SyFy response to the cancellation

[firehawk12]

http://www.gateworld.net/news/2011/05/an-open-letter-to-stargate-fans-from-syfy/

A lot of the standard points being made. Basically the ratings slide made it impossible for them to renew.

A few of the points covered:

The erratic scheduling killed SGU:
We started the show on Fridays where we’ve had the most success and where it initially did well, and we left it there until it started struggling. When it was clear the show had fallen to unsustainable levels and would not survive on Fridays, only then did we move it to the night where our highest rated show of all time had recently aired.
The hiatus killed SGU:
As you can see from the ratings above, the biggest drop in viewers came before the hiatus, not after. In fact, SGU actually grew around 10% after the hiatus between season 1.0 and 1.5 in its first two episodes back.
If you’d left it on Friday nights, it would have done well:
When left on Friday nights SGU lost 1/3 of its audience and dropped to consistently unsustainable ratings levels. The only hope of keeping it was to move it to another night where new viewers could find it.
You canceled SGU because you hate science fiction:
If we didn’t like science fiction we simply wouldn’t have made SGU. It’s because we like science fiction that we tried it. Even though SGU was ultimately unsuccessful, we don’t regret trying it. Science fiction shows are the backbone and lifeblood of our network, and we have many in development. Later this year we’ll be debuting Alphas, the Battlestar Galactica: Blood & Chrome pilot is being worked on as you read this, the movie Red Faction starring Stargate Universe‘s Brian Jacob Smith will air next month, 5 of our original dramas will return with new seasons or new episodes this year, and we’re working on many more behind the scenes.

Yeah, it's a bit of spin, but I can see why they'd kill it if the numbers continued to decline. Certainly the show itself bears some of the responsibility anyway.

 

[BlobVanDam]

Huge credit to SyFy for responding so thoroughly to the concerns, as they didn't really owe an explanation to anyone given the low ratings of SGU. Overall I'm pretty content with their answers. I still think it's a huge shame that SGU got canceled right when it was finally delivering, and I don't see that they currently have a lot of good scifi to make up for it (aside from Warehouse 13, but that's a very light scifi show).
Hopefully these new shows in development they've hinted at are actually some real scifi, and not just empty words. I'm not a BSG fan, so I don't care about that new series, so there's really not much on SyFy I care for right now.

 

[Mr. Adventure]

While I'm not sure about all of the things said it is interesting to note that they are aware of the criticisms up there in the ivory towers. Sometimes you wonder if they are aware of those things.

 

[Danny99]

SyFy shoulders some of the blame for the wider concepts of their network, like why a cooking show and wrestling is on a network whose mandate is science fiction. It shouldn't be called SyFy if they are padding their line up with garbage. Wrestling is not a sport, nor is it science fiction, it should be relegated to Spike TV.

The writing staff needs to shoulder most of the blame here. I think we could have done without the whole civilian uprising in Season 1 and a lot of the Young stuff with his wife and Telford. Also, it's well known how hated Scott and Chloe were. They didn't abandon concepts that weren't working or develop them to make a lot of sense.

Unfortunately, shows are not given a chance to develop these days. One would imagine that if TNG S1 and S2 happened today, it would have been canceled too.

 

[Jax]

Unsustainable levels am sorry but that letter was horeshit through and through. Writing was a problem but the response to season 2 has been better than season 1 from what I can tell so that issue was not as bad as the crippling time slot change and facing network shows for all 40 episodes.

* Lets just get down to the fact audience erosion in the franchise began to become a problem when Skiffy took SG away from the summer to compete with networks.

* The ratings began to become worrying after the midseason break that saw a 4 MONTH GAP not inbetween a season but just episode 10 & 11 of the debut season.

Then they moved to Tuesdays where 3 of the most watched shows on networks air NCIS (2 of em), DWTS and the fact Skiffy has limited success on non summer fridays. The fact they knew SG had a audience problem before SGU was even aired so that makes the lack of commitment to fridays even more a joke.

