^Apparently not, many actors turn down US TV roles because of the long contracts.
And many more snap those contracts up happily. I've heard of a TV show that couldn't go forward because they couldn't find any actor to sign on the dotted line. You get a no, you go on to the next person in the audition waiting room.
^6 million is a lot of nobody.
Not a lot by network standards. They need to make $$$ off ad revenues, which are worth a lot less per eyeball versus the way cable does it - ad revenues plus subscriptions. Premium cable eyeballs are worth the most of all, because you have to subscribe directly to the channel, and it isn't shared among 100 different basic cable stations or whatever.
What the ratings mean varies wildly according to the underlying financial model. Six million is a huge hit on Showtime. Twice that number will still mean cancellation on CBS.
Warehouse 13 is basically a magical detective show, and it's pretty successful. And The Dresden Files, about a wizard/detective, is a very successful book series, although the TV adaptation didn't last.
Both on cable. Broadcast networks demand a larger audience than either of those shows could garner. Have you failed to notice how many sf/f shows are trotted out on broadcast networks and how many of them fail? The failure rate is almost 100%. What is surviving anymore,
Fringe and
Chuck? They're hanging on by their fingernails. Sure, the TV biz is hard and cop shows fail all the time too, but it seems like sf/f on network TV is a sure recipe for cancellation.
Magic realism is a very popular genre these days in literature, and Ron Moore has tackled it in past TV shows including Carnivale and even Battlestar Galactica (which was essentially a magic-realist space opera, a rather novel variation on both genres).
BSG was on basci cable, and
Carnivale was on premium cable. Comparing shows from broadcast vs basic cable vs premium cable is comparing apples, oranges and pomegrantes.
Isn't True Blood a sort of magical show too?
Yes. It's on premium cable, the best place for niche TV. Second best is basic cable, which bodes well for
The Walking Dead. Worst choice is broadcast. It's all about the financial model, which determines the ratings needed for survival. The more each eyeball is worth, the easier it is to survive on the smaller number of eyeballs that are interested in sf/f.
