continuum (US) Season 1 Discussion Thread (Spoilers)

Discussion in 'Science Fiction & Fantasy' started by Tom, Jan 15, 2013.

  1. Zod

    Zod Captain Captain

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    NY
    I have been watching and really liking it. The most recent episode was very strong imo.

    I am glad its getting a 2nd season as it deserves one. Will Sci Fi channel pick it up? Hope so. Their track record with shows like this is dismal compared to their love of reality TV like blackout (where they scare people in the dark-dumbest show I have ever heard of)
     
  2. Christopher

    Christopher Writer Admiral

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    Mar 15, 2001
    Yes, they have already picked it up, but the airdate isn't yet known. However, Syfy is currently showing new Lost Girl episodes just a day after their Canadian premiere, so hopefully the same will be true here.


    It's not love, it's money. TV is a business, and the shows that cost less to make and bring in higher ratings are the ones that any network is best able to afford. People keep blaming the networks, but the simple fact is, reality shows dominate because that's what the audience wants to see -- they're a way that networks can get high ratings with low overhead, so from a business sense, they're a necessary evil no matter how much the executives would prefer to be doing smart, critically acclaimed scripted programming. At least the profits from the popular, lowest-common-denominator stuff help fund the better stuff.

    And no, Syfy's track record with scripted SF shows is not dismal. This came up just the other day in the Lost Girl thread (starting with post 76). If you compare the track record of genre shows on SciFi/Syfy with those on the major networks, you find that Syfy has a distinctly higher ratio of longer-running shows. We've seen a passel of mediocre genre shows premiere and die quickly on the broadcast networks in the past couple of seasons, but the only cancellations Syfy has had in that interval were Eureka (after its fifth season, making it roughly tied with Battlestar Galactica as the second longest-running show in the network's history), Sanctuary (after four seasons), and Alphas (after two full seasons). Go back a little farther and you can add Stargate Universe (2 seasons) and Caprica (one season), but they still got more than network shows like Journeyman, FlashForward, Terra Nova, Alcatraz, Awake, Last Resort, 666 Park Avenue, or Do No Harm got.

    And of course Continuum is a Canadian import, so it's not as costly for Syfy because they don't pay for its production. Thus they can more easily afford to air it and have less incentive to cancel it. That's why so much of the current Syfy scripted-drama lineup consists of imports.
     
  3. Zod

    Zod Captain Captain

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    Dec 26, 2002
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    NY
    You posted this is the other thread and I guess that is why I said what I said.