SGU starting at Friday Nights 10pm in the late summer with a much smaller break or NO break inbetween episode 10-11 might of stood a chance especially as Season 1 ended with around 1.5 million so not a big increase was really needed to get some form of a 3rd season.

 

[AJ86]

The flaw in his reasoning is that he completely ignores the wrestling lead-in that SGU would have gained had it stayed on a Friday. It would have gone from having a repeat as a lead-in, to having a show that pulls in around 3 million viewers. I mean just look at how many viewers Sanctuary has lost since it lost that lead-in. It's gone from pulling in around 1.4 million viewers, to just over 750k, which coincidentally is about the same number of viewers SGU would have needed to survive. If I had to guess, I'd say that Syfy simply shifted SGU and Caprica to Tuesdays to die, and used Fridays to try and save Sanctuary instead.

 

[JarodRussell]

The ratings and schedule argument reminds me of a cat biting its own tail.

 

[CaptainJack]

I dont care how they spin it. But the way Scy-Fy has been airing SG and BSG its amazing anyone at all watches them. I remember thinking one time after maybe the 2nd to the last seasons of BSG. Once that final episode aired I was like, oh thats great. Now I have to wait 6 months to see the next episode. Thats bullcrap. And doing stuff like that is why the ratings suffer as bad as they do.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

Oh goodness, it's so simple: SGU was an attempt to reinvigorate a fading franchise by aping BSG's style, which was the sort of approach that might have worked, had it not been beyond the abilities of the producers to pull off. So the resulting train wreck of a show just accellerated the departure of the fans and the final death of Stargate (until the inevitable reboot with all new producers sometime in the future).

As for Syfy, they are acting like a smart business (sad to say). Their "crap" - wresting, fake-ass reality shows about ghosts, lightweight sci-fi-y shows (in the USA style) and bad Sat night movies - are all good business propositions. They appeal to a large enough audience to be financially successful.

Blaming the scheduling is pointless. Viewers are capable of following a show around the schedule if they are motivated to do so. If a show sucks, why should they bother? If SGU really had been BSG reborn (not that BSG was perfect by any stretch of the imagination), I would have followed it regardless of where it went. At the very least, I can set my DVR to follow it for me.

Contrast that with risky shows like Farscape and Caprica, which despite their flaws are certainly more brag-worthy than piffle like Warehouse 13, but simply don't appeal to a large enough audience. We can't expect skiffy to be a charity.

There is interesting sci fi popping up every so often, but not on skiffy. In June, we get to sample Falling Skies on TNT, which looks much better than anything skiffy is airing or has planned, and next fall there's a slew of new shows, many of which are sf/f.

There's nothing I can point to that skiffy is doing that is "wrong." They've looked at the numbers and decided that lightweight crap and non-sci-fi is lucrative. Instead of fighting against the tide, let's be happy that there are a large range of channels out there that also are interested in sf/f. The good stuff is going to be like The Walking Dead - anyplace but skiffy,

 

[AJ86]

There's nothing I can point to that skiffy is doing that is "wrong."

That seem to be a failure of analysis on your part more than anything else to be fair. It's been talked about at length here and elsewhere how they mismanaged a show that was already very niche to begin with. Much like Caprica it was high quality, but didn't stand much of a chance when it had the ineptitude of Syfy to contend with. In hindsight, it's difficult to see how they could have mismanaged the show any worse. Of course as things stand though cancellation was the right decision from a business perspective, it's the things that they did before that that fans take issue with.

 

[brian577]

This is what interests me most: When MGM decided to bring Stargate Atlantis to an end after five seasons, they did so knowing they’d transition to a new show in the franchise

Confirmed, it was MGM's call, not Syfy's

 

[Hartzilla2007]

There's nothing I can point to that skiffy is doing that is "wrong."

That seem to be a failure of analysis on your part more than anything else to be fair. It's been talked about at length here and elsewhere how they mismanaged a show that was already very niche to begin with. Much like Caprica it was high quality, but didn't stand much of a chance when it had the ineptitude of Syfy to contend with. In hindsight, it's difficult to see how they could have mismanaged the show any worse. Of course as things stand though cancellation was the right decision from a business perspective, it's the things that they did before that that fans take issue with.

No they they didn't stand a chance becuase they were BORING becuase they took so long to get to he good stuff while wasting time on relationship and emo crap. No amount of blaming the network will ever change this no matter how loud you yell it.

 

[firehawk12]

This is what interests me most: When MGM decided to bring Stargate Atlantis to an end after five seasons, they did so knowing they’d transition to a new show in the franchise

Confirmed, it was MGM's call, not Syfy's

Yeah, I caught that too. Although I think that was confirmed for the most part, yeah?

 

[Brent]

They shoulda never cancelled Atlantis in the first place

Syfy has not had a good history with actual scifi shows, Farscape anyone? Surely everyone remembers that cancellation on that crazy cliffhanger. Glad they saw the light with that one and let them finish the story. Too much to hope they'd do that for SGU though

 

[Temis the Vorta]

Much like Caprica it was high quality, but didn't stand much of a chance when it had the ineptitude of Syfy to contend with.

Caprica doomed itself. It was an interesting concept, but they dicked around with the story way too much. It needed much tighter focus from the start. (I've written the equivalent of an entire book on the topic so if you were around the BSG forum, you already know what I've said.) I can't blame the audience for getting bored and leaving. I was tempted to do the same, except there are so few shows around that are like that one.

What else do you think skiffy has done that's actually wrong from a business perspective? I'd love to slam them, but I'm not sure there's any basis for it, other than that they aren't airing shows I personally want to see. Neither does CBS, ESPN or Fox News, but I don't think I can reasonably expect the entire TV spectrum to cater to my specific interests.

 

[AJ86]

No they they didn't stand a chance becuase they were BORING becuase they took so long to get to he good stuff while wasting time on relationship and emo crap. No amount of blaming the network will ever change this no matter how loud you yell it.

I'd love to see you objectively prove something that is inherently subjective. Anyone can proclaim something good or bad, which is the point I was working toward. The only real measure is how broad the appeal is. SGU's wasn't particularly broad, no one can really deny that, sci-fi is a genre genre as it is, and the audience for sci-fi character drama is even smaller, but that doesn't mean the audience wasn't there, not whan Syfy seemingly did everything it could to hinder SGU in finding it.

Caprica doomed itself. It was an interesting concept, but they dicked around with the story way too much. It needed much tighter focus from the start. (I've written the equivalent of an entire book on the topic so if you were around the BSG forum, you already know what I've said.) I can't blame the audience for getting bored and leaving. I was tempted to do the same, except there are so few shows around that are like that one.

You don't think that releasing the pilot long before the series première hurt it? Or the mid season break right as the pace was picking up? If you've documentaed your critcisms of it there's no pointi n getting into a debate about it, but I personally enjoyed it, probably more than BSG itself especially toward the end.

What else do you think skiffy has done that's actually wrong from a business perspective? I'd love to slam them, but I'm not sure there's any basis for it, other than that they aren't airing shows I personally want to see. Neither does CBS, ESPN or Fox News, but I don't think I can reasonably expect the entire TV spectrum to cater to my specific interests.

Their scheduling decisions are completely backward. They break up niche serialized shows and air them against broadcast competition in the fall, while airing their more mainstream and higher rated episodics through the summer. Not only that, but their promotion is absolutely awful. They don't know how to market anything that isn't an action adventure, it's no wonder that SGU and Caprica never found an audience. If you go purely by promotion you'd expect more of the same, so those who want that end up being disappointed, and those who don't simply don't check it out in the first place. That coupled with the DVD pilot go a long way to explain Caprica's premiere of 1.6 million viewers, which is pitiful, frankly. Were it not for the stronger brand name, and not having to deal with that stupid pilot decision I don't suppose SGU would have fared much better. Blood and Chrome will need to be cheap as shit to survive, assuming it ever gets made into a series at all.

 

[Noname Given]

They shoulda never cancelled Atlantis in the first place

Syfy has not had a good history with actual scifi shows, Farscape anyone? Surely everyone remembers that cancellation on that crazy cliffhanger. Glad they saw the light with that one and let them finish the story. Too much to hope they'd do that for SGU though

The FarScape situation was VERY different as ratings were not the problem - the fact that the profits were shared between Sci-Fi and another productrion company, and the fact that Sci-Fi didn't own the rights to the farscape IP outright was why Sci-Fi backed out; and the other production company couldn't shoulder the production cost without a partner.

In fact THAT'S the time when Sci-Fi did the deal to continue Stargate SG-1 after it's 5 year run with ShowTime was concluding. They saw it as having a built in audience and the revenue stream was better in their eyes.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

They don't know how to market anything that isn't an action adventure, it's no wonder that SGU and Caprica never found an audience.

You could just as easily explain the failure of those shows this way: they were both boring. Caprica at least had a germ of an interesting idea and some very good actors, which is more than SGU had, so I cut it some slack but I don't expect everyone to do the same. Both deserved to fail on their own merits.

As for "proving" that they're boring, well, they bored me. They bored other people, who announced their boredom in the threads and then vanished. I think that's probably a sign of something.

Name a good show skiffy has done recently that was prematurely cancelled and didn't deserve it. This is a trick question because all their recent shows have sucked except BSG, and that one really needed to go after four seasons. Until skiffy actually airs a show that deserves to survive, it's impossible to say whether their bungling is hurting the shows at all.

The last show I can think of that definitely deserved to survive was Farscape, which was an unusual case, and after all, it did come back from premature cancellation for a very satisfying wrap-up. The quality on that show was very up and down, and by the last season there were more downs than ups. I'm not sure I'd have wanted another season from it, either.

Blood and Chrome will need to be cheap as shit to survive, assuming it ever gets made into a series at all.

I truly hope that one never sees the light of day. I've been watching that kid they cast as young Adama on The Borgias, and he can't act to save his life. And he'd have to be a very good actor indeed to convince me that a scrawny pretty boy is the same person as Bill "Flashlight" Adama. That role was a very hard one to cast well, and they completely blew it. (In their defense, if they're going the cheap-ass route, maybe they offered the role to better actors and couldn't meet their salary demands. Anyone with some acting talent probably knows what they're worth.)

Skiffy not only has nothing good on now, it has nothing that sounds good among its upcoming shows. What a complete waste of a network (which is not the same as saying the don't know what they're doing, $$$-wise).

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

Yeah, it's a bit of spin, but I can see why they'd kill it if the numbers continued to decline.

It's "spin" to the extent that anyone you don't agree with who explains their point of view without successfully persuading you can be interpreted as "spinning." There's really no part of the explanation that doesn't hold up to scrutiny from a business POV.

 

[Dac]

The cancellation of SGU made me angry, bitter and pissed off. But, I read SyFy's "statement" on the matter and I have to say for the most part it makes sense from their point of view.

As much as we all want it to be true, a good story doesn't mean a large audience. To me, SGU was 50:50 in the first season, and the second season was a vast improvement that continued to get better and better right up until the end. Yes it sucks and yes I do think they were too optimistic putting it up against big network shows for the entirety of its run.

All I know is, something was off. My friend who never watched a Stargate in his life was hooked on SGU. That was the mythical new viewer that SGU tried to reach, and in my experience did reach. Perhaps he was the only one? I don't know. I hope not, but the picture SyFy paints is a pretty sobering one